By AARON RECUENCO
National police chief Director General Oscar Albayalde disputed yesterday the claim of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) that there is already an oversupply of illegal drugs in the country that led to the significant reduction of the price of shabu.
Citing its daily street operations as basis, Albayalde said both the quantity of illegal drugs that police seize and the price remain the same.
“I cannot second guess the PDEA on how they obtained that statistics. As per experience, we do not know, we cannot validate it as of this time if the price indeed decreased or there is an overflow of supply of drugs especially here in Metro Manila,” said Albayalde.
Earlier, PDEA Director General Aaron Aquino was quoted saying that the oversupply of shabu led to the reduction of price especially in Metro Manila.
The basis he mentioned was the recent successful operations of the agency in the past day.
But for Albayalde, it is neither the PDEA nor the police which could determine if there is indeed a price reduction but the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB).
On the part of the PNP, he said there is no confirmatory intelligence reports of the oversupply and reduction of price of shabu on the streets of Metro Manila.
“Based on our efforts on the streets, it is still the same. We do not have information that the price of shabu was reduced,” said Albayalde.
PDEA’s statement of oversupply of shabu is currently being connected to the alleged missing shabu from the four magnetic lifters found in Cavite a few months ago.
If the PDEA statement is true, Albayalde said their concern is to recover all of them and run after those who smuggled and distributed the illegal drugs.
“We will not be blaming anybody here. On our part, we will double time to recover those shabu which was allegedly smuggled,” said Albayalde.
The top officials of the PDEA and the Bureau of Customs are on a word war on the alleged missing R6.8 billion of shabu, with the former insinuating that the magnetic lifters found in Cavite contain shabu while the latter has been denying it.
