Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers filed a bill seeking the creation of a Dangerous Drugs Court in all cities and provinces to hasten the disposition of at least 300,000 drug cases pending resolution in various courts nationwide.
Barbers, chairman of the House committee on dangerous drugs, said there was a backlog of 405,062 drug cases pending in various courts nationwide from over a two-year period ending in 2022, consisting of those filed by Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, the Philippine National Police, and National Bureau of Investigation.
“Out of this figure, only 28 percent or 114,610 cases have been resolved or have been handed decision by the judiciary. This means there are about 300,000 drug cases or approximately 72 percent still pending in courts as we speak,” he said.
The delay in the resolution of drug cases “would only lead to more clogging of court dockets, impairing our already slow-paced justice system in the country,” Barbers said.
Under his House Bill No. 9446, Barbers said the absence of drug courts has caused the delay in the issuance of court orders and other processes in connection with the destruction of seized or confiscated drugs.
He said he got the information during a dangerous drugs panel hearing that the PDEA and the PNP still have in their respective custody a total of “undestructed” 8,662 kilos of shabu and 4,233 kilos of marijuana.
Barbers said both the PDEA and PNP claimed that immediate destruction as mandated under the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2202 could not be done because of the difficulty in obtaining court orders to carry it out.
“This has opened windows of opportunity for rogues in uniform, popularly known as ninja cops, to operate by recycling illegal drugs for the purpose of planting evidence, or worse, selling it back on the streets,” he said.
