The Effectiveness of The Community Based Prevention Program to Manage Drug Abuse

Most studies revealed that the underlying cause of the use of drugs is the ugly relational background of the drug victims. The majority of these victims wanted to escape from their personal issues such as broken-family, unemployment and poverty and take drugs to satisfy their thirst for attention. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) (2008) expressed that punitive approach did not lessen the drug intake of the victims because it did not delve into the real root cause of the problem. Caday (2017) found in his research that one of the top ten reasons why college students in the northern part of the Philippines resort to drugs was the unmet emotional needs from their peers, family, faculty and staff handling them. These students withdraw from scholastic activities because they feel that they lack connection with others. It only shows that relational aspect is of great importance and this cannot be dealt with law. Gunawa was right when he pointed out that anti-drug mechanism that honors human life is much more effective in eliminating drugs than using the old approaches. Punitive approach only answers one aspect leaving the others on the line. “Knowledge dissemination and refusal skills” have only limited effects.

Pure medication is less effective most specially when “drug cues such as places, the drug itself or stress causes a replay in the memory”. With this complexity, the government finds it hard to integrate the victims back to the society leaving them unrehabilitated and causing others to relapse which then becomes another load to the society in general. In addition, Kooler (expressed that a “personal support network” as an alternative influence from the family can make the victim reduce drug abuse. Positive parent-child relationship and effective parental monitoring contributes to the positive impact on child’s attitude and behavior towards drug and peer selection. In other words, the importance of communication between the parents and their children is crucial. Hence, if the family lacks support and becomes a source of discouragement then it will result to drug relapse of the victims.

On another front, as early as 2002, the Philippine Government instituted the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) as the policy-making and strategy-formulating body in planning and executing the policy and mechanism to counter the illicit drug use in the country. Substantial achievements and actions have been achieved and gauged but was not enough to eradicate the problem. Along with the DBB is the formulation of various anti-drug abuse councils from national level to the local government unit through the direction of Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to revitalize the Barangay Anti-Drug Abuse Councils considering the barangay as the place where drugs are most visible. This highlights the involvement of the local units particularly the barangay officials in support of the whole government forces to deal with peace and order mainly in decreasing illegal drugs and other substances.

The community participation is noteworthy as this is the safe space of the victims. As the social cognitive theory of Bandura stresses that “environment causes behaviour”. While it is true that drug intake is a personal choice however the truth cannot be denied that behaviours are still under the influence of the socio-cultural environment. If this environment is not safe, then the families’ effort in helping the victim could be useless. On a more serious note, quitting drug intake is not just a one-time activity and cannot be won over night. The community prevention approach is deemed an appropriate prevention as it enables collaboration among different sectors in the community to combat drugs that cannot be fought alone with the victim. Considering the many factors and the complexity of the reasons for drug dependence, it disables the victims’ capability to help himself. With the strong commitment and constant effort to help the victims, this will result to a victim to victor situations.

Given these literatures and noting the different experiences of the people have served as the bases for the study of the BADAC’s implementation and the selected stakeholders’ stories. While there are various approaches in decreasing drug dependence, the community based prevention program still brings the most effective solution to drug abuse.