By Christian Dee
MANILA, Philippines – According to an official of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency – Central Visayas, 48 percent of the barangays in the region are still affected by drugs.
In 2016, a data showed that 96 to 97 percent of the barangays in the said region were affected by the illegal drugs which made the PDEA-7 spokesperson, Leia Alcantara, say that the current data is a significant decrease from its status 7 years ago.
The official also highlighted that the substantial drop of affected barangays or the drug-cleared and drug-free barangays, is an evidence of the improvement of the region’s drug situation.
116 out of 3,003 barangays in Central Visayas are now regarded as drug free while 1,444 of them were already recognized with a drug-cleared status.
With 610 drug-cleared barangays, the province of Bohol had the highest number of the said status, which also has 17 barangays that are drug-free.
While the Cebu province has now a total of 157 barangays that are drug-cleared along with 18 barangays that are considered as drug-free.