Going all out against illegal drugs, Manila Mayor Joseph “Erap” Estrada will introduce the city’s school-based Drug Abuse and Resistance Education (DARE) program to 896 barangays.
Estrada ordered the Manila Barangay Bureau (MBB) on Friday to plan the giving of DARE lessons to out-of-school youth and young adults.
“This is to complement the [anti-drug] drive of President Duterte. Prevention is the key. Stop the increase in the number of addicts,” he said.
“You see the bad the effect of drugs on the mind and on the body. Not just that, it can ruin the family. A father raping his daughter. This is caused by drugs,” Estrada added.
In a memorandum to MBB head Arsenic Lacson, the mayor tasked the bureau to intensify its awareness campaign about DARE in the barangays.
Estrada employs DARE as a “drug demand-reduction strategy” in accordance with the National Anti-Drug Plan of Action.
Originally from the US, DARE teaches schoolchildren the dangers of drug addiction and how to avoid it. It taps police officers as instructors who go to classrooms giving one-hour, once-a-week DARE lessons to Grades 5 and 6 students.
The mayor brought DARE in the Philippines in 1993 when he was vice president and head of the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC).
He has been implementing the program in the Manila schools since 2013.
For school year 2016 to 2017, the city government aims to reach 27,000 Grades 5 and 6 students.
Estrada’s anti-drug crusade is two-pronged: relentless law enforcement operations and prevention.
“Prevention is better than punishing the crime,” said Estrada.
The city government’s hard-hitting anti-drug operations have so far resulted in the surrender of 10,174 drug personalities and the deaths of over 100 drug suspects during armed police operations.
Estrada implements his anti-drug campaign through the Barangay Anti-Drug Abuse Councils (BADAC).
