Central Visayas may be next big market for illegal drugs—Sinas

Cebu City, Philippines—For Police Brigadier General Debold Sinas, Cebu may be the next big market for illegal drugs.

Speaking during a press conference on Thursday, June 4, 2019, at the Police Regional Office Central Visayas headquarters at Camp Sergio Osmeña, Sinas divulged the accomplishment report of PRO 7, which showed that they have confiscated illegal drugs worth almost P1.12 billion from 9,609 users and pushers arrested in the city since July 1, 2018.   

“We have a very high recovery of illegal drugs in our area,” said the PRO-7 chief. “This means Central Visayas and Cebu is really the next very big market for shabu and marijuana.”

Although the number of arrests are high and the efforts of the police in conducting buy-bust operations has productive outcomes, Sinas admitted that more illegal drugs are entering the city.

In fact, there were more numbers of new drug personalities nabbed compared to the ones in the watchlist. There were only 397 arrested under their current watchlist while 9,226 are identified as new.

Despite this alarming rate of new drug users, Sinas assured that they have not found any shabu laboratory in the city. 

He added that they are closely monitoring this issue together with the continuous investigation on the original source of the illegal drugs, which they believe is coming from Manila.

Comparing the arrests last year, Sinas also mentioned the change in strategy of the new drug personalities. He said last year,  drugs were packed in bulk of kilos while this year, it has been packed in smaller sachets.

“They really changed their strategy,” he said.

But Sinas said the police isn’t backing down to the challenge, a proof of this is the number of arrests of drug personalities in the region recently. /bmjo