LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – The La Trinidad Municipal Police Station (LTMPS) was able to document some two hundred fifty six drug surrenderers from the town’s sixteen barangays since the aggressive implementation of the government’s anti-drug campaign over two years ago.
LTMPS head Chief Inspector Benson Macliing said that some 30 drug surrenderers are expected to complete the prescribed community-based drug rehabilitation program in the next several months while the remaining drug surrenderers have been subjected to close monitoring by the police operatives and barangay officials for them not to go back to the practice of using and peddling illegal drugs.
“Most of our drug surrenderers are not bonafide residents of the municipality because they simply came to the locality to look for greener pasture but they were tempted to use and peddle illegal drugs as an added source of livelihood or for their convenience,” Chief Inspector Macliing stressed.
Aside from helping work out the rehabilitation of the drug surrenderers to make sure that they will not go back to the use and peddling of illegal drugs, the police official disclosed that series of arrests were made by the local police force against identified drug users and pushers over the past two years that resulted to the filing of appropriate charges against them wherein almost of all of those who were arrested were not actual residents of the town.
According to him, La Trinidad is also a transhipment point of illegal drugs because those who continue to peddle illegal drugs in the locality are not residents of the locality but they are just visitors in the place who simply want to evade the aggressive anti-drug operations in other places not knowing that the town’s anti-drug campaign is also enhanced in the municipality.
He expressed his gratitude to the municipal government led by Mayor Romeo Salda for their unrelenting and uncompromising support to the sustained implementation of the government’s anti-drug campaign which resulted to the neutralization of the illegal activities of drug pushers and users in the 16 barangays and contributed in efforts to ensure the reign of peace and order in the locality.
He explained that the 30 percent reduction in the town’s crime rate over the past two years is one of the gauges on the successful implementation of the anti-drug campaign because most of those who are involved in the use and peddling of illegal drugs have already been neutralized or some of them might have left the locality and transferred to other places where they could freely do their illegal drug.
However, Macliing claimed that there is no more avenue in the country where illegal drug operations could thrive because law enforcers and anti-narcotics agents are on the lookout for illegal drug operations considering that illegal drugs is the source of all evil activities in the community.
He urged individuals involved in the use and peddling of illegal drugs in the locality to start reforming themselves and not to await that they will be collared by law enforcers that will lead to their being detained in jail.
By HENT
