PA drug-free Bohol? It should be or we are all doomed to perdition. In the first place it should not have been the question to ask if every law enforcer was doing his/her job and every Boholano was aware and realized the damage illegal drugs could do to the victim. But because someone got greedy and curious, the drug lords and pushers have increased too many and the users can no longer be counted how many. The realization may be a bit late but the situation is not without solution. I am glad to hear P/Chief Supt. Prudencio Bañas, newly appointed regional director of PNP-RO7, announce during a conference with the Bohol Tri-media that his mission now is to make Bohol a drug-free province in the same manner that it was made an insurgency-free province. I have said it before and I say it again that I would rather have the communists insurgents as a problem than illegal drugs. The former are fighting for a cause against injustice and oppression while the latter are the purveyors of injustice and oppression themselves. The former have hearts for the poor while the latter have no hearts and are driven only by their greed for power and money.

When it comes to the level of difficulty in addressing them, the local communists have been in the country since World War II but the problem of illegal drugs have been throughout the globe since cocaine was discovered. That should tell us which one is easier to address. As to adherents and supporters, the insurgent-influenced masses are only hooked until they realize they have been duped. In the case of the illegal drug users they are hooked until they breathe their last. And for as long as they are still breathing, the drug lords and pushers are laughing their way to the bank. Is Banas' mission attainable? Of course it is. But first things must be done first. He must rid the PNP under his command of the scalawags who have sold their souls and their badges to the devil himself. Information that filtered to me has put hundreds of PNP enlisted personnel and officers up to the position of provincial and regional directors (it did not say whether past or present) who are or have somehow abetted the proliferation and growth of illegal drugs in the region and especially in Bohol.

So before calling on the citizens to report to the police illegal drug activities and those involved in it, Banas must first get rid of his own people who have put the PNP to shame. The well-meaning citizens have long wanted to report but to whom will they report knowing that the officer they report to might be the devil himself. They will just be endangering their own safety. The documents intercepted in that San Miguel police checkpoint the day the good PNP personnel clashed with the bad elements of cashiered PO1 Owen Rosales and those discovered alongside the dead bodies of Rosales and his cohorts should be more than enough to put some of the bad policemen to the gallows if Banas is really bent on accomplishing his avowed mission of making Bohol a drug-free province.

It may be unfair to ask for shorter timelines knowing the extent and depth of the problem and the principle of due process that democracy demands. But for now, Banas has given us something to cling on and hope for a better Bohol. That hope is strengthened by the fact that the other week Gov. Edgar M. Chatto also declared war against illegal drugs in the province. With the police hierarchy and the civilian government collaborating and working together in declaring war against illegal drugs there can be no doubt, we are destined to live in a drug-free Bohol. But again the strategy and means of collaboration must be put in clear terms and the battle plans drawn and implemented with precision. So can we have a drug-free Bohol? Yes we must say. When? That will be for all of us to work on.