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Friday, March 29, 2024
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Heartbreaking for Oca

Everyone in a drug user’s family is affected when he or she gets exposed or worse, get caught and jailed, I once heard a health professional who dealt with drug cases said.

So it pains me to read about what happened to Sean Moreno, son of Cagayan de Oro City Mayor Oscar Moreno a few weeks ago. My heart is broken reading the unkind and harsh remarks and comments from Facebook users who don’t know how Sean ended up the way he did. But just as there are those who judged, there are also those who sympathized and offered their prayers and advice to the mayor and his family.

It’s heartbreaking indeed for the Moreno family.  Any parent’s heart would bleed on seeing their children arrested for one crime or another and for the Moreno family, learning about Sean’s arrest is a nightmare. Reading the mayor’s prepared statement made me cry and one can feel his agony.

As the eldest son, it is expected that Sean would receive a lot of love and attention from parents.  Yet Sean is but one of many users in a country still plagued by the drug menace and he just so happened to be the mayor’s son. There is no precise medical explanation on why drug users fall back to their addiction even after undergoing intervention and rehabilation.

As parents, it is but natural for them to dream big for their children and to work hard to make those dreams come true.  Alas both parents and children make mistakes and these mistakes which can be either undone or not often hound them to their graves. While the public should know anything that may compromise their elected official’s performance, private matters are best left to the family.

Drug addiction and alcoholism remains a persistent menace and while we should go after these drug pushers and syndicates, we should also respect and be compassionate to those families who lost their sons/daughters to drug use as well as those whose children are still recovering from the ill effects of drug use. I join the others in  praying for the speedy recovery of Sean.

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I talked with Villanueva Mayor Jenny Uy about  a lot of issues faced by her constituents including drug addiction.  She said drug use is both a health and mental issue.  Mayor Uy said while the national government has its own goals to fight the drug menace, local governments should map their own strategy in the war on drugs. I will talk more about this in future issues (Questions and comments to [email protected])

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