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By Jefferson Antiporda Reporter
The Philippines ranked No. 1 in Southeast Asia as the country with
the most number of drug users based on the 2008 World Drug report
released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA),
however, is not convinced about the finding.
Based on the UN report, prevalence of
amphetamine abuse in the Philippines was found to be at 6 percent of
the population aged 15 to 64 years old. Amphetamine is a “racemic
compound or one of its derivatives [as dextroamphetamine or
methamphetamine] frequently abused as a stimulant of the central
nervous system but used clinically especially as the sulfate or
hydrochloride salt to treat hyperactive children and the symptoms of
narcolepsy and as a short-term appetite suppressant in dieting.”
The number for the Philippines is far greater
than that of second-placed Thailand with 0.8 percent, followed by
the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, or Laos with 0.7 percent,
Cambodia with 0.6 percent and Myanmar and Vietnam each with 0.2
percent.
The report said that from the 20,000 drug users
in the Philippines in 1972, the number climbed up to 6.7 million in
2004, meaning that one in every 29 Filipinos aged 10 to 44 was on
drugs.
It added that the preferred illegal substances
of Filipinos were methampethamine hydrochloride, popularly called
“shabu,” and marijuana.
Not believable
The UN report, however, was disputed by the
Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency chief, Dionisio Santiago, who on
Thursday said there could be some errors in the data submitted to
the UN by the Philippines’ Dangerous Drugs Board and which were
made as basis of the report.
Santiago announced that he would commission an
independent research group to conduct a new survey in order to
correct the alleged errors contained in the data that the drugs
board had given to the United Nations.
The alleged errors, he said, could have arisen
from the UN report concluding that 6 percent of Filipinos aged 15 to
64 were drug abusers, when that number could have wrongfully
included those who have tested and tried illegal drugs only once.
Santiago branded the UN report as unfair
because, he said, comparing the population of the Philippines
(around 90 million) with that of China (more than one billion),
chances are there were more users in China than in the Philippines.
Push for death penalty
He raised the need to reimpose the death penalty
even only on those individuals who would be proved guilty of drug
trafficking.
Sen. Francis Escudero is stopping short of
meting out capital punishment to the traffickers and their supposed
backers in high places.
Instead, he batted for identifying and seeking
the prosecution of government lawyers who may have become protectors
of drug rings.
Toward that end, Escudero said, the Senate
Committee on Justice and Human Rights, which he heads, would review
heinous-crime cases, the hiring and firing of prosecutors, the rules
on inhibition and the track records of prosecutors on drug cases
filed and dismissed. The review, he added, will start once Congress
resumes its session on January 19.
‘Fiscal Dismissal’
It is not far-fetched, according to the senator,
that the case of Colombia, where drug syndicates have men in the
judiciary, is already happening in the Philippines. He did not
elaborate.
“We used to have a ‘Hanging Judge.’ Now,
we could have a ‘Fiscal Dismissal,’” Escudero said, referring
to one who seems to just love meting out the death penalty and to
one who would be found by the review to be just throwing out cases
for favors.
He expressed concern that government prosecutors
looked to be siding with the three suspected drug pushers known as
the “Alabang Boys” against men of the Philippine Drug
Enforcement Agency that had entrapped the suspects in September
2008.
“If the PDEA spot report is correct, I see
nothing wrong in the entrapment, the arrest and the filing of
complaint against the ‘Alabang Boys,’” Escudero said.
Bribery blunder
He added that if there was anything wrong, it
was the agency’s “premature” leak to media of the P50-million
bribery attempt to free the three suspects—Richard Santos Brodett,
Jorge Jordana Joseph and Joseph Ramirez Tecson, all from rich
families.
Escudero, though, noted that there has been no
proof that the bribery was ever attempted. Also, he said that based
on his personal knowledge of Santiago’s character, the chief is
not one who would succumb to bribery.
“But the real issue is not bribery. It is the
criminal-justice system,” he said.
-- With Efren L. Danao
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