MANILA, Philippines—What prompted President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to take over the reins of the fight against drug trafficking?

One reason may be the government’s generally dismal performance at the prosecution level: From 2003 to December 2008, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) recorded a total of 99,754 cases filed, of which 78 percent remained unresolved.

Of the resolved cases, 27 percent led to the acquittal of the suspects and 31 percent to conviction, Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) Chair Vicente “Tito” Sotto III said in a presentation at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting in Malacañang.

The cases the government lost during the five-year period numbered at least 6,000.

Sotto said the acquittals were a result of the “nonappearance of prosecution witnesses, insufficiency of evidence, irregularity or illegality of arrest, search and seizure, and inconsistencies in testimony.”

He said agents of the PDEA and the Philippine National Police failed to show up consistently during the prosecution phase, usually because they were assigned to another area.

Sotto said another reason was the failure of government agents to comply with Section 21 of RA 9165 governing the “custody and disposition of confiscated, seized, and/or surrendered dangerous drugs, plant sources and dangerous drugs, controlled precursors and essential chemicals, instruments/paraphernalia and/or laboratory equipment.”

Despite the miserable number of resolved cases, Sotto assured the public that the latest anti-drug campaign would not be short-lived, like the one launched some five years ago.

“My name is Tito Sotto,” he told reporters in Filipino. “I have long-term proposals, amendments to the law, including the structure of the PDEA. If they are approved, the campaign will have a life of its own even if I’m no longer in it.”

In the new campaign, the government is presented a clearer profile of drug dependents per DDB records collated from 66 rehabilitation centers nationwide.

The average age of drug dependents is 28. Most of them are unemployed but belong to a family with an average monthly income of P14,980.

Male users outnumber female users 9 to 1.

Most of the users live in urban areas, have been using banned substances for more than six years, and have used various drugs (poly-drug users). With reports from Marlon Ramos in Manila; Delfin T. Mallari Jr., Inquirer Southern Luzon