Marijuana now drug of choice among  users – PDEA

MANILA, Philippines — Marijuana has become the drug of choice for most users in the country, according to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), which also sounded the alarm on the “rapid increase” in the smuggling of the party drug Ecstasy.

At present, marijuana is the most abused illegal substance, dislodging methamphetamine hydrochloride or “shabu” as the most circulated, both on the demand and supply side, PDEA Director-General Wilkins Villanueva said yesterday.

“Marijuana is now the dominant drug in the country as shown by the massive volume seizures in 2021 and the survey result of the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) in 2019,” he said.

The DDB survey showed that marijuana is the most commonly abused prohibited narcotics with 57 percent followed by shabu at 35 percent.

Meanwhile, Villanueva said the smuggling of Ecstasy – methylenedioxy-methamphetamine – has expanded in the last three years, from 13,000 tablets in 2019 to more than 74,000 in 2021, an increase of about 469.23 percent.

Villanueva said among the factors which contributed to the spike are psychological and mental health effects brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing popularity of the internet as a convenient way of obtaining illegal drugs.

Based on recent interdiction operations, he said the supply of Ecstasy comes from European countries such as the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.

“They employ drug couriers to transport drugs to the intended buyers, or distribute the drugs through social media using secured accounts, a proven and efficient method to avoid detection,” Villanueva said in a statement.

Last January, anti-narcotics agents seized 2,054 Ecstasy tablets from the Netherlands at the Port of Clark in Pampanga.