THE recent dismissal of the former chief and the appointment of retired police general Arturo Cacdac Jr. as new director general of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) has highlighted the failure of our own war on drugs.

The International Narcotics Board, the quasi-judicial body tasked with implementing the anti-drug conventions of the United Nations, lists the Philippines among the Asian countries where methamphetamines (shabu) abuse is commonplace.

PDEA reports that methamphetamine hydrochloride and marijuana are the most used and peddled drugs here.

We are, with China and Myanmar, the location of most of the underground and illegal factories of amphetamine drugs. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) from 2002 to 2010, 72 illicit methamphetamine laboratories were shut down in the Philippines, seven of these in 2010.

Our columnist Ricardo Saludo’s research, analysis and think-tank firm, CenSEI, which recently issued a report on narcotics abuse, writes: “Drug seizures are down: A total of 63.6 kilos of crystalline methamphetamine and 46.4 liters of liquid methamphetamine were seized in the country in 2010, down from 149.3 kilos of crystalline methamphetamine and 831.5 liters of liquid methamphetamine in 2009, and a single seizure of 745 kilos in 2008 – the largest amount of shabu seized in the past five years. The amount seized in 2010 represents a 57 percent decline from 2009, and is considerably lower than the totals reported in each of the previous four years.”

But in his column on this subject, Ric Saludo and CenSEI ask: Is the drug haul down because there is less stuff on the street, or is PDEA slipping?

The question is worth answering in depth. For, as Ric Saludo and his colleagues write: “From January to October last year, the government conducted 9,850 anti-illegal-drug operations, resulting in the arrest of 8,491 suspects and 9,995 cases filed, according to PDEA. Those numbers were going in opposite directions compared to previous years, with arrests falling from 11,535 in 2006, while raids jumped from 8,677. Go figure.”

Meanwhile, PDEA under Director-General Cacdac has announced that it and the National Bureau of Investigation are tightening their partnership in the war against illegal-drug dealers, smugglers, manufacturers and mules. And the Coast Guard’s Canine Section is helping train PDEA’s drug sniffer dogs.

We pray that, unlike the rest of the world, PDEA and the NBI finally win the war on narcotics.