Bogus drug arrests and seizures

has haunted the consumers. No solution in sight.

Yet, our economic managers assure us that the 2022-2023 chapter on the saga of the sibuyas will not happen in the last quarter or even next year.

Promise, ha?

The Bangko Sentral chimes in with its assurance that come September, inflation will go down to the 4 percent level.

Promise ulit, ha?

DA, BPI, even our legislators have long known who is considered the “reina de las sibuyas,” once and perhaps till now also “reina de los ajos.”

And her reign will likely outnumber the years Elizabeth II had been head of state, assuming she lives beyond the years of the quintessential survivor, the supraintelligent Juan Ponce Enrile.

As it has been in sibuyas, so it is with asukal.

Despite so many fumbles, from the incipient SRA sugar order to import sugar which was rescinded due to politics from the weakened “sugar bloc” (hindi mamaytay-matay), and sugar prices rising to P110-130 per kilo, then an emergency import, followed by a controversial 440,000 metric ton import, which the lone opposition in the Senate exposed with good research, the price of sugar has yet to be tamed.

And the favored importers are still laughing all the way to their banks.

Befuddled, bewildered and likely bewitched, officials now tell us they will strengthen and modernize agricultural information systems, so supply shortages or surpluses can be properly monitored.

There used to be a Bureau of Agricultural Statistics, which the law creating the Philippine Statistics Authority subsumed, and no longer under DA, but NEDA.

THE National Police Commission has spoken.

And what it says exposes a fundamental flaw in the Duterte administration’s implementation of its bloody war on drugs from 2016 to 2019.

That flaw is measuring the success of the war on drugs on the sheer number of drug suspects killed and clamped in jail, as well as on the size of the drugs seized.

Duterte regularly repeated his “kill, kill, kill” mantra to the police who dutifully carried out his marching order for them to take no prisoners, especially if they resisted arrest.

The police always claimed those killed were “nanlaban” or fought back. But these claims were not substantiated at all, just accepted by the public out of fear or reprisal if they as much breathed a word about “salvaging” to human rights groups here and abroad.

The Napolcom is now saying the quota system in the PNP where promotions of officers depended on how many arrests were made and how big was the drug haul is what’s at fault.

It kept mum, however, on how many suspected ‘drug personalities’ were summarily executed.

News reports in the early years of the Duterte administration revealed that police offices at the local level were told to account for 30 drug personalities for a certain period—perhaps every week.

The PNP officially acknowledges more than 6,200 killed since 2016 to the present.

But human rights groups here and abroad monitoring the war on drugs had tallied figures of between 20,000 to 30,000 killed, an assertion that is practically impossible to validate given the hesitancy of the families of victims to come forward for fear of reprisals.

It was Atty. Alberto Bernardo,

What ails the LTO?

A Batangueno to the core, he must have realized “sino ‘ga ang niloloko natin!”

And then there is the on-again, off-again “raid,” or to be legally correct, “inspection” of onion cold storage facilities to determine if traders are into hoarding and its corollary market effect – profiteering.

Por Dios y por todos los santos, how many onion cold storage facilities are there in this technologically-challenged land?

First of all, you cannot store onions the same way you freeze poultry or meat to prolong its shelf life and marketability.

Onion storages require a precise temperature and humidity controlled environment, as even the ordinary Bureau of Plant Industry employee knows, (or pardon my assuming), or ought to know.

Higher than the precise temperature or humidity band, and the onions begin to sprout.

Lower than that band, it dries up, “reseco” as every player in the value chain knows. Either way, the onions either rot or are deemed unmarketable.

By the way, do not such agricultural machineries placed in cold storages pass through another DA agency, the PhilMech, which is supposed to inspect and accredit these? So they have the records, right?

So if BPI, BoC and DA are serious, they could have inspected the few such cold storage facilities in the country by now.

After all, it has been seven months, eight even, that the anomaly of that poster boy of food insecurity, the lowly sibuyas,

MEXICALI, Mexico—Elena Ruelas prepares a syringe of heroin, a drug that she has been using for 20 years. These days, however, it is almost certainly laced with potentially deadly fentanyl.

A rapid strip test in a Mexican safeuse center in the city of Mexicali near the US border confirms the presence of the synthetic opioid, which is 50 times more powerful than heroin.

The result comes as no surprise.

Since 2019, “there’s not a single heroin test that does not come back positive for fentanyl,” said Said Slim, who works at a nonprofit organization, Verter, which created the safe-consumption place in 2018 to protect vulnerable users.

