MANILA, Philippines - 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,” anti-narcotics 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 Brodett, Jorge Joseph and Joseph Ramirez Tecson by agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in a drug-bust operation last 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 PDEA 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 UNODC report said that 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),” PDEA 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 PDEA and the PNP 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.
Locally grown marijuana, however, remains the “alternative drug of choice” for shabu users whenever prices of synthetic drugs escalate, according to PDEA. 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 PDEA 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.
Law enforcers also arrested several big-time lab operators, among them Chinese nationals 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.
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