Party drugs worth P178,000 were seized on Sunday from two 21-year-olds in a Quezon City hotel, the police said.
The drugs taken from the apartelle in Barangay Doña Imelda included five grams of cocaine worth P25,000 and 90 ecstasy tablets with a street value of P153,000.
Kevin Costes and Chrestien Deryck Angeles were arrested in the buy-bust operation conducted by Quezon City policemen around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday.
The pair had been under surveillance since December last year, according to Quezon City Police District Drug Enforcement Unit head, Chief Insp. Ferdinand Mendoza.
No proof of employment
Angeles said that he was a call center agent but Mendoza told the Inquirer that the suspect could not present any document to back up his claim.
Mendoza added that the suspects supplied the party drugs to a sprawling network of upscale bars in parts of Metro Manila, including Quezon City, Makati City, Parañaque City, Muntinlupa City and Cavite province.
The buy-bust was a follow-up operation to a series of raids that resulted in the seizure of party drugs, the most recent on Feb. 6 where live-in partners Russel Tan and Jazel Cabresos yielded 21.5 grams of cocaine, 36 capsules of ecstasy and eight bottles of liquid ecstasy worth P294,000.