Once practically a drug haven that had many of its younger residents hooked on shabu and heroin, Tatalon now has what is considered a good model of community-based intervention that primarily targets the youth.

by VINIA M. DATINGUINOO

EXCEPT PERHAPS for the fact that they are almost always bustling with teens and pre-teens, Tatalon's four day-care centers look like just any other in an impoverished urban community lucky to have even one. But the centers here share something else that sets them apart from those in other areas: they are all vital elements in a community-based drug prevention program that is infusing this congested barangay with hope.

Not too long ago, drugs tainted practically everyone in Tatalon, whose 52,000 residents make it Quezon City's most populous barangay. It even came to a point where vendors would arrange the packets of shabu on bilaos (woven trays) as they would any merienda fare. Says one grizzled resident: "They'd sell shabu like they would peanuts. Tatalon was then really number one in terms of drugs."

"Pati palanggana nanakawin para lang magkapera pambili ng shabu (People would steal even washbasins just so they'd have money to buy shabu)," recalls Evelyn Galang, describing the way in which illicit drugs quickly swept into Tatalon in the 1980s and '90s. "In the alleys, the toilets, the (addicts) would be there, jamming." Other residents say that in those days, whenever a fire broke out in Tatalon, it could almost always be traced to a candle left burning by "jamming session" participants who were too high to put it out.

Today, as authorities continue to fight the national war on drugs, other urban poor communities look to Tatalon for lessons in battling the use of narcotics. Central to Tatalon's anti-drug efforts is a campaign aimed at the youth, whom residents want to lure away from drugs even before they have a taste of these. It is also a campaign that Tatalon residents consider to be part of their community's "healing process" from its drug-ridden days. As residents here see it, those among them who became addicts were not the only ones in need of rehabilitation; the entire barangay itself fell ill, and so the whole community needed to be treated.

A few years ago, an increasingly alarmed Kapatiran-Komunidad People's Coalition (KKPC), an umbrella organization of women's and youth groups in the barangay, had begun calling meetings to discuss Tatalon's drug problem. "Someone would suddenly cry," says Galang, who heads the KKPC. "They'd say, 'That's how it is in our family, too.'"

These days, the KKPC-led program is an example of a community-based model of intervention. That it is aimed at the youth is no surprise. According to a 2003 study by the World Health Organization (WHO), the age of first use of illicit drugs among Filipinos falls within mid-adolescence, or 15 to 16 years old. Of the estimated 3.4 million drug users in the Philippines, more than half are between the ages of 15 and 27 years old.

The Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Study 3 (YAFS 3) conducted by the U.P. Population Institute also notes that while 5.7 percent of Filipino youths between 15 and 24 admitted to having tried drugs in 1994, that proportion had climbed to 11 percent by 2002. Among these, 2.8 percent admitted to currently using drugs — twice the 1.4 percent recorded in 1994.

In Tatalon, though, the efforts do not stop at keeping the children off the streets and in schools. Indeed, volunteers — many of whom are from the community itself — make sure that parents are part of the campaign, and are given leadership-training seminars, as well as helped with livelihood activities.

At the same time, Tatalon residents give credit to local police for tackling the supply side of their community's drug crisis. Experts themselves agree that the Tatalon experience is one of the best examples in which both the supply and demand sides of the drug-abuse problem are being addressed.

ACCORDING TO the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), drug abuse can result in increased rates of crime and violence, susceptibility to HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, huge demand rates for treatment and emergency room visits, and a breakdown in social behavior, among other things. It is not, therefore, a problem that affects only the abuser himself, but also his family and the community in which he moves.

Theoretically, the Philippine government's approach to the country's drug problem is also two-pronged — aimed at supply reduction and prevention. But sociologist Christina Crisol observes that it is nongovernmental organizations such as Tatalon's KKPC that are leading the way toward strengthening demand-reduction programs. "Sadly," she says, "(the) government has been quite focused with addressing the supply issues."

Perhaps the reason why police raids and apprehensions are more often magnified in the public eye is because these are "easier to quantify — the kilos and the billions of pesos involved," says Crisol. But, she stresses, "prevention and demand-reduction programs give more long-term results."

Crisol is with the department of sociology and anthropology of the Ateneo de Manila University. She was one of two leaders of a participatory research that examined the involvement of children in the drug trade in three areas in Metro Manila: Tatalon, Paco-Pandacan, and Pasay. The study, began in 2002 and released in 2004, is regarded as a pioneer in using participatory research methods in building the knowledge base on drug use.

Among its findings was that children were fast becoming "a growing demographic" in the drug industry. Their use starts at the age of between 12 and 15, whereas only five years before the study, the age of initiation was a higher 15 to 17. There were cases reported of even younger users, even as children themselves became players in the drug trade, acting mostly as couriers.

The United Nations itself says that most drug prevention campaigns need to focus on the youth, because the longer initiation into drug use can be delayed, the less likely it is to begin — or, if it does begin, to become compulsive. These programs, the U.N. says, are based on theories of social learning: Teach children how to recognize pressures that influence them to smoke, drink and use drugs and how to resist these pressures, and they will be likely kept off the risk.

In its 2003 study, the WHO found that the reasons cited by respondents in Manila and Davao for trying drugs were mostly "curiosity, enjoyment, and social acceptance." These findings reinforce those by the Ateneo team-led study, which reported that children are usually initiated to drug use by people close to them such as friends and peers, neighbors, and even family and relatives.

Dr. Emma Porio, who worked with Crisol in the participatory research conducted by Ateneo, says it makes the most sense to focus on giving youth opportunities for productive living — whether it is school, or other endeavors.

"Ang mga batang naliligaw kadalasan walang magawa, hanggang masangkot sa gulo (Children who stray from the straight path usually have no activity to occupy them so they get intro trouble)," she says. "You need to give them rewarding alternative ways of crafting their lives." Intervention, then, means lessening the opportunities for the children to be idle (and therefore more vulnerable to risky behavior).

Larry 'Bench' Ondinero was already in his 20s and well into drugs when the KKPC-led anti-drug campaign began in Tatalon. It took him some time to be weaned off shabu and heroin, but the process was made quicker by the fact that he soon found himself with less and less suppliers in the barangay. Many of his co-jammers also began to swear off narcotics.

Ondinero has been off drugs for the last three years. He is now married, with a steady job — and a volunteer counselor at Tatalon. He says he starts each day praying he will not slip, but he is convinced the children at the day-care centers will never pick up the same habit that he had. "They're far from trying out drugs," he says. "They just have too many things to busy themselves with."