The group’s records for 2022 indicate that overdoses among consumers doubled in one year.

There are deaths every day in Mexicali, according to the authorities.

The city, located just south of California and home to a million people, is suffering from the spillover of the opioid crisis blamed for hundreds of overdose deaths

It was functioning very efficiently then, under the leadership of now retired ASec Romeo Recide, a constant Philippine delegate to food and agricultural fora because of his wealth of expertise, just as then USec for Planning and Policy Fred Serrano, now retired as well.

DA and its agencies relied on BAS for the right statistical measurements and forecasts, which were most always reliable.

Who minds the store now, and how?

I do not relish having to keep writing about our food insecurity or consumer woes in this benighted country.

But if there is one issue that the people have to confront day-in and day-out, it is food inflation and supply shortages.

“Politica del estomago” always prevails, and optics like Kadiwa and SRP cannot forever paper over the daily realities of life.

*** every day in the United States.

And lest I forget, a happy birthday to former Senator Ping Lacson, who commemorates it today, 01 June, who has re-invented his career from most effective police chief to a brilliant senator, to now a gentleman farmer.

What was it Pres. Elpidio Quirino, one of our great presidents, once said?

“It is not who can lead, but who ought to lead,” words which our electorate have most often failed to heed.

I hope Ping succeeds in his new endeavor, which could be a trail-blazer in our long quest for food security.

Whatever, the Senate would be a much more credible institution from what it presently is, if men like Ping Lacson repopulate it.

Fentanyl has become one of the top issues dominating diplomatic relations between the United States and Mexico.

Washington has accused Mexican drug cartels of controlling the bulk of fentanyl production and cross-border trafficking.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador denies that the drug is produced in Mexico.

He says that US-bound fentanyl is imported from China and turned by the cartels into pills that are easy to smuggle due to their size.

‘Too strong’

Ruelas, 50, suffered a near-fatal overdose a year ago, even though she had injected herself with no more than her usual dose of heroin, a highly addictive opioid made from the opium poppy.

“I used the same amount as before but it had fentanyl in it and it was too strong for me,” she said.

Ruelas was lucky to be given naloxone, a medicine that is capable of reversing an

LAST week, Jay Art Tugade submitted his irrevocable resignation as Land Transportation Office Administrator due to differences in management styles with his boss DOTr Secretary Jimmy Bautista. If this were a divorce proceeding it is what we might call as irreconcilable differences. What these differences were, both gentlemen did not say. But we can surmise that the differences must have been acute because it triggered the resignation of Tugade.

At least, he is man enough to do it unlike others who would just have swallowed their pride to stay in that position. He served for only about five months which is perhaps one of the shortest stints.

Of all the DOTr line agencies, the LTO is one of the most sought after positions. Indeed, it is such a high profile position even if the head of the agency is an Assistant Secretary which is a third tier position in a department.

Since it deals with road vehicles, it is constantly in the line of fire because of its daily interaction with the public.

Of late, however, due to the many unresolved issues that have plagued the agency over the years – like the issuance of paper licenses due to the lack of plastics and the 12-year-old car plate problem which, to this time, has not been fully solved – there is that urgent need for reforms in the agency.

We can understand if a government agency finds it difficult to solve a problem for six months or even a year but 12 years is unheard of anywhere in the world.

Tens of thousands of car owners who have paid for their car plates years ago deserve something better.

It is unacceptable that this project has not been completed. The LTO owes it to the public to provide a satisfactory explanation.

When this project was first launched in 2012, it generated a lot of controversy.

But the LTO leadership at that time went ahead with it.

After a leadership change in the agency, problems started to show up.

The new officials that followed never really did anything substantive to solve the problem because they had no incentive to solve the problem. all know, the LTO is principal government agency that administers all laws pertaining to the operation of land vehicles. From licensing of drivers, car registration, repair shops and many more. And LTO has something to do about it. LTO’s authority is therefore quite extensive.

The joke that circulated at that time: why solve a problem that did not benefit the succeeding officials.

Past practices in the agency was that every time a new leadership comes in, a new project also enters the picture.

For instance, the case of early warning devices.

If readers can recall, car owners were required to buy the device before registration.

But, as we now all know, this is no longer required.

Napolcom vice chair and executive officer, who said the anti-drug agencies were planning a shift in strategy to veer away from a statistics-heavy analysis of the country’s drug situation in the wake of the controversy over the P6.7-billion drug haul in Manila last year and its alleged cover-up.

