PHILIPPINE DRUG PROBLEM 'OVERBLOWN'

THE drug problem, classified as public enemy No. 1 by the Philippine
National Police (PNP), is not as menacing as the drug-enforcement
authorities have portrayed it to be.

General Panfilo Lacson, the PNP chief, said that the claim by former
drug-busters that 1.7 million Filipinos were hooked on illegal drugs --
particularly methamphetamine hydrochloride -- was baseless.

The estimate that the drugs trade had a yearly turnover of 250 billion pesos
(S$10.6 billion) was also unfounded, he told foreign correspondents
recently.

"Those figures were not validated and have no basis. Actually, they were
bloated deliberately to justify previous requests for a bigger budget," Gen
Lacson said.

He added that there were only between 300,000 and 400,000 drug users and
peddlers throughout the country, although it had become a major
transshipment point for cocaine and other banned substances which were being
moved illegally to Western countries.

An unrelenting crackdown had left only about 2,000 of the country's 42,000
villages "drug affected", meaning more than 1 per cent of the residents in a
village were drug users or peddlers.

Gen Lacson also revealed that the police had put a number of politicians
under surveillance on suspicion that they "coddled" drug lords, but have so
far gathered "no solid information" against any of them.

While the drug called "ice" was the preferred substance from the late 80s to
the 90s, he said there was now a growing preference for Ecstasy.

Police links have also been forged with China and Hongkong, from which the
basic ingredients for making "Ice" were being smuggled.

Last year, the authorities arrested 37,305 drug peddlers, including users,
seized illegal substances with an estimated value of 2.7 billion pesos and
cracked 20 drug syndicates.

They filed 22,287 drug-related cases, of which 600 have been dismissed for a
host of reasons.

These include the illegal arrests of suspected drug peddlers, lack of
documentary evidence and the failure of government witnesses to appear in
court.

The PNP chief said the Justice Department was still trying to determine how
many of the cases eventually led to convictions.