Bricks of Cocaine are Literally Washing Up on Philippine Shores

There’s a Filipino comedy film set for release this year entitled Mina-Anud, which depicts the story of two surfers who devise a plan to become drug dealers after finding tons of cocaine in their resident shores. The film, the trailer says, is based on true events.

It’s not far-fetched. Bricks and bricks of cocaine are washing up on Philippine shores, apparently more and more frequently. The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) reports that more cocaine has been recovered in February this year compared to the whole of 2018.

This, against the backdrop of a brutal government crackdown on drugs. Oh, the irony.

Just last month, fishermen found almost $5 million worth of cocaine drifting along Barangay Poblacion in Burgos, Surigao del Norte. Wrapped in packing tape, the amount of cocaine collected amounted to 48.5 kilos.

It's a shit ton of cocaine. But they're appearing in different parts of the Philippines as well. From February to March, blocks of cocaine were recovered in at least 12 different areas from the Northern islands all the way to the South.

The cocaine bricks were labeled after European car brands, like Lexus, Bugatti, BMW, or Audi. The names, according to PDEA, point towards international drug rings who use the same manufacturer.

Some of the bricks recovered had GPS tracking devices on them. PDEA Chief Director General Aaron Aquino said that drug rings use the recovered bricks as a diversionary tactic. The bricks are used by syndicates as a warning for drug dealers to avoid the area as they expect government authorities to be present.

But where do these bricks come from exactly? No one is sure exactly but Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said that the Medellin cartel in Colombia and the Sinaloa drug cartel have infiltrated the country, based on reports from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. He said that the Philippines’ many islands will be a difficult problem in apprehending the smugglers.

“What is difficult is the Philippines has the longest shoreline because it has multiple islands,” Duterte said in a speech last February. “It's not straight. Very porous.” The Philippines has 7,107 islands.

PDEA also thinks that the Philippines might not be the intended destination of these bricks. The agency said drug rings may have been using the Philippines as a conveyance point since there is no market for cocaine in the country.

In the 2016 annual report by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), cocaine remained a distant choice for Filipinos. Based on drug-related arrests, shabu (methamphetamine) remains the top choice at 94.93%, followed by marijuana at 5.23%, and other drugs, including cocaine, at 0.34%.

But then again, cocaine tends to be the preferred drug of the wealthy, which might explain the supposedly low demand in the country. Drug arrests in the Philippines have notoriously been targeted towards the poor rather than richer drug users or traffickers, which may be skewing PDEA's numbers.

The police think they have a solution though. In the Caraga region, police are incentivizing residents who find the bricks of cocaine by trading one brick for one sack of rice. According to PDEA, one kilo of cocaine costs 5.3 million Philippine pesos, or approximately $101,000. A sack of rice meanwhile, is worth about 1,789 Philippine pesos ($33.9). Good luck with that initiative…