Phil Regis Lapitan (CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA).
A son of a barangay councilwoman was collared by the agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in Central Visayas (PDEA) 7 during a buy-bust operation Friday night in Barangay Tuyan in Naga City, 22 kilometers south of Cebu City.
Philip Regis Lapitan, 42, the son of Barangay Tuyan Councilwoman Luzminda Lapitan, was arrested in his house on Friday at 8 p.m. after a three-week surveillance confirmed that he was selling shabu (metamphetamine) to street level pushers, said PDEA 7 deputy regional director Wardley Getalla.
Recovered from his possession were four packs of shabu weighing 50 grams worth P200,000, a mobile phone and P1,000 used as buy-bust money.
“Ang dami niyang (drug) transactions, maraming kumukuha sa kanya to order (He has numerous drug transactions; there are so many who get their drug supply from him),” Getalla told Cebu Daily News.
Lapitan admitted that he was selling and using illegal drug when he spoke to Cebu Daily News this morning while detained at the PDEA 7 detention cell.
Lapitan, who said he has been using shabu since he was 19 years old and had been in and out of rehabilitation centers three times, said he was selling illegal drugs to support his wife and three children.
“Wa na ko’y mahimo tinuyuan man ni nako, mao naman akong naandan (There is nothing a can do about being arrested since I know the consequence of what I am doing. I’m used to this),” said Lapitan.