EDITORIAL - Drug trafficking in the high seas

Along the country’s western seaboard from Bataan to Northern Luzon, shabu by the sack keeps turning up, found by fishermen floating in waters near the shore. Before the weekend, three sacks of what turned out to be shabu were found floating in the waters off three towns in Pangasinan.

In just the past weeks, the combined street value of the sacks of methamphetamine hydrochloride fished out of the sea has been estimated at billions of pesos. That’s a lot of money, and a lot of shabu, that cannot have been simply dumped inadvertently into Philippine waters by drug traffickers.

The Philippine summer is just ending and the weather has been generally fine in the past weeks, and there have been no reports of vessels sinking in those areas. The recovered shabu is typically in waterproof packaging. Those sacks of prohibited drugs were deliberately offloaded at sea, for recovery by traffickers in the Philippines, but were accidentally intercepted by fishermen.

Fortunately for the criminality campaign in the country, the sacks were turned over by the fishermen to law enforcement authorities.

The incidents are not entirely new. For many years now, there have been reports of all sorts of contraband entering the country through poorly policed coastal areas. In the high seas, prohibited drugs and guns are transferred from large ships to small boats that can ply municipal waters without attracting attention.

Law enforcers have also raised concern about the entry of contraband through private ports, whose regulation by the state is weak. Such ports are also suspected to have allowed certain high-profile fugitives to leave the country.

Beyond giving rewards to the fishermen who found the shabu, the frequency of such incidents should lead to intensified patrols of municipal waters and better monitoring of coastal communities, particularly private ports.

This task is best carried out with the assistance of local government units and barangay offices. The problem is if LGU and barangay officials themselves are involved in the smuggling of drugs and other contraband. In previous years, local political warlords have been implicated in the smuggling of even motorcycles through beachfront properties.

The country has one of the world’s most extensive coastlines. For every sack of shabu recovered by fishermen, how many reach their intended recipients?

While the country lacks patrol vessels, technology can help in monitoring coastal communities and territorial seas. Drones can be deployed in lieu of patrol boats. The difficulty of stopping such drug trafficking operations should not mean that authorities can stop trying.