14 September 2005
EDITORIAL: BFAD: Too little, possibly too late
WE laud the efforts of the food and drug authorities and the police as they continue their campaign to catch drugstores suspected of violating the laws on the selling of regulated drugs and counterfeit medicine. Finally, after earlier reports on this illegal activity (as far back as last year, Health Regional Director Eduardo Janairo had already accused some drugstores in the Ilocos of selling counterfeit and fake drugs), we are seeing some action.
Apparently, the successful raid on a drugstore in Alaminos City last September 2 was a follow-up operation on the earlier arrest of two women couriers of the counterfeit medicine gang and an Indian national a few days later. The “blue book” or list captured from the two women couriers was obviously an A-1 lead for authorities to go by in breaking the back of the counterfeit drug syndicate. In that list, based on reports so far, the names of at least 12 doctors, several of them quite prominent, stood out, and possibly, too, the “client-drugstores.”
Now, might we ask: If BFAD and the NBI and the cops are really that dead earnest, how is it they’ve netted just one drugstore owner yet? How about the rest of those in the list –doctors, drugstore owners and yes, pharmacists – so far incriminated by the “blue book?” It’s not as if only 24 hours have passed since the arrest of the first suspects to allow the lead hunters of BFAD and NBI more generous time yet to do follow-up operation. It’s been weeks, for God’s sake!
Any lead, any trail that there might have been before would have gone cold by now. Even last week’s announcement by a BFAD official about sending out some 200 poseur-buyers to check if suspect drugstores are really selling the illegal products is so sickeningly funny. Telegraphing one’s moves is surely one way of forewarning the guilty.
Why not simply apply for a warrant and go check their inventories pronto, using the confiscated “blue book” as basis? If the cops can do this in search of suspected drug supplies, with nothing much but their tipsters’ word to justify the application, why not the BFAD in this quest to protect the health of an unwary population from unscrupulous merchants and mercenaries in the medical world? Or is some shielding going on now between hunter and quarry?
Apparently, the successful raid on a drugstore in Alaminos City last September 2 was a follow-up operation on the earlier arrest of two women couriers of the counterfeit medicine gang and an Indian national a few days later. The “blue book” or list captured from the two women couriers was obviously an A-1 lead for authorities to go by in breaking the back of the counterfeit drug syndicate. In that list, based on reports so far, the names of at least 12 doctors, several of them quite prominent, stood out, and possibly, too, the “client-drugstores.”
Now, might we ask: If BFAD and the NBI and the cops are really that dead earnest, how is it they’ve netted just one drugstore owner yet? How about the rest of those in the list –doctors, drugstore owners and yes, pharmacists – so far incriminated by the “blue book?” It’s not as if only 24 hours have passed since the arrest of the first suspects to allow the lead hunters of BFAD and NBI more generous time yet to do follow-up operation. It’s been weeks, for God’s sake!
Any lead, any trail that there might have been before would have gone cold by now. Even last week’s announcement by a BFAD official about sending out some 200 poseur-buyers to check if suspect drugstores are really selling the illegal products is so sickeningly funny. Telegraphing one’s moves is surely one way of forewarning the guilty.
Why not simply apply for a warrant and go check their inventories pronto, using the confiscated “blue book” as basis? If the cops can do this in search of suspected drug supplies, with nothing much but their tipsters’ word to justify the application, why not the BFAD in this quest to protect the health of an unwary population from unscrupulous merchants and mercenaries in the medical world? Or is some shielding going on now between hunter and quarry?
