BATTLING DRUG LORDS

The video opens with the song What a Wonderful World. Then it features a
world that's anything but wonderful: a drug abuser's life in hell. It goes
on to detail accomplishments in the government's battle against drug
trafficking and abuse. It concludes with a message that the battle can be
won only with the cooperation of all concerned sectors.

Police Deputy Director General Edgar Aglipay is showing this video to
anyone interested, not just to highlight the accomplishments of the
anti-narcotics task force that he heads, but also to get wider public
cooperation in the campaign against illegal drugs. He reassured me this
week that cops aren't just faking raids and issuing press releases about
the anti-drug campaign.

These days Aglipay goes around accompanied by top officers of the task
force, armed with a computer for video presentation, wanted posters and
reams of documents on the war against drug trafficking. The task force is
trying to get the Church, barangay officials and civic groups on board.

One young officer showed me a favorite line of the task force: "For evil to
triumph, all it takes is for good men to do nothing."

In this country, it's often hard to tell the good men from the bad, but you
get the drift.

The video presentation was rather sappy for my taste, but I got the
message. In my teenage years I lost friends to drugs. There they were
happily rolling marijuana into fat cigarettes, carefully including the
seeds, and one day they were dead, from drug overdose or a fall from
drug-induced stupor.

It's a social problem - one that can't be solved just by regular raids on
shabu laboratories. What can you do when kids use drugs to cure boredom,
calm teenage angst or control rampaging hormones?

For those who do want to kick a nasty, expensive habit, the problem is
compounded by the lack of proper rehabilitation centers. With an estimated
3.4 million drug abusers nationwide, rehabilitation centers can accommodate
only up to 30,000. And it takes six months to a year to rehabilitate a drug
abuser. Aglipay has persuaded Malacanang to set aside P100 million to set
up additional rehabilitation centers in key areas around the country, but
he knows it won't be enough.

This is just the demand side. Even if the demand is there, and even if drug
abusers have the money, what can they do if supply has dried up? This is
where the cops come in. And this is where you find even bigger problems.

Shabu is big business - so big that the Philippines has started exporting
the product. If you see packs of what is supposed to be "Kaoshan" tea, it's
most likely shabu for export. Aglipay said the drug's destinations include
Australia, China, Guam, Japan and New Zealand.

Raw materials such as ephedrine come from India, which has a large but
loosely regulated pharmaceutical industry, as well as China where smuggling
of almost everything is big business. Ephedrine and shabu are topped with
bleaching powder and transported in drums. Now that this system of shabu
smuggling has been exposed, the drug traffickers will simply change tack
once again.

Shabu manufacturing, which used to be a mom and pop operation, is now done
in this country on an industrial scale, Aglipay said. Giant mixers have
replaced pots and slotted spoons. Regular refrigerators have been replaced
with walk-in freezers. And driers with a capacity of 100 kilos have
replaced electric fans. The manufacturing pro-cess is now computerized.

Aglipay said a kilo of shabu costs only about P20,000 to process, but
fetches up to P2.5 million in the streets. For that kind of money, there
are people willing to risk a trip to the lethal injection chamber.

The Philippines has some of the toughest laws against drug trafficking in
the world. The amended anti-drug law, Republic Act 9165, punishes the sale
of a mere 200 grams of shabu with life imprisonment or death.

Still, that may seem less threatening than being executed within days or
weeks of being arrested for drug dealing in China. So Chinese drug
traffickers come here, setting up what ostensibly are chemical
manufacturing plants, and rake in billions.

Often they are aided in their enterprise by cops. Aglipay said 250
policemen, with the highest ranking a senior superintendent, have so far
been arrested, charged in court or dismissed for drug-related offenses.

Under RA 9165, bungling a drug case is now a criminal offense punishable
with up to 12 years imprisonment. The offense includes willful omissions on
the part of a cop that lead to the dismissal of a drug case. "Planting"
evidence also carries stiff penalties.

Still, those arrests of cops pale against the reported involvement of
ranking police officers in the multibillion-peso drug trade. Straight cops
grumble about two officers who were even promoted to star rank recently.
And there's the lower-ranking officer whose appointment to the Philippine
Drug Enforcement Agency was reportedly opposed by the US Drug Enforcement
Agency. The PDEA turned down the officer, but he found a home in another
anti-narcotics unit.

Aglipay said they need hard evidence to root out such cops. They also need
evidence against certain politicians rumored or suspected to be in cahoots
with drug lords. So far no evidence has been found, he said.

He did not say it, but one of the weakest links in the anti-drug campaign
is the Bureau of Customs. Those drums of ephedrine, classified as a
prohibited substance, cannot possibly keep coming into the country through
sheer incompetence at Customs ports. If Customs personnel are willing to
look the other way for a shipment of frozen chicken being sought by
government meat inspectors, they are surely willing to look the other way -
for bigger bucks - for a shipment of what is supposed to be bleaching powder.

Aglipay is proud to announce his task force's accomplishments in just six
months: over P13 billion worth of shabu and ephedrine seized, 24,405
suspected drug offenders arrested and 12 transnational drug rings
neutralized, 16,761 cases filed in court, and 3,955 drug-affected barangays
cleared.

Those figures could help him win more public cooperation in this campaign.
Still, the picture is ugly and the challenges are daunting.