One reason drug problem remains despite PNP drive

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 07:56:21 +0000

PRESIDENT Duterte had initially vowed to end the drug problem in the country within three months, only to find that it was so huge that he finally said it cannot be eliminated even by the end of his six-year term. In the course of the anti-drugs drive, thousands have died, many while resisting arresting officers. Billions of pesos worth of drugs have been seized. The raids continue to this day all over the country and drugs continue to be seized. But it seems the drug problem continues, seemingly without letup.

It could be that the racket is so profitable that drugs continue to be smuggled into the country by foreign cartels. Only last Monday, an Indonesian woman passenger arrived at the Manila International Airport from Cambodia, with $54 million worth of methamphetamine hydrochloride – shabu – the drug of choice among most Filipino addicts – in her luggage.

We recall that in previous years, smuggled shabu in the billions of pesos was able to make its way past the Bureau of Customs, which has already had several changes of leadership as a result. So many floating blocks of cocaine have also been found in Philippine waters, mostly near the shores of our islands facing the Pacific. Our international borders are so porous, smugglers could easily bring in illegal shipments of any kind.

Now we have found that some of the drugs seized by the police in their operations have not been destroyed as they should have been, but recycled and returned to the market by the police themselves. The Senate is now looking at one case – a police raid in Mexico, Pampanga, in November, 2013, that yielded 200 kilos of shabu, in which the police raiders reported only 40 kilos and kept 160 kilos with a street value of R650 million, which they then sold back on into the drug market.

The supreme irony in all this investigation is that the present PNP chief, Gen. Oscar Albayalde, was the Pampanga provincial police chief at the time of the 2013 raid. He has denied any involvement in the case, but witnesses have claimed he made some calls to investigators as the suspects were his men in the Pampanga PNP.

President Duterte has vowed to carry on his drive against drugs even if, he said, it will take more time than his six-year term. He must know, by his time, why his original expectation of a quick war on drugs was not realistic – the problem is just too big.

The supply from outside the country is just too great. The country’s borders are just to
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