I READ the Inquirer editorial of May 30 and noted its taking issue with my stand against the “Harm Reduction Program” under which free syringes and needles are distributed to a barangay in Cebu to reduce the possibility of contracting HIV/AIDS among injecting drug users. Had the editorial writer been at the hearing of the Senate committee on public order and illegal drugs chaired by Sen. Grace Poe, he/she might not have been as unkind in his/her tirades against me. In that hearing, representatives of the Department of Health, the Dangerous Drugs Board, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, the Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operations Task Force of the Philippine National Police, and the National Bureau of Investigation were all at a loss as to the factual basis of the program, the relevant statistics and its parameters. No person or group claimed to have had any assessment reports or hard data on the program’s basis, the progress and status of the experiment, and its overall effectiveness. The health secretary, an hour before the hearing, told me that she herself did not know or approved of it.
Just because funds are available from a foreign source should not compel us to undertake a program that is not appropriate for us. Syringes and needles are shared in a heroin-dominated drug community as found in developed western countries. In our country, the predominantly used drugs are methamphetamine hydrochloride-based. Needles and syringes are not the paraphernalia of our drug culture. Introducing such a foreign-adopted strategy into the Philippines is like sending skiing paraphernalia to a tropical, basketball-crazy country.
My opposition to this strategy is not a knee-jerk reaction. I have been against it since 2008 when I was chair of the Dangerous Drugs Board. I campaigned against it in the 2009 UN Conference on Drugs and Crime in Vienna, Austria, when I spoke for the Asian countries.
The intellectual stance of press people against those in the entertainment industry who get elected to public office is no longer in currency. It’s par for the course for public officials to get criticized by the press, and the public expects the press to report the facts rather than what is presumed to have happened.
I hope we all do our share in protecting our people from the menace of illegal drugs.
—SEN. VICENTE SOTTO III