ANTI-DRUG DRIVE STEPPED UP

President Arroyo vowed no letup in her administration's war against the
flourishing shabu trade as the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA)
busted yet another large shabu laboratory in Valenzuela City yesterday.

The President motored all the way to an abandoned warehouse in Villa
Liwayway Subdivision in Valenzuela where PDEA agents found 147 drums of
chemicals used in manufacturing shabu, shabu-making equipment and six sacks
labeled as sodium acetate which contain crystalline substance.

The PDEA estimated that the confiscated materials were enough to
manufacture 3,000 kilos of shabu worth P7.5 billion. Its street value was
pegged at P2.5 million per kilo.

The President took the occasion to read to reporters her official statement
in reaction to a published report of the United Nations on the extent of
the problem of the shabu trade.

"We have pushed the drug menace far back but we take the UN report as a
reminder that there is more to be done," said Mrs. Arroyo, who was
accompanied by Interior Secretary Angelo Reyes, PDEA executive director
Anselmo Avenido and Gen. Edgar Aglipay, chief of the Philippine National
Police special task force on anti-illegal drugs.

The drug menace has been "half beaten" only, the President said, citing
that the street price of methamphetamine has gone up almost five-fold, from
P500 to P2,500 per gram.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Philippines is
the third biggest source of shabu, or methamphetamine hydrochloride, in the
world, next to China and Myanmar.

Shabu manufactured in the Philippines reaches as far as Australia and the
United States, the UN report said.