“We need to change this statistical basis in our crime situation wherein performance rating is based on the volume of seizures, which has prompted some officers to concoct their arrests just so they can have accomplishments,” he said.

Bernardo said the current system requiring police officers to produce five to 10 arrests to be considered for promotion was inherently flawed.

“For instance, if a province or a city has low drug-related crime statistics, this should not be taken to mean the drug situation there is good; on the other hand, no arrests should not be taken to mean that the locality is already drug-free,” he said.

Talk about turning a bad thing into a good thing.

The bad thing is the alleged involvement of at least two top police officers in the cover-up of the seizure in 2022 of nearly a ton of shabu.

But the good thing is that this has opened a can of worms that should now prod the PNP to radically change its strategy and tactics in the war on illegal drugs.

My long years of government service allowed me to interact closely with the LTO. The first was when I was detailed to the DOTr after coming back from my traffic and transport engineering studies and was assigned by the Secretary who was then a Minister to supervise the LTO as one of the agencies assigned to me as a special assistant to the Secretary.

The second was when I headed the Highway Patrol of the PNP and the third was when I handled the traffic of the National Capital Region.

Come to think about it, the car plate problem is really not such a difficult issue to resolve because if the car plates of vintage cars could easily be made available, the new plates could as well.

But perhaps the reason is something else that is better left unsaid.

So what really ails the LTO?

Is it simply plain and simple ingrained corruption?

One indication is the presence and need to have fixers to make it easier to transact business with the agency.

And the agency is still full of fixers.

It could also be the work culture that exists within the agency that needs to be changed.

To be fair to the many Assistant Secretaries that headed the agency, a lot of them did in fact start a reform process but left not being able to complete what they started.

Jay Tugade is therefore, just following the footsteps of many of his predecessors. We and sex workers, are greeted by name and given health and other advice. opioid overdose but whose sale is restricted in Mexico. Ruelas, who works as a cleaner, cut her dose in half and almost always now injects herself in La Sala, a pioneering initiative in Latin America.

“They make me feel that I’m still a human being,” said Ricardo Rizo, who has used heroin for 26 years.

He too was almost killed by fentanyl.

“It’s only by the grace of God that I’m here,” he said.

Adjusting to the growing risks has been a major challenge for Rizo, who lowered his dosage to reduce the risk of overdose, the 59-year-old said.

The fentanyl makes users drowsy, leaving them “practically asleep,” said Rizo, who earns a living selling candy on the street.

Like the police where I used to belong to, the LTO also needs a change in work culture. There seems to be some elements within the LTO who are not so enthusiastic to change or what we call reform.

I experienced this when we attempted to introduce the benefits of computers in the agency when computerization was just starting.

The LTO is now, of course, much more computerized but that is not enough. A lot more needs to be done.

It is hard to pinpoint a single reason for LTO’s struggles.

This is perhaps what makes identifying what should be done to reform the agency harder.

In a case like this, the DOTr and LTO leadership should undertake a complete overhaul of the current staffing pattern to make it more responsive to the increasing demand of motorization and undertake a complete retraining program to change its corporate values.

All this, however, will be impossible to achieve if the DOTr and LTO do not see each other eye to eye.

“The presence of fentanyl has grown a lot in the city,” he added.

Julio Buenrostro, who works for the Red Cross nonprofit humanitarian organization, said that overdoses represented up to 25 percent of the emergencies that the organization deals with.

Thanks to naloxone “we managed to save a lot of lives,” he said.

Without regular access to the drug, emergency workers turn to Verter, which sources naloxone from across the border.

The organization provides drug users with consumption kits to prevent the spread of hepatitis C and HIV, while also monitoring their health. Visitors, who include homeless people

“People are not stupid... they realize when someone is under the influence,” he said. Saving lives

Every day the Mexicali police department deals with several deaths of suspected addicts, most of whom are believed to have been unaware of exactly what they were taking, according to its deputy director Carlos Romero.

“Many are overdoses,” Romero said.

Lopez Obrador has criticized the United States for its provision of free naloxone, arguing that it does not address the root causes of the problem.

He has floated the idea of banning fentanyl as a painkiller.

After his own brush with death, Rizo wants to warn others of the danger of taking drugs that may have been adulterated.

“I lived it firsthand,” Rizo said of his overdose in Mexicali, where he roams the streets using a walking frame with two faithful dogs following him. AFP