This developed as Jeoffrey Tacio, director of the Philippine Drugs Enforcement Agency (PDEA) for Central Luzon, expressed “alarm” over the decrease in the street price of the popular illegal drugs shabu in his region.
During a meeting of the Regional Peace and Order Council (RPOC) chaired by Nueva Ecija Gov. Aurelio Umali last Monday here, Tacio said that historically, the price of shabu was proportionate to the supply of the illegal substance.
From P6,000 per gram in 2014 before the discovery of the illegal drug operations of a Mexican cartel in the region, the price of shabu has plunged to P3,000 per gram, he noted.
Santos, in an interview during the RPOC meeting, said “no one is exempted from the campaign against illegal drugs trade” as he considered the possibility of candidates resorting to illegal drugs to raise campaign funds.
“This has happened before so we are wary,” he said.
During the meeting, Angeles City Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan cited previous drug-related cases that indicated that police and other lawmen are themselves involved in illegal drugs trade.
“No one, not even religious leaders want to get involved in anti-illegal drugs operations because their feeling is that nothing will happen because some lawmen are themselves into illegal drugs,” Pamintuan told leaders of the RPOC.
Pamintuan noted that since he became mayor anew of Angeles in 2010, he has seen no less than five chiefs of the local Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) being appointed and then sacked one after the other following their successful illegal drugs operations in his city.
He cited instances wherein illegal drugs were declared “negative” by police laboratories a few months after being seized during CIDG operations.
Tacio reported that in 2014, a total of 3,223 or 9.77 percent of a total of 32,973 criminal cases in Central Luzon were drug-related. In the same year, 483 kilos of shabu and 1.15 kilos of marijuana were confiscated by lawmen.
His report indicated that Pampanga topped in drug-related cases with 891, followed by Nueva Ecija with 684, Bulacan with 680, Zambales with 571, Bataan with 394, and Tarlac with 293.
