2.2 M FILIPINOS ARE DRUG USERS - AGENCY REPORT

THE PHILIPPINES has up to 2.2 million full-fledged drug users, helped
by around 500,000 drug pushers who bring the drug menace to the
communities, the National Drug Law Enforcement and Prevention
Coordinating (DEP) Center reported Thursday.

Chief Supt. Miguel Coronel, executive director of the DEP Center,
said results of a Social Weather Stations survey commissioned by the
DEP Center in July 2001 showed that a majority of those who admitted
having used illegal drugs were aged 25-34 and belonged to the Class D.

The same SWS survey, conducted from July 9 to 27 among 1,200 adult
respondents, showed that 51 percent of Filipinos now consider the
drug menace as a "very serious problem."

Residents of Metro Manila feel more strongly that the drug menace has
reached very serious proportions than those living in other parts of
the country. Survey results showed 41 percent of Metro Manilans view
the drug problem as "very serious" but only 33 percent of those
living elsewhere in Luzon feel the same.

Coronel said only 39 percent in the Visayas and 33 percent in
Mindanao regard the drug menace as "very serious."

Even Director General Leandro Mendoza, chief of the Philippine
National Police, himself was alarmed that the drug menace has become
entrenched in urban communities following the discovery of three
shabu laboratories this year.

Busted were shabu laboratories in Quezon City last March, in Lipa
City in May, and in Pasig City last Tuesday.

Mendoza said new techniques in the manufacture of shabu have been
devised such that "cooking" of the drug no longer emits an acidic
smell.

"Before shabu laboratories were set up in islands because you could
smell the acid as far 150 kilometers away," Mendoza said.

"But now, the cooking process is odorless because they no longer use
ephedrine," he said.

Mendoza said the raid on the shabu laboratory in Pasig last Tuesday
revealed that liquid materials other than ephedrine was now being
used in the manufacture of shabu.

The laboratory was run by Chinese chemists, one of whom was arrested
during the raid. Eight other Chinese were arrested along with three
Filipinas.

The suspects identified their leader as one Cai Hontian alias Huai
Ia, said to be a doctor and chemist. Police are trying to track him
down.