PDEA checks report linking pols, government executives to drug trade

BAGUIO CITY , Philippines  – Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Cordillera is finding out if there is any truth to a report linking political bets and other government officials to the illegal drug trade here.

This, after a Pakistani was busted red-handed selling prohibited drugs worth at least a million here Thursday night.

Ghulam Sheikh, a Pakistani national who married a Baguio resident, was caught by PDEA agents with valium, methergine and stillnox, all regulated drugs.

PDEA-CAR spokesperson Emily Fama said Sheikh is trafficking these drugs to Northern Luzon provinces, including Benguet, La Union, Dagupan, Abra, Cagayan and other provinces in the North.

Fama said the foreigner and other drug traffickers have the balls to engage in their illegal trade because they are being “protected” by big people like politicians. But she said they have to make an air-tight probe on their assumptions.

Former Dangerous Drugs Board chairman Vicente Sotto III earlier told reporters here that if not for government being on its toes, the country would have been controlled by drug lords in the early 90’s.

Although measures like stiff laws were implemented in the country, Sotto claimed, drug trafficking in the country is a stiff foe.

PDEA director general Dionisio Santiago, on several occasions had been ranting on the involvement of some politicians into the illegal trade, sometimes rendering government’s actions in stamping out the problem unsuccessful.