More than 500 kilos of illegal drugs still ‘pending’ destruction — PDEA

PDEA Director General Wilkins Villanueva. INQUIRER FILE/ MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

MANILA, Philippines — More than 500 kilos of illegal drugs are still waiting to be destroyed as lower courts handling drug cases have yet to conduct their respective inspections of the seized evidence.

PDEA Director General Wilkins Villanueva revealed this Wednesday during the incineration of seized illegal drugs worth more than P1 billion at a waste management facility in Trece Martires, Cavite.

“Pending in court, we still have about 567.4 kilos of dangerous drugs,” he said during a speech. “Malaki po ito, at pipilitin po nating gisingin ang ating mga korte nationwide, para mabigyan tayo ng ocular inspection para sa eventual destruction of dangerous drugs.”

(This is big, and we will ask our courts nationwide for ocular inspection leading to the eventual destruction of these dangerous drugs.)

Section 21 of the Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 mandates that a court handling a drug-related case should conduct an ocular inspection of the seized illegal drugs within 72 hours. After the conduct of the ocular inspection and the taking of a random sample needed for the hearing of the case, the rest of the seized drugs should then be destroyed within 24 hours by the law enforcement agency in custody of it.

The PDEA chief also pointed out that no less than President Duterte himself ordered that the destruction of seized illegal drugs be hastened.

Villanueva also noted that PDEA already received “several administrative memoranda from the Supreme Court itself to hasten the destruction of dangerous drugs.”

“We promise you that this 567.4 kilos of dangerous drugs pending in court will be destroyed on our next destruction,” he stressed, “kung hindi, papangalanan na natin ang mga korte na yan,” (if not, we would name those courts.)

John Eric Mendoza

/MUF