THE vast waters off Samar Island has turned anew to be a “drop-off” point of international drug smugglers with the recovery of over 20 kilograms of cocaine worth nearly P112 million in Arteche municipality last Friday.

Since 2009, huge volume of cocaine bricks have been found floating in the seashores of different Samar municipalities and amid findings that there is no “cocaine market” in the Philippines, officials have raised the possibility that they could have been accidentally dropped off by foreign drug smugglers’ ships.

In one incident, foreign drug smugglers reportedly being chased by United Sates Drug Enforcement Administration (US-DEA) agents were forced to throw their cocaine contraband overboard in the Pacific Ocean near the Philippine territory, the drugs later finding their way in the Samar waters.

The Philippine National Police headed by Gen. Benjamin C. Acorda Jr. and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency chaired by Director General Moro Virgilio M. Lazo have joined hands in investigating the latest cocaine recovery in Samar.

PNP spokesperson Col. Jean S. Fajardo said that this is not the first time that cocaine bricks were found floating in the Samar waters although an investigation is already underway regarding their source.

She said that last March 9, a fisherman recovered two bags found containing 20 cocaine bricks. The man reported his discovery to local barangay officials who in turn sought the help of the local police.

Fajardo said that in 2009, 209 cocaine bricks were also recovered in the same area while in 2010, another nine bags of cocaine washed ashore. Since 2009 to date, she said that a total of 255 cocaine bricks have been discovered in the Samar waters.

“What is glaring here is that the cocaine bricks were found in adjacent barangays. They may have come from areas like South America and another proof that our country is being used by international drug syndicates as a transshipment point since cocaine has a very limited market in the country,” the official said.

Fajardo said that even before the discovery of the cocaine bricks, the PNP, the PDEA and the Coast Guard have been helping each other patrol the maritime waters in the area.

The Philippine Coast Guard have also stepped-up its patrol in the same water corridors.

“History will tell us that foreign drug traffickers are using our country as a transshipment point, Even in the waters of Zambales and Quezon, huge volume of smuggled shabu have been recovered in the past. That’s the reason why we need to strengthen our cooperation with out international counterparts,” said the PNP spokesperson who used to be an officer of the now defunct PNP Narcotics Group.

“We actually have conducted high-seas interdiction in the past as a result of our cooperation with our foreign counterparts,” Fajardo said.

In 2009, about 1.2 tons of cocaine were thrown off the waters off Northern and Eastern Samar provinces by a Chinese vessel, reportedly to avoid being detected by the PDEA and the US-DEA.

Local residents started recovering parts of the drugs but some opted to hide and sell them. This prompted the PNP and the PDEA to launch operations to convince local villagers to voluntarily surrender the drugs they found.

Others who refused to heed the PNP and PDEA appeals were eventually arrested in buy-bust operations.