EDITORIAL — Minors and drugs

Agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in Central Visayas recently conducted an operation in Sitio Aroma, Barangay Subangdaku, Mandaue City, last Friday, where they seized a suspected drug courier with two kilos of suspected shabu valued at ?13.6 million.

The amount of drugs isn’t that shocking to many anymore, since the past two decades drug hauls in the millions of pesos have become so common that people don’t even bat an eyelash anymore at how much is usually confiscated.

But what shocked people was that the suspect was just 17 years old.

Because he seemed unwilling to answer some questions, authorities are unsure how deeply he is involved or whether he knew he was transporting drugs. For now, they are treating him as a victim and are trying to determine who tricked him into taking the drugs from Bohol to Cebu.

It is dismaying to see how someone so young can get into --or be tricked into-- the drug trade.

Why drug peddlers or drug syndicates like to use minors to move drugs is obvious. They are young enough to throw off suspicion by policemen and they are also easy enough to trick into their business. They are also quick enough to escape policemen should the worse come to worst.

Why minors must be kept away from drug operations is also obvious. They might come know no other way to make money and come to see selling or moving drugs as the only way they can make a livelihood. Worse, they might grow up to be criminals who think nothing of sampling other types of crime, anything as long as it is lucrative.

We hope the minor who was arrested was just tricked into delivering the drugs, that he didn’t know what he carried. Otherwise the alternative is really hard to stomach; that someone so young has decided to willingly involve himself in dealing with such dangerous and harmful substances.