Pubdate: Sun, 27 Jun 2004
Source: Philippine Star (Philippines)
Copyright: PhilSTAR Daily Inc. 2004
Contact:  http://www.philstar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/622
Author: Jarius Bondoc, The Philippine Star
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

FACILITATORS - STRONGEST LINK OF DRUG LORDS TO NARCOPOLS

CEBU CITY - Authorities have busted 22 shabu factories and warehouses in 
the past 12 months, netting P22-billion worth of illegal substances. Yet 
drugs still proliferate because of "facilitators" who intercede with 
government officials in behalf of rich syndicate bosses.

The Church is seeing its flock being lured into drug dependence or quick 
bucks from peddling. Yet as a moral guide, it is not doing enough to stop it.

These self-confessed failures of authorities and activists opened the 
first-ever National Consultation on the Awareness and Prevention of Drug 
Abuse and Narcopolitics. The three-day meeting, convened by Cardinal 
Ricardo Vidal and PNP Deputy Director General Edgar Aglipay, thus dwelt on 
how government and civic groups can complement to lick the drug problem.

Aglipay's Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operating Task Force admitted to weak 
evidence-gathering against facilitators - the go-betweens of drug lords and 
corrupt officials.

He didn 't name them, but described how they operate.

Usually citizens of good-standing in, say, the Chinese-Filipino community, 
they are amiable, philanthropic, perhaps even frequent donors to community 
and Church projects.

It,s the perfect front for their secret, impregnable role in the thriving 
drug trade.

Syndicates come and go; facilitators stay. The police had dismantled six 
major syndicates in the 22 busts, led by Jackson Dy, William Gan, Miko Tan 
and Benito Zhe. The Lim gang relocated to Fiji and the Lam group to 
Malaysia, but were caught by the Interpol. Yet new syndicates emerged and 
the enduring facilitators linked them up with the corrupt government contacts.

Drug lords maintain big kitties for facilitators and the contacts. Said 
Aglipay: "The capital for chemicals to make a kilo of shabu is only 
P20,000, but the street value of that kilo can run up to P2 million.

You can just imagine how, when the volume is in the dozens of kilos, the 
syndicates can easily throw money for payoffs."

The payoffs make policemen look the other way, prosecutors to foul up 
cases, or judges to acquit drug lords despite the evidence. Most of all, 
they finance the election or appointment of officials to positions of 
influence that the syndicates can call on for protection and relief.

The various forms of narcopolitics are, to be sure, punishable by death 
under the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act. But the setback is in enforcement.

Outdated laws and equipment for electronic surveillance often are cited as 
pitfalls.

It's more an excuse. Facilitators are known to, yet remain untouched by 
cops for fear of political retribution. AID-SOTF's Col. Federico Laciste 
said their quarry are influential enough to turn the tables on narc agents, 
portraying them as villains before the press and public, or setting them up 
for false charges. He had opened his Powerpoint presentation with a 
photograph, seized in a raided shabu lab, of Chinese Triad bosses with 
their local political protectors. The picture painted a thousand words, but 
may never serve as evidence of the illicit connections. During the election 
campaign, Aglipay's men traced a drug shipment in Cebu to a gubernatorial 
candidate and son of a senator.

AID-SOTF, to his chagrin, immediately was pilloried for supposed political 
harassment.

Earlier during a Mass, Cardinal Vidal intoned that drugs continue to pull 
poor families deeper into poverty.

He urged Church groups to be more active in the anti-drug fight in both the 
supply side, by boldly exposing pushers, and the demand side, through 
prevention and addict rehabilitation.

In June 2002 Vidal had issued a pastoral statement descrying narcopolitics 
and the imminence of falling into a narcostate like Colombia. He followed 
up last year with a circular withholding the sacraments, like Communion, to 
known but heretofore uncharged drug lords.

Peer pressure, it would seem, is the Church,s big role in the demand side. 
Fr. Carmelo Diola, a seminary teacher, wanted more than that. Describing 
the Church as a sleeping giant, he organized last weekend,s conference to 
elicit more ways from the faithful to help in the antidrug campaign.

The response was mostly in the area of rehabilitation. It has always been 
said that the seven government and seven dozen private treatment centers 
are not enough to accommodate all the addicts in needs of immediate care, 
estimated at 1.4 million.

Fr. Diola said only 0.5 percent of addicts, or 7,000, are in the clinics 
for six months at a time: "It would take us a hundred years to treat all of 
them." Rehabilitation is also expensive for families that may already have 
kicked out the addict for stealing or violent behavior.

Private centers charge P30,000 a month for six months, for board, lodging, 
therapy and medical care. Government clinics are free, but "inmates" 
nonetheless need P5,000 a month to live comfortably.

The good news, though, is the spread from America to Asia of Narcotics 
Anonymous (NA), a therapy akin to Alcoholics Anonymous. It can last beyond 
six months, sometimes up to five or ten years of sharing meetings, but it,s 
free.

Recently government and private clinics have found that physiological 
therapy must always be linked with spiritual reawakening. Fighting 
addiction is not just a matter of will power against substance abuse.

One out of every four persons has higher levels of dopamine, the substance 
responsible for craving, in the body. More susceptible to addiction from 
just the first experiment with shabu, they also are the most difficult to 
wean away from it. Detoxification requires proper diet and, at times, 
medications. But successful rehab programs are those that, aside from 
physiotherapy, also bring addict-patients back to God. A conference ender 
was a letter urging Catholic bishops to set up NA chapters in all parishes.

Among the assenting delegates were Drug Enforcement Agency deputy chief 
Rodolfo Caisip, Supreme Court administrator Presbiterio Velasco, 
industrialist Ernesto Aboitiz, Miguel Perez Rubio of Katotohanan, 
presidential daughter Luli Arroyo, dozens of police officers, youth 
leaders, priests, nuns, and addiction therapists.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager