4.11 kilos, PHP 74M, zero drug lords: Something doesn’t add up

PHP 74.868 million. That is the standard drug price of the shabu seized in Western Visayas in February alone — all from just over 11 kilograms of product.

At roughly PHP 6.8 million per kilogram, a figure consistent with the Dangerous Drugs Board’s own pricing, this is not a law enforcement triumph to announce at a press conference but a market signal. And what the market is saying, clearly and loudly, is that the drug trade here remains one of the most profitable businesses in the region.

Brig. Gen. Josefino Ligan, the Western Visayas police chief, called the figure alarming. He is right. But the alarm bells should be ringing for a different reason than the one being sounded. The PHP 74.8 million haul — extracted from 144 operations and 187 arrests — tells us less about how hard police are hitting the drug trade and more about how little a dent enforcement alone is making in it. The pipeline refills. It always does, as long as the demand and the profit margins remain what they are.

Look more closely at the geography. Iloilo province accounted for 61.66% of the region’s total haul — PHP 46.169 million worth of shabu in just 45 operations. The single biggest bust, a PHP 14.008 million seizure in Balasan town on Feb. 20, involved a suspect from Barangay Gogo in Estancia, a coastal fishing community. This is not coincidence. A previous report from the Negros Occidental Provincial and City Law Enforcement Coordinating Committee had already flagged that up to 12 kilograms of shabu enter Panay monthly through ports like Caticlan, transported via roll-on/roll-off vessels. The province’s coastline is being worked. Local executives in Estancia, Balasan, and similar towns need to ask themselves — and answer publicly — what they know and what they have done about it.

Compare that to Iloilo City, which ran the highest number of operations in the region at 59 — and still came away with less than 2 kilograms of shabu worth PHP 13.307 million. The city is busy. But busy is not the same as effective. Those 59 operations are largely catching street-level pushers, the most replaceable link in any supply chain. The province’s far fewer operations — 45 — netted nearly three and a half times as much product. Two very different drug market structures, two very different problems. The city’s drug problem is diffuse and retail. Chasing it with buy-bust after buy-bust, without moving up the chain, is not a strategy. It is a habit.

And then there is the admission nobody seems to want to linger on. Ligan said, plainly, that Western Visayas is a transshipment point and that the bulk of supply originates from Metro Manila. This means regional and provincial police are absorbing the operational cost and risk of a supply chain whose source remains largely undisturbed. The 187 arrests made here in February did not touch whoever is moving product from Luzon. That is a national enforcement failure being managed — quietly, persistently — at the regional level.

The sharpest question, though, is the one Ligan left dangling. He acknowledged that authorities have identified areas being used as drug distribution hubs — but refused to disclose where, citing ongoing coordination with local government units. At the same time, he stated that no known drug lord has been monitored in the region. PHP 74.8 million worth of product does not move itself. It does not organize logistics, manage couriers, or settle debts without someone at the top of that operation. The absence of a named drug lord is not evidence of one’s nonexistence. It is evidence of investigative limits, at best.

The solution is not more operations — not yet, anyway. It starts with honesty: about the economics that sustain the trade, about the maritime vulnerabilities along Iloilo’s coast, about the limits of supply-side enforcement when demand is never seriously addressed. DILG Secretary Jonvic Remulla himself noted that the Marcos administration’s focus on supply interdiction drove shabu prices from PHP 3,800 per gram under the previous administration to PHP 6,800 today. Higher prices slow consumption somewhat. But they also raise the stakes — and the incentives — for every player who remains in the game.

We deserves an honest accounting of what PHP 74.8 million in seized shabu actually means. It means the trade is lucrative, organized, and adaptive. Treating each press conference haul as a win, without confronting the structural conditions that guarantee the next one, is how this problem persists — month after month, bust after bust, alarm after alarm.