Shabu

BEHIND THE SCENES

Alfred P. Dizon

It is known by many names in different parts of the world – “ice,” “yaba,” “poor man’s cocaine,” “crazy meds” and “crystal meth” – and has destroyed the lives of people worldwide from the rich to the poor.

Recently, “shabu,” destroyed the lives of two women – a 22-year-old college undergraduate sentenced to life imprisonment in Baguio City and a 24-year-old bachelorette busted in a drug sting in San Fernando City, La Union.

Judge Antonio Reyes of the Baguio City Regional Trial Court Branch 61 recently sentenced Marie Flor S. Rodriguez to life imprisonment for unlawful sale of dangerous drugs.

The judge also ordered Rodriguez to pay a penalty of P5 million for her crime, two years and three months after being collared in a shabu buy-bust operation by agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Cordillera Administrative Region.

Rodriguez, whose clients were mostly college students, was arrested on June 23, 2011 in a sting operation near her house in Pinsao Pilot Project, Baguio City after selling shabu weighing 0.86 gram to a poseur-buyer.

Meanwhile at Camp Florendo in La Union, Chief Supt. Ricardo C. Marquez presented to media a 24-year-old suspect identified only as “Marian,” of Barangay San Francisco, San Fernando City.

Marian, along with three other men – her live-in partner Dondon E. Guerero, 34, of Candon City; Melchor D. Lorenzo, 53, of Galimuyod, Ilocos Sur; and Jerry M. Salingbay, 36, of Banayoyo, Ilocos Sur – were arrested in an entrapment.

They yielded three heat-sealed plastic sachets of “shabu,” marked money, and drug paraphernalia to joint operatives of the police’s Regional Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operation Task Group 1, the PDEA-Regional Office 1, and the San Fernando City Police Station.

Marquez said Marian had long been in the police’s watch list of top drug dealers in the region.

In Santiago town Ilocos Sur, authorities recently seized P80,000 worth of shabu from the house of a municipal councilor and her husband, a former village chief, in Barangay Poblacion Norte here on August 31, police said.

Senior Insp. Roderick Vintero, Santiago police chief, said a search in the house of councilor Lilia Tengsico and her husband, former barangay chairman Renato Tengsico, yielded several sachets of shabu and drug paraphernalia.                 

Vintero said PDEA agents and local police were armed with a search warrant when they entered  Tengsico’s house.

            

These reports were cited by the PDEA of Ilocos and Cordillera regions as the agency recently marked its first decade anniversary.

Cited was the “neutralization” of the Nider Drug Group, a notorious and long-existing drug group operating in the Cordillera and Ilocos Regions.

The leader of the drug group, Arthur Nider Sr., was cornered in Baguio City in a sting operation by the PDEA on Nov. 12, 2012 after indulging in shabu trade for around 30 years.

One of his members was earlier sentenced to life term, one died of shabu overdose, while, still, another member is now paralytic due to abuse of drugs. This powerful local drug group, affiliated closely with the Bahala Na Gang, which included his two brothers and a nephew, was thus deemed disbanded and deactivated.

The PDEA also cited the arrest of Federico Oliveros, the son of Bernardo Oliveros, “Baguio City’s drug lord and ‘godfather of organized local drug groups” by drug law enforcement agents on May 21.

Meanwhile, the arrest of Rodolfo Eskerdo Busoy alias “Renato Esquerdo Busoy” or “Renato Esquiro Busoy” or “Reynaldo Busoy”, the “topmost wanted drug personality” in the Cordillera, who had also been wanted for frustrated murder, highlighted PDEA accomplishments on arrest of drug personalities in wanted list.