Drugbusters nab courier in Ermita

The Philippine National Police’s Anti-Drug Special Operations Task Force seized four kilos of ephedrine, estimated at P8 million, from a female courier in Manila Tuesday night.

Task force chief Deputy Director General Edgar Aglipay said Jane Yllasin, 18, was arrested by a team led by Senior Inspector Dominic Baccay in a buy-bust operation at 9 p.m. last Tuesday at the corner of United Nations Avenue and San Carlos Street in Ermita.

Police agents were initially tailing a drug trafficker from Mindanao believed to be operating inside the Quezon City Jail. The trafficker, whom Aglipay refused to name, was also engaged in big-time sales of illegal drugs in various parts of Metro Manila.

Yllasin denied owning the ephedrine, saying she was merely instructed to get "something" from a hotel and turn over the contents to its recipient.

Police said the group’s modus operandi is to instruct the courier to get a parcel from a hotel room and deliver it right away to the recipient.

Yllasin said she went to the customer counter of a three-star hotel in Quezon City to get a key of the room where the parcel was to be picked up.

Police agents had arrested her even before she was able to deliver the four kilos of ephedrine, contained in a transparent plastic bag, to the recipient.

Aglipay, for his part, warned the public against the proliferation of ephedrine, potentially lethal in large doses, in the illegal drugs market.

Ephedrine is one of the key ingredients in the manufacture of shabu.

"The drug suppliers are now using ephedrine as a substitute for shabu because of the scarcity of supply caused by the government’s crackdown on shabu laboratories. They have become desperate," Aglipay said.