Undeterred

Rice prices continue to go up. The other day when I bought my month’s supply of 50 kilos, there were also fewer varieties of commercial rice to choose from at my usual outlet. Some folks must be holding on to their stocks.

Meanwhile, the supermarket price of the regular bunch of small local celery from a well-known farm has doubled to over P100. Shame on this farm – only greed can justify this price surge. We should support our local farmers, but when they get this greedy, I eagerly await a flood of celery imported from China.

There’s no respite from soaring prices – and the economic managers aren’t budging on the fuel excise tax under TRAIN. The poor should prepare to be poorer all the way to Christmas.

One item, however, has seen its street price plummet in recent weeks. Shabu now costs from P1,200 to P1,600 per gram in Metro Manila – down from P6,000 to P8,000.

This is according to Aaron Aquino, director general of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency. By law, the PDEA is the lead agency in the campaign against illegal drugs.

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Aquino attributes the plunge in shabu prices in Metro Manila to the recent smuggling of what the PDEA estimates to be a ton of the drug through the Manila International Container Port (MICP). The shabu, valued at P6.8 billion, was hidden in four magnetic lifters that PDEA agents found in a raid in Cavite.

Initially dismissed by even President Duterte as “speculative,” the reported release of the one ton of shabu is now believed to be true. Aquino’s deputy is in the freezer and under investigation in connection with the smuggling, now linked to the earlier seizure on Aug. 7 at the MICP of about 355 kilos of shabu shipped from Malaysia and concealed in two magnetic lifters.

Aquino is chafing at the efforts of Bureau of Customs officials to discredit the PDEA’s assessment, based on circumstantial evidence, about the smuggling of the ton of shabu. BOC officials even presented to the media a member of the US Homeland Security who used a handheld device to sweep a magnetic lifter and attested that it was negative for shabu.

But the scrap lifter that was tested by the American, Aquino told “The Chiefs” on Cignal TV’s One News channel, was new and NOT among the four seized in Cavite where PDEA canines sniffed out traces of the drug. The consignee of the scrap lifters in Cavite and those seized at the MICP is also the same entity, Aquino pointed out.

Dogs can’t be bribed and I trust K-9s far more than human inspectors. This is deception on the part of the BOC that should warrant administrative sanctions and even a criminal investigation.

Clearly, there are persons who are undeterred by the viciousness of the war on drugs in this country.

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Since Oplan Tokhang was launched in 2016, over 1.3 million drug personalities have either surrendered or registered, with a promise to mend their ways, according to the Philippine National Police.

In terms of drug dealing and abuse among the masses, that number can be considered progress in the war on drugs. Presumably, most of those who surrendered have enough sense not to return to their old ways. Having identified themselves to the PNP, they become easier to place under surveillance, and potentially to fall in operations at the higher level of this brutal war.

Not everyone, however, is deterred by the thousands of people killed in police anti-narcotics operations. For certain abusers, the risk of arrest and the idea that they are engaged in something illegal even heighten the appeal of drugs.

For penny-ante impoverished pushers, who peddle drugs by mere sachets, the profits – often used to sustain their drug habit – aren’t worth the risk of being shot dead ostensibly while resisting arrest. But for large-scale traffickers, the lure of enormous profits can trump concerns over the possibility of arrest and falling under Oplan Double Barrel. 

Crackdowns can also tighten supply and drive up prices of prohibited substances.

All this could partly explain why, despite extensive foreign media coverage of the bloody war on drugs in the Philippines, people continue to bring into the country shabu by the ton, party drugs and high-grade marijuana or kush from abroad, even through the main seaport and international airport.

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In an earlier episode of The Chiefs, PDEA spokesman Derrick Carreon said another reason cited by arrested foreigners is that public officials in this country are vulnerable to corruption.

PDEA agents recently raided a Pasay condominium where they found P700 million worth of shabu produced by Chinese suspects in a kitchen-type, manually operated laboratory. Such operations have become a worrisome trend, with part of the products even exported, according to Aquino.

The suspects told Aquino that they picked the Philippines for their Asian operations because the cost of living here is cheaper than in other countries such as Japan. Also, the Philippines and Cambodia are the only Southeast Asian states with no death penalty.

Our brand of capital punishment is of course swifter and often brutal. Yet foreigners must have noticed that so far, the thousands killed by Philippine law enforcers have been mainly Filipinos or of Filipino descent.

What could deter foreign traffickers? This war can use a recalibration.

The foreign traffickers’ local protectors in government agencies are also undeterred.

Still, Aquino stresses that the government is winning the war. He said this could be measured in terms of the number of drug-related arrests made – 155,000 so far since 2016 – as well as the number of barangays declared drug-free. Of the 68,000 barangays, about 24,000 have been cleared of illegal drugs, Aquino said.

A good indicator of success is the price of the drug. Around the country, shabu has become expensive in the past months, Aquino told us – until that shabu shipment, believed to be about a ton, slipped out of the MICP and flooded Metro Manila.

This war must take aim at the bigger players.