Going over the reported facts of the case of the so-called ?Alabang Boys,? one can?t help but wonder if perhaps what we really need right now is a Lim Seng-style execution. But maybe, instead of just a convicted drug dealer, a crooked cop, prosecutor or government official with ties to the drug trade should also be made to face a firing squad.

For those too young to remember, Lim Seng was a drug dealer who was publicly executed soon after the imposition of Martial Law in 1972. The newly minted dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, made sure that Lim?s death was covered by the state-censored media to send the message that the military government was getting tough on the illegal drug trade.

Nowadays, of course, there?s no chance that even the most hardened criminal convicted of the most heinous of crimes would get the Lim Seng treatment, what with the abolition of the death penalty. Instead, what we have is the spectacle of the top people at the premiere government anti-drugs enforcement agency and Justice Department officials throwing mud at each other over reports of money changing hands to release three drug-dealing suspects.

Whatever happened to sending a message to the lords of the illegal drug trade? If that?s progress in the fight against illegal drugs, then I?m the golf-playing mayor of Masiu, Lanao del Sur.

The truth of the matter is, drugs are probably as available now as they have ever been in this country at any time, before or after Lim Seng. For the right price and with the right connections, anyone can purchase practically any illegal narcotic substance with a minimum of fuss and risk.

Everything from marijuana and ?shabu? to cocaine and ecstasy can be bought from drug dealers who ply their trade in public places like shopping areas and nightclubs. Entire communities devoted to the sale and manufacture of illegal drugs have even been put up, like that scandalous ?shabu tiangge? in Pasig which was busted by cops a couple of years ago.

(Even if the Pasig operation was raided and closed by the authorities, none of the people behind the tiangge have been convicted, to this date. More than anything that the people in charge of the arrest and prosecution of criminals linked to the drug trade say these days, in the aftermath of the Alabang Boys furor, the fact remains that no one was convicted for putting up and running the Pasig drug ?supermarket.?)

If anything, the Alabang Boys case highlights how laughable the process of arresting and prosecuting of drug suspects has become. While the police and other enforcement authorities say their biggest arrests are thrown out by prosecutors, the Justice Department insists that the cops give them half-baked cases that have no chance of conviction because of serious legal flaws in the apprehensions.

In this particular case, top justice officials are being accused of interceding for three arrested drug suspects, in exchange for a fat bribe from the families of the wealthy young men they arrested. But while the department has already ordered the release of the suspects, they remain detained by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, which insists on its right to keep the people they have arrested?on the basis of the rules of the Justice Department itself, off all things.

Meanwhile, Congress has gotten into the act, convening hearings on the case while many congressmen are still on their extended Christmas break. And the illegal drug trade continues unabated, by all accounts, as officials wrangle over memoranda, arrest methods, conviction rates and, yes, bribery charges.

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While the authorities point fingers at each other, no one has seen it fit to ask why there haven?t been any major drug busts in recent days, except for the small-time stuff like the one being discussed right now, which only happened to involve three rich kids from an exclusive subdivision. Had the three suspects not been wealthy, their case would not even have made the newspapers.

Indeed, one would have to search a long time just to find a recent bust on the scale of the Pasig operation three years ago?and still come up empty-handed, in all likelihood.

Meanwhile, one of the major proposals made during yesterday?s preliminary hearing in Congress to address the drug problem is to throw more money at it, this time to hire lawyers who will review cases filed against suspected drug dealers. Presumably, adding lawyers will improve the efficiency of the law enforcement agencies that are already working full-time to fight the problem of illegal drugs.

Perhaps the congressmen think that there is nothing more to be done to improve the enforcement side of the equation, what with the sheer number of agencies dedicated to stamping out the drug problem. After all, just on the enforcement side, we already have the PDEA on top of specialized units of the National Bureau of Investigation and the National Police, not counting the anti-drugs units in the local police stations.

But will adding prosecutors and case reviewers truly help make headway in the fight against illegal drugs? That remains to be seen, especially since the enforcement agencies haven?t really been delivering the big cases that would have to be submitted to prosecutors and the courts.

On the other hand, it?s hopelessly na?ve to think that just because there haven?t been any big drug busts that there aren?t any big-time drug dealers anymore. If any police or other law enforcement official even attempts to insinuate this, he?d be laughed out of town, probably by the drug dealers themselves.

What the people in both the enforcement and prosecution aspects of the fight against drugs need to do is to get their act together to get the job of fighting the proliferation of illegal drugs done. If the government agencies involved spent more time fighting drug dealers instead of themselves, there would be less lives lost to this unabated menace.

Of course, we could always bring back the death penalty for drug dealers, if we wanted. But we?d still have to arrest and convict them, first.