Academics push for ‘science-based,’ ‘community-led’ interventions to drug use

“We need to act based on science and not whim, act with mercy and not malice, and we need to heal and not kill.”

This, in a nutshell, was the goal of a two-day conference that started on Wednesday at the Philippine Social Science Center in Quezon City. The conference seeks to provide a venue for the presentation of various studies on crime and punishment, including methods to best address the illegal drugs scourge.

The quote came from Regina Hechanova, psychology professor at the Ateneo de Manila University, who presented a “relapse prevention program” currently being piloted by the Psychological Association of the Philippines’ (PAP) Task Force on Drug Recovery, in coordination with the Quezon City government.

According to Hechanova, since November, the task force, which she heads, has been studying at least 80 drug surrenderees in the city – all adults and mostly male – and following their progress under the community-based relapse prevention program called Katatagan Kontra Droga sa Komunidad.

In her abstract for the ongoing study, Hechanova said only 10 percent of drug users require in-house rehabilitation in treatment centers, while the rest could be treated through community programs.

“Only 15 percent of those we talked to are [drug-] dependent,” Hechanova said in an interview with the Inquirer after her presentation.

One of the initial findings of the ongoing study is that drug use was primarily a “psychosocial” issue, though it also has an “economic component.”

“We saw environment was a trigger,” Hechanova said, saying that the participants would cite neighbors, peers, friends, and family as the reason why they first started using drugs.

“One of the most bothersome data that we got: Almost 90 percent of users said that they grew up in communities used to violence,” Hechanova said in her presentation.

“Two-thirds report growing up amidst neglect, physical abuse and emotional abuse. There is a component that is familial…. it’s the distress that is correlated to dependence or drug use,” she added.

Asked what would make them stop doing drugs, Hechanova said the participants would cite job opportunities, activities, and social guidance and support.

She described the surrenderees as poor. More than half were unemployed, and the other half were employed but only as contractual or transient blue-collar and manual workers, such as construction workers, street sweepers, drivers, even launderers.

“One of the misconceptions we have for drug use is that it’s recreational,” she said. “But what we’re seeing is that it’s for productivity. Many of them call it ‘tamang-sipag’ [hard-work high]. They use it because they need the energy, because it will allow them to work longer hours. There’s that perspective. This is bothersome.”

“Based on our data, what we decided to focus on was better coping skills…the better the coping strategies, the better their well-being,” Hechanova said.

The relapse prevention program hold weekly or biweekly “modules” first with the individual users, then with their families.

In presenting his studies, Dr. Leonardo Estacio Jr., dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor at the Department of Behavioral Sciences at the University of the Philippines Manila, said these were the sort of perspectives and data that should be used “as basis in developing intervention programs.”

“We really [should] use grounded theorizing to understand that not all drug users are addicts,” Estacio said. “The problem of drugs is not a problem of the drug itself but a problem of social relations. From a sociological perspective, there is improper socialization…and the law [operates from a] criminalist [mindset], so even those frameworks will fail.”

Estacio reported that he found, based on interviews with surrenderees, that the primary reason for continued drug use was to escape problems and because of peer pressure.

“We look at the data, and they took drugs because they have problems. Therefore, drugs, [for them] is a solution. It only becomes a problem when some of them go into ‘unwise’ use,” Estacio shared.

Estacio pushed for a mindset of “restorative justice” or from a “notion that they need our help.”

“This is the framework we should use in order to develop modules that are participatory,” he said.

As a community worker, he said he observed that current government drug intervention programs – usually involving physical activities such as Zumba, or spiritual activities like going to Mass, or at worst, killing off suspected drug suspects in police operations – had “minimal effect” or “low effectivity.”

“What can we say about these interventions? They’re not working,” he said. “We validated this with our research partner-treatment centers and they agreed. So there’s a serious problem here. But we can argue the best solutions are still community solutions. Treatment centers should be for severe users.” /atm