TAKING A leaf from Jonathan Swift?s ?modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick,? and riding the global trend of taking work where it will be handled effectively and, most important, cheaply, we propose that the seemingly unenforceable task of identifying and apprehending drug traffickers be outsourced.

The idea is not as ridiculous as it may initially sound. Imagine the efficacy of allowing a drug trafficker unrestrained passage through security X-rays and obligatory pat-downs and thence into a plane, lulling the subject into thinking ?so far so good? and into settling down to the sublime comforts of the first-class cabin, then awaiting the certain fall of the axe at the airport of the country of destination (Hong Kong, say, or better yet Singapore). It?s a cinch.

Halfway attentive observers will note how the curious case of Ilocos Sur Rep. Ronald Singson is perfectly illustrative of this proposal. From accounts, on July 11 Gov. Chavit Singson?s son breezed through Philippine immigration and such hurdles deemed pesky at best by people of similar circumstance, boarded a plane bound for Hong Kong, where, upon landing at the Chek Lap Kok International Airport, was found in possession of 26.1 grams of cocaine and two tablets of a sedative, arrested, and clapped in jail. His application for bail was quickly thrown out. He is due to appear in court on Aug. 19. Until then he remains behind bars.

Can this conceivably happen in the Philippines? Where money and entitlement, or a perverted sense of it, allow the law to be flouted in many creative ways?

The eminent Swift presented the purported merits of his ?modest proposal? as far back as 1729. He argued that in order to cut the number of papists, ?with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation,? to allow ?poorer tenants? something of value of their own, to replenish the nation?s stock by 50,000 pounds a year, to assure ?constant breeders? the annual sum of eight shillings sterling, indeed to serve as a great inducement to marriage, the sale and consumption of babies and young children for food should be seriously considered. He went so far as to recommend ?buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.? Dare we say that this could also be a solution to the untrammeled population growth to which the papists among us choose to turn a blind eye?

On the matter of our own proposal to outsource law enforcement as it involves drug trafficking, it will concededly result in a black mark on Philippine pride. It will prove, after all, a long-held suspicion usually discussed with a smirk and a shrug: that our authorities are powerless to act against highly placed persons in apparent possession of contraband?in this case a lawmaker with, in the estimation of a veteran antinarcotics officer, intent to ?test-sell? cocaine to a transnational drug syndicate. (The narc surmised that the cocaine bricks recently discovered in waters off Samar had found their way to Northern Luzon and Metro Manila?a not unsurprising turn of events in this neck of the woods where, as whistle-blower Rodolfo Lozada Jr. can attest, official greed blossoms to such proportions as to require a ?mitigator.?)

But to be sure, our proposal will simplify matters immensely. For one, our enforcers will be spared the tremendous pressure of upholding the law in the face of a real danger to life and limb. (Remember that the young ensign Philip Pestaño was found shot dead after he resisted the loading of illegal logs and drugs onto his ship.) For another, it will do away with the practical matter of having to house and feed wealthy suspects in the manner to which they are accustomed. (Think, for just an example, of the high-living Ampatuans and their literal army of cohorts.)

And then there is the all-important issue of punishment. It?s said that trafficking 10-50 grams of cocaine merits a prison term of five to eight years in Hong Kong. If the Honorable Ronald Singson, lawmaker and scion of an empire in northern Luzon, is found guilty of the crime, he will be sufficiently punished.