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By Vera Files
First of two parts
The trade in crystal methamphetamine hydrochloride or “shabu” in
the Philippines has grown into a P1 billion-a-day industry, but the
drug has now become more expensive, making it “the poor man’s
cocaine no more,” antinarcotics officials and international drug
reports said.
The price of shabu has doubled to between P8,000
and P10,000 per gram since law enforcers dismantled several
“mega-laboratories” in 2006 and 2007.
But government successes in curbing shabu
production have been offset by another problem: Users are now
turning to the amphetamine-type stimulant “Ecstasy,” which sells
for P750 to P800 per tablet, and cocaine, which sells for P2,500 per
gram, the kinds of drugs that were seized from “Alabang Boys”
Richard Santos Brodett, Jorge Jordana Joseph and Joseph Ramirez
Tecson by agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in
separate entrapments in September.
The 2008 World Drug Report of the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said the Philippines “continues
to have the world’s highest estimated annual methamphetamine
prevalence rate” at 6 percent of the population. Officials from
the anti-drug agency and the Philippine National Police said in
separate interviews that nearly 200 kilos of shabu are sold every
day at a wholesale price of P5 million a kilo or P1 billion a day.
The UN report said methamphetamine use in the
Philippines has actually declined. “Accomplished ang mission
namin. Walang gumagalaw. May psychological warfare—active and
passive [We have accomplished our mission. The syndicates are
immobile. There is an ongoing psychological warfare, both active and
passive],” anti-drug agency Director General Dionisio Santiago
said of the shabu syndicates.
But with the antinarcotics crackdown over the
past years making shabu more scarce and its price steeper, users are
now turning to cheaper alternatives and producers shifting to other
modes of production.
Antinarcotics officials from the agency and the
Philippine National Police reported an increase in the use of
Ecstasy or methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA), a drug favored
by the rich now trickling down to the middle class. The 2008 World
Drug Report has also noted a rising level of cocaine consumption in
the Philippines.
Marijuana still popular
Locally grown marijuana, however, remains the
“alternative drug of choice” for shabu users whenever prices of
synthetic drugs escalate, according to the anti-drug agency. It is
also known as the “starter drug” for teenagers.
Demographic data from drug rehabilitation
centers nationwide in 2007 indicate poly-drug use among patients,
almost one-third of whom were high-school students.
The agency reported confiscating a veritable
spread of drugs from the “Alabang Boys” —shabu, cocaine,
Ecstasy, marijuana as well as diazepam or Valium.
In 2006 and 2007, law enforcement agencies
raided and dismantled a dozen clandestine “mega-laboratories”
that produced shabu in industrial quantities of 1,000 kilos or more
in one cycle.
‘Shabu’ factories
Law enforcers also arrested several big-time lab
operators, among them Chinese who did not speak a word of English or
Filipino and who turned out to be the shabu chemists. The chemists
took care of “cooking” the shabu and were “embedded” in
these labs.
These days, shabu is produced in “large-scale
laboratories” that churn out just one-tenth or 100 kilos per
production cycle, as well as smaller ones that are easier to
dismantle. These labs have also moved to rural and “remote rural
areas” in Luzon and Visayas to escape detection. All six major
raids on shabu labs last year were outside Metro Manila. They were
in La Union, Pampanga, Masbate and Bicol.
The chemists, meanwhile, no longer stay in the
labs but just come to the Philippines as tourists, staying only for
a week to “cook” the shabu and leaving as soon as production
ends and the syndicate has gotten its share—usually one-fourth of
the output—in cash, a national police official said.
Law enforcers said the chemists are essential to
the operation since the Chinese refuse to “transfer” this skill
to Filipinos. The Philippine labs also acquire the hydrogenator,
cylindrical equipment used in shabu manufacturing, from the Chinese.
What China leaves to its Philippine counterpart
nowadays is the importation of the precursor materials, particularly
ephedrine, a basic component in cold tablets that is sourced from
India and China. India is said to produce better-quality ephedrine.
A hundred kilos of ephedrine can yield 70 kilos of shabu.
The new arrangement makes it more difficult for
antinarcotics operatives to detect the labs. “You have to recruit
a member of the syndicate to know the location of the lab and the
production date,” the national police official said. “You need a
deep penetration agent.”
Shabu imports up
The drop in local shabu production has also
caused a rise in shabu importation from China, anti-drug and police
officials said. From Yunnan province in China, the shabu travels to
the Guangxi, Guangdong and Fujian provinces and Hong Kong before
ending up in the Philippines.
Shabu arrives at different ports around the
country, packed in a variety of containers less likely to be
checked, including large giant ornamental jars sold in furniture and
ornamental shops in malls, or even inside expensive imported cars.
One source said the new strategy of syndicates
is to shun the “traditional ports” in Cavite, Navotas, and
Dingalan in Aurora, preferring instead the less prying eyes in
private ports in Zamboanga and Jolo. Using speed boats, illegal
drugs are distributed to various destinations or abroad.
