SC urges focus on big drug operators

IN two successive issuances, the Supreme Court (SC) has spoken out on the antidrugs campaign which has been underway since 2016. Last April 2, the court ordered the government to submit all documents on the drive, particularly on the number of people killed in police operations, since July, 2016. This week, the court urged law enforcers and prosecutors to focus their resources more on the source and true leadership of the drugs trade rather than on small-time drug users and retailers.

The court spoke out anew on the drugs problem in connection with the case of a man, Lahmodim Ameril, who was arrested in Manila in 2006; convicted of illegal sale of dangerous drugs by the Manila Regional Trial Court in 2012; appealed his case to the Court of Appeals which upheld the conviction in 2015; then elevated his case to the SC.

The Supreme Court found the arresting officers “remiss in the performance of their official functions” as it found “discrepancies in the markings of the seized illegal drugs.” The officers, it said, “failed to comply with the chain of custody.” The court thus acquitted Ameril.

It was in connection with this case that the Supreme Court this week called on law enforcers and prosecutors to focus on the big operators in the illegal drugs trade, rather than on people like

Ameril who was charged with selling three small plastic sachets of shabu.

“It is lamentable that while our dockets are clogged with prosecutions under RA 9165, the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act, involving small-time drug users and retailers, we are seriously short of prosecutions involving the proverbial ‘big fish.’ We are swamped with cases involving small fry who have been arrested for minuscule amounts.… Both law enforcers and prosecutors should realize that the more effective and efficient strategy is to focus resources more on the source and true leadership of these nefarious organizations.”

We have had reports of big volumes of shabu smuggled into the country. A huge 16.4-billion shipment – 600,000 grams of shabu – that had evaded detection in the Bureau of Customs was seized in a raid on two warehouses in Valenzuela City last year. Another big cache valued at 14.3 billion was intercepted at the Manila International Container Port, hidden in magnetic scrap lifters.

These are huge amounts of shabu and we should have more of these seizures and interceptions; the three sachets of shabu in the case of Ameril are nothing in comparison. If, as the Supreme Court has urged, the government focuses on the big operators rather than on the “small fry,” the drive on illegal drugs should meet with much greater success.