THE cocaine seizure in Samar is the country's significant contribution to the world's anti-drug campaign for the year 2009, said Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) Undersecretary Paul Oaminal.
Studies revealed that dope user consumes .01 to .02 grams of cocaine per session at the average range.
Therefore, a gram of cocaine could be shared by a conservative estimate of five persons, said Oaminal.
He noted that a cocaine brick weighing a kilo could be consumed by at least 5,000 dope users.
Earlier, drug enforcement teams seized 200 cocaine bricks, which Oaminal said saves at least one million would-be dope users.
Oaminal personally stayed in the Leyte-Samar area to monitor and supervise the cocaine retrieval where up to the latest countdown has reached more than 200 bricks.
He said that if not for the fast action of the Philippine Government in the retrieval of the drugs, it would now have been distributed and consumed by dope users not necessarily in the Philippines but in Hongkong (the point of destination of the vessel that unloaded the shipment), United States of America and other European countries.
Oaminal added that aside from the cocaine seizure in the provinces of eastern and northern part of Samar, the Philippine government has likewise seized 16 kilos of cocaine in Davao City last December.
The cache would have been consumed by at least 75,000 dope users, Oaminal said.
The Philippine anti narcotics agents may not have the best technologies and logistical requirements but it definitely achieves its mission, he said.
With the past year alone, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in coordination with the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has dismantled more than a dozen clandestine shabu laboratories nationwide and it, likewise beyond argument, "that more than 70 percent of detainees in our jails nationwide are drug related, an evidence that our enforcers are indeed arresting drug offenders," Oaminal said.
"If our law enforcers are not doing their job then there would not have been jail congestion in our correctional facilities," said Oaminal.
He added: "The rise of the price of shabu is basically founded on the fact of less supply and the higher percentage of arrest by the pushers, this is due to the unrelentless operations of our law enforcers."
Oaminal believed that the PNP, NBI and PDEA anti narcotics operatives are properly motivated despite the not so high salary it has done its job greatly is because they know that they are fighting for a cause larger than their lives.
Anti narcotics authorities are fighting for the lives of their children and your children, opined Oaminal.