Part of the shabu shipped to and produced in the
Philippines makes its way to South Korea, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan,
Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the US (including Guam) and Canada,
according to the 2008 UN World Drug Report.
Since the late 1980s, Ecstasy has been popular
among showbiz denizens, the rich and young expatriates in the
Philippines. The UN report said Ecstasy users make up 0.2 percent of
the population aged 15 to 64.
Antinarcotics agents have said that drugs like
Ecstasy are distributed to users at local high-end bars and
restaurants, and during concerts. “We are watching [the]
international concerts. Illegal drugs are present in these
events,” a source said. The source said they have identified these
international performers who “carry Ecstasy from Europe.”
‘Hug drug’
Ecstasy is imported, chiefly from the US and the
Netherlands, said the operatives. But they cited intelligence
reports that the drug is now being locally produced in minute
quantities on an experimental basis, but of poor quality.
Ecstasy from the Netherlands, on the other hand,
is sourced from contacts in Thailand and Malaysia, said anti-drug
and police officials.
One law enforcer said some Ecstasy pills that
come from the United States are stuffed into DVD and VCD shipments,
the cases lined with carbon paper to prevent detection by X-ray
machines. These parcels are then mailed to the Philippines, with
“many of them” successfully reaching their local destinations,
he said.
Ecstasy is also known by the following street
names or slang: Adam, E, Roll, X, XTC, Dolphin, Cream Honda, Clover,
Twin heart, Red hook, Pink dolphin, Blue mushroom, Playboy, Mickey
mouse, Pink arrow.
Ecstasy has been called the “hug drug”
because users like being touched. Medical researchers have observed
that users said they “experience feelings of closeness with others
and a desire to touch others.”
“Recently, we found out that different brands
have different effects. Some brands heighten sexual desire while
some have the effect of giving one a ‘high’ for days,” one
source said.
Pharmacologically considered as a stimulant,
Ecstasy and its variants enhance mood and increase energy level,
“producing intensely pleasurable effects” even allowing users to
dance for hours. Once its effects wane, users descend into
depression and anxiety, and have sleep disorders.
Others effects include uncontrollable teeth
clenching, disappearance of inhibitions, blurred vision, increase in
heart rate and blood pressure, and either chills or sweating.
Seizures are a possibility.
“The stimulant effects of the drug enable
users to dance for extended periods, which when combined with the
hot crowded conditions usually found at raves, can lead to severe
dehydration and hyperthermia or dramatic increases in body
temperature. This can lead to muscle breakdown and kidney, liver and
cardiovascular failure. Cardiovascular failure has been reported in
some of the Ecstasy-related fatalities,” one medical pamphlet
said.
Other party drugs
The veterinary anesthetic ketamine has also
emerged as a “party drug” among some bar habitués. A horse
tranquilizer, it is popularly known as “kets” or “ketabu”
and induces psychedelic or hallucinogenic states. A number of
Ecstasy pushers also deal in ketamine, said anti-drugs officials.
A US State Department report said ketamine is
being converted from its legal liquid form to the illicit crystal
form in the Philippines and exported to other countries in the
region.
Cocaine, produced from the coca leaf grown in
South America, has not gained much following in the Philippines.
More so with heroin, which is produced chiefly in Afghanistan and
Myanmar.
But law enforcers said the country has become a
transshipment point for heroin and cocaine as a growing number of
Filipinas in their 20s and 30s have been turned into “drug
mules” by international syndicates. Also last year,
counternarcotics agencies were alerted to cocaine smuggling through
a port in northern Luzon.
Cocaine and heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia
is handled chiefly by West Africans based in Thailand and Malaysia,
in particular Nigerians, they said. Legitimate recruitment agencies
hire Filipinas for “jobs” in these neighboring countries, with
some ending up as girlfriends of the traffickers.
The powder-form drugs are concealed in false
bottoms of carry-on luggage, packs of feminine sanitary towels or
candy boxes that get past airport X-ray machines. They are flown
into the Philippines and turned over to another Filipina. The latter
then flies to another country, including China, usually on a
Philippine airline, and hands the shipment over to a member of the
syndicate.
About one to 1.5 kilos of cocaine or heroin is
transported per voyage, for which the “drug mule” is paid $1,500
to $3,000.
Filipino “drug mules” have been arrested in
China and Hawaii airports for heroin possession.
An anti-drug agency official said the canine
squad has limitations in detecting illegal drugs at the country’s
ports. “A dog that is used to sniffing two grams of drugs may get
confused when exposed to a kilo or a ton,” he said.
The dog also becomes ineffective when it is
tired, he added.
Mechanics manning X-ray machines at the
country’s port fare no better than the dogs. Most are untrained in
drug detection and have admitted that they cannot tell an illegal
drug even if they come across one, the official said.
The country’s ports also have a different
priority. “They are more concerned with explosives than drugs,”
he said.
Yvonne Chua, Ibarra Mateo, Luz Rimban And Ellen
Tordesillas
To be continued
Editor’s note: VERA Files is put out by
veteran journalists taking a deeper look at current issues. Vera is
Latin for “true.”
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