IF you happen to be in the Hall of Justice, try to check the day’s calendar of hearings of our two special “drug courts” which are Branches 25 and 36 of the Regional Trial Court. Sometimes they consist of three to four pages or about over 20 cases. How can the lone prosecutor handle that number of hearings in one court in half a day or for three hours the most?

Branch 25 is trying drug cases under the old law (R.A. 6425) while Branch 36 is handling cases under the new law, the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 (R.A. 9165) which amended R.A. 6425, mainly by increasing the penalties for dangerous drugs related crimes and the establishment of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).

Did the new law achieve its purpose of curbing dangerous drugs related crimes? Most who are facing trial are petty violators, some involving “traces of shabu” if not, say, .05 gms. “Big catches” are rare in Iloilo. If there are, they give the prosecution a hard time by hiring bright but expensive lawyers. How much does the government spend in prosecuting one case, for example, involving “traces of shabu”? The amount is unimaginable if you have to count the equivalent salaries of the judge, trial prosecutor, stenographer, interpreter, and the rest of the trial process up to promulgation. Add to that the expenses in ferrying the accused from his detention cell to the court and back, granting he could not afford to put up bail. Add to that again the court time of prosecution witnesses who are mostly police officers who have to leave their assignments for a while to attend to the hearing only to be postponed because of “lack of material time.”

There is also no denying the fact that the judge, the trial prosecutor, and the public attorney assigned in one branch are overworked. Everyday, drug cases of petty violations are filed before the Prosecutor’s Office and raffled every week. And the cases kept piling up, the courtroom is always full of accused, police officers, jailers, and family and relatives of accused, they make it smell like a detention cell.

One may notice that “big catches,” especially in Luzon area, involve Chinese nationals from the mainland. They build and operate shabu factories here due to our better-equipped airports and maritime ports which make shipment or importation of dangerous drugs to the country impossible to pass undetected. I think this is the kind that PDEA should concentrate on—eradicate the source. Petty street peddlers of drugs will eventually find other means of livelihood once there is no more stuff coming from factories.

Speaking of drug trade, it was the Philippine government under Spain which allowed the opium trade to flourish here through the development of the China-Manila junk trade under the context of reciprocity between China and the Philippines. After the last of the Opium Wars (1856-1860), Spain also wanted to acquire the benefits China had given to other countries under the Opium War treaty. Spain, wanting China to allow greater privileges to Spanish vessels at any of China’s ports like Hong Kong, allowed Philippine Chinese to use opium. In 1864 China granted a treaty to Spain for greater privileges in exchange for more liberal and better treatment of Chinese junks merchants and Chinese residents in the Philippines.

But even before that, a Royal Order of 1828 permitted opium culture in the Philippines on a strictly controlled basis. Domestic use was prohibited though. In 1843, a government opium monopoly was already established in the Philippines on a limited basis for purposes of raising revenues. The use of opium was only limited to Philippine Chinese under the control of the government monopoly. Non-Chinese were forbidden to use opium.

Do you know why only Philippine Chinese were allowed to use opium? According to the commission that made a study on whether or not the opium monopoly would be established in the country, there was no conclusive evidence that opium caused physical damage to the user. It was also reported that prohibition against opium use was impossible to enforce against the Chinese. (So, if you can’t enforce it, allow it.) Another reason was that if the prohibition is enforced, that would be interpreted as “harsh treatment of Chinese subjects in the Philippines” which could jeopardize the trade treaty negotiation between Spain and China.

So there were opium dens operated by the government and restricted to the area of Manila and San Fernando. Later, it involved the entire archipelago.

It was not only in opium that the Philippine Chinese were allowed. By 1850 they were also allowed to bid in contracts for collecting taxes and controlled 80 percent of municipal tax contracts. The Chinese also took interest in government monopoly of cockpits and grabbed the “great cockpit of Manila and one another” and also of Cebu.

The use, manufacture, importation and sale of illegal or dangerous drugs have been in our system since the Spanish times. We, then called indios, were not responsible for injecting this anomaly in our system. Not even the Chinese of the time. They even fought the British because they smuggled opium from British India into China . This led to the Opium Wars (1839-1842; 1856-1860) between Britain and China because the latter wanted to enforce its drug laws. The trade agreements which China was forced to swallow after its defeat in the Opium Wars contributed to the eruption of the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) and the downfall of the Qing Dynasty.

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