Cebu City Police Chief Royina Garma is not the first critic of the government’s practice of declaring a barangay as drug-free. Almost everybody takes that declaration, once practiced religiously by the Cebu Provincial Government, with a grain of salt.

No barangay exists in isolation and the illegal drug trade knows no borders. Even the province’s islands like Camotes and Bantayan couldn’t evade the reach of the trade, and the illegal drugs flow there is constant, the gaps only momentary.

Two effects can easily be had once a barangay is declared as drug-free, and these are conjured by the illusion the declaration creates. One, law enforcement operation in the area against the illegal drugs trade weakens. The other effect is the one Garma mentioned: “Pag nag-operate ka doon at nasira mo yung perception na free baka magalit pa sa ‘yo and barangay captain o whoever kung sinong nagpirma na free.”

The problem is that the Dangerous Drugs Board and the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), the agencies behind the practice, is not taking the criticisms seriously. They apparently haven’t come up with a thorough assessment of the effectiveness of the practice in the fight against illegal drugs. Or how those declarations have made a laughingstock out of the anti-illegal drugs drive.

The truth is, the integrity of the “drugs-free” declaration depends too much on how compelling government-gathered data is. Consider just three of the six requirements that must be met before a barangay can be declared drug-free: non-availability of drug supply; absence of a drug den, pusher, user; and, absence of clandestine drug laboratory. Who can say with certainty those requirements have been complied with?

Let’s cite an example. The Cebu Provincial Anti-Drug Abuse Office (CPADAO) declared in May this year 25 barangays in the province as drug-free. The declaration is apparently based partly on the intelligence data gathered about these barangays. After several months, have the data been updated?

Local government units should better focus on initiatives against the illegal drugs trade other than indulging in the futility of declaring a barangay as drug-free.