DRUGS AND THE LAW

Pinoy Kasi

I WASN'T surprised when I learned about the police raid on a 600-sq-m
lot in Pasig City, with some 40 shanties selling illegal drugs. They
were doing this much like roadside restaurants, complete with menus.
"Shabu tiangge" [methamphetamine hydrochloride flea market], some
newspapers called it. Others described it as a shabu
supermarket.

And yet it's fairly common knowledge that Metro Manila and other large
Philippine cities are now saturated with drug dens. In Cebu City,
there are even "shooting galleries," where drug dependents go to get
their drugs injected intravenously.

What did shock me about this place in Pasig was the scale of the
operations. The police arrested some 300 people, including 59 minors.
There were at least two pregnant minors, one aged 17 and the other
14.

Besides the drug use, there was also prostitution. Apparently some of
the women drug-users were selling themselves to pushers if they didn't
have money to support their habit.

All of this was happening half a kilometer away from the Pasig City
Hall and the Eastern Police District headquarters. And in broad
daylight (the raid took place around noon). What was it like in this
place at night? I wondered.

Shoot 'Em

Several policemen and operatives from the Philippine Drug Enforcement
Authority (PDEA) have been suspended, and our politicians, from the
President down, are now talking tough about the drug problem. So far
though, the action taken has been one investigation after another,
with Congress now trying to get into the act. Congress will probably
review the laws and propose an increase in penalties.

"Shoot the pushers!" vigilante groups will proclaim, as if they're not
already doing this. Every few days we hear of corpses floating down
rivers, and communities identifying them to be suspected drug pushers.

But this police model of responding to drugs with more laws and
harsher penalties just isn't working. In fact, I'd argue it worsens
our drug problem.

This happens for two reasons. First, it does little to address the
needs for drug prevention and rehabilitation of dependents. Second,
the law actually gives even more opportunities for the corruption that
allows the drug problem to grow.

In 1972, Ferdinand Marcos decreed a Dangerous Drugs Act that included
imposition of the death penalty for drug pushing. To show he meant
business, Marcos had a drug dealer, Lim Seng, executed by firing
squad, the grisly event well covered by mass media.

For a short period after that, the drug trade subsided, but with time,
it was back to normal for pushers and users, drugs passed out together
with canapes at the parties of the rich and the famous. The Dangerous
Drugs Act itself became almost irrelevant, as drug use patterns
changed. It did not include, for example, metamphetamine
hydrochloride, on its list of prohibited substances and there were
several judges who used this as an excuse to acquit shabu
manufacturers and pushers.

Comprehensive?

Eventually, Congress passed Republic Act No. 9165, now called the
Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002. This new law is even
stricter than Marcos' version, with penalties for every kind of
offense imaginable.

I was listening to one of the police officials after the Pasig drug
bust and he was practically gloating about the types of criminal
charges they could slap on the people arrested. At one point, he even
mentioned that "visiting a drug den" was punishable. He was right:
according to Republic Act 9165, anyone who "is aware of the place
(drug den) as such and shall knowingly visit the same" can be
imprisoned from 12 years and one day to 20 years, with a fine of
P100,000 to P500,000.

But that new law is comprehensive only when it comes to punitive
measures. When it comes to prevention, it offers little. The
implementing rules and regulations, for example, require all business
establishments that have 10 or more employees to try to build a
"drug-free workplace." It includes education on drug abuse, random
drug testing, even a provision that the workplace should have a
streamer or billboard that reads: "This is a drug-free workplace;
let's keep it this way!"

Streamers? They're about as useful as those "Get high on God, not on
drugs" billboards on the streets. Drug testing? Shabu is excreted from
the body in three days. Education on drug abuse would work, if you
have properly trained people and teaching materials, but no one's
supporting that, as far as I know.

The law is there to scare people into behaving. The penalties are
heavy, I can assure you. Just as an example, the possession of eight
grams of shabu carries penalties of imprisonment of 20 years and one
day to as long as life, with fines of P400,000 to P500,000. Moreover,
if the person found possessing that amount of shabu was in the
"proximate company of two people," presumably in a drug den, the
maximum penalty can be death, and the fine goes up to P10 million!

Why did I zero in on "eight grams of shabu"? Because that's the amount
of shabu the actress Nora Aunor allegedly had when she was arrested in
the United States some time back. Nora Aunor certainly isn't going to
get imprisoned anywhere close to 20 years in the States. In fact, the
word is that her lawyers are pleading for a light sentence, plus
community service.

Protection

Is the United States too lax? Actually, their use of imprisonment for
drug users is seen as barbaric by Europeans and doing little to solve
the bigger social problem. The American model pours much more money
into police operations and throwing drug users into jail, with far too
little going into rehabilitation.

When Aunor's case first made the headlines here, I asked a friend, a
drug dependent, if he knew what would happen if the actress were to be
convicted here, for the possession of 8 grams. He shrugged his
shoulders and tersely replied, "Nothing. She has connections."

He was probably right. The law actually helps nurture the drug trade.
In our corrupt system, the heavy penalties increase the potential take
for police. After the Pasig raids, for example, the police coddling
other dens all over the country are bound to increase their protection
fees. And whenever these fees increase, we see the involvement of
higher officials.

That's not the end of it. As more and more powerful godfathers become
involved in this lucrative industry, the operations actually grow in
scale, so it's not surprising that the dens have now become "tiangge"
and supermarkets.

I'm just talking about protection money here. In urban poor
communities, I've heard stories of people having to pay extortion
money to the police after being set up with planted drugs. There are
probably millions of pesos going into bribes as well for the police,
and judges, to get an arrested relative off the hook. Some are real
offenders, and others are just hapless fall guys and victims.

Alas, the Pasig shabu supermarket only reminds us that the law is very
much on the side of the drug syndicates and their "kumpare" [close
buddy] politicians, police and judges.