MANILA - The price of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) in the country has risen sharply from P1,300 per gram to P25,000 as the Duterte ...
MANILA - The price of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) in the country has risen sharply from P1,300 per gram to P25,000 as the Duterte administration tightens the noose around suppliers and peddlers of the illegal drug, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) said Wednesday.
“I confirm that indeed, the price of shabu has increased considerably from P1,300 per gram to P25,000 as of August 2016,” Roselyn Borja, PDEA deputy director general for administration, told the House Justice panel at its second day of hearings Wednesday on the prison drug trade.
Benjamin Magalong, Philippine National Police deputy chief for operations, said the administration’s war on illegal drugs has restricted the movement of the illegal substance in the country, resulting in tight supply.
“The way to gauge it is the very high cost of drugs at present,” he said.
Magalong also noted that the intensified campaign against illegal drugs had caused the drop in crime incidence.
He said the reforms in the New Bilibid Prison, which used to be a hub of the drug trade, have also been “very effective.”
He added that it has also changed the demeanor of high-profile inmates, who used to lord it over their fellows in the penitentiary.
“Now, the inmates feel that they are equal,” he added.
President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown on the narcotics trade has been declared a success, but various sectors and human rights advocates have criticized the high number of killings associated with it: with police accounting only for half of the 3,000 deaths, and the rest, tagged "deaths under investigation," or what are referred to also by some quarters as extrajudicial killings.
In just over two months since the President assumed office, the body count in the government’s war on drugs reached almost 3,000. (Source)
