This time it’s for real?

Imagine tearing into pieces more than 200,000 illegal cigarette sticks with your gloved hands, then soaking the cigarettes in water to make sure they won’t be distributed, sold, and smoked. CNMI Customs Services Division personnel painstakingly did exactly that early last year.

Sure, there are faster ways to dispose of illegal cigarettes or any counterfeit luxury products but at the time, that was the surest way to make sure efforts and time that Customs spent in intercepting illegal items at ports of entry won’t be wasted, given the agency’s limited resources.

At the time, Customs had no more space to safely store ready-for-disposal illegal cigarettes even as they were waiting for the incinerator to become available to burn them. And even if the incinerator was available to dispose of the confiscated cigarettes in just a few minutes as opposed to days of manually breaking them into pieces to render them unusable, Customs Director Joe Mafnas said the agency had no funds to pay for incineration service.

That’s more than a year ago. Customs had offered ways to address the matter but Capital Hill has been slow to act on the idea of a bill that would allow Customs, for example, to immediately impose fines of $50 to $2,500 on those bringing in more than the allowed number of legal cigarettes and those bringing in illegal cigarettes such as those that do not have English labels. This immediate imposition of fines and taxing more cigarettes would generate additional revenue and should also be able to help Customs dispose of confiscated items.

Moreover, Customs—as a law enforcement and tax enforcement agency rolled into one and despite repeated request for more funds to hire more inspectors and buy or repair X-rays—has always been underfunded along with other agencies and obligations.

But elected officials will make you believe they are willing and able to give Customs more funding, especially after every major bust including Customs’ interception of some $4.2 million worth of methamphetamine or “ice” in a 40-foot container from China on July 17.

“This [the drug bust] makes it more reasonable for us to give the Customs more tools to prevent drugs from coming in the CNMI,” acting governor Ralph DLG Torres said in last week’s news briefing about the confiscation of what officials touted as “the largest drug bust in CNMI history.” That’s about 12 kilos or 23.5 lbs of “ice” worth some $4.2 million.

Customs requested a $2.148-million budget for fiscal year 2016, but the Inos-Torres administration gave the agency just $1.2 million. The House of Representatives, except for one or two members, went with the administration’s Customs budget.

This is the same set of lawmakers, along with their counterparts in the Senate, that wrestle over funds for special interest derbies, annual festivals without demanding accountability, fix roads leading to their aunt or grandma’s house, build more school bus stops than needed, and buy lawn mowers almost every year for their precinct schools.

While more funds do not necessarily guarantee Customs will intercept more illegal drugs or illegal cigarettes, it will enable the agency to hire and train a decent number of required personnel and acquire an X-ray and other tools that will complement manual cargo and passenger checks.

Some lawmakers want Customs to look for other sources of funding such as federal grants and portions of the hotel occupancy tax that was raised from 10 percent to 15 percent mainly to fund CNMI tourism marketing and destination enhancement. Customs has yet to find out whether the latter is even allowable or feasible.

Customs’ recent drug bust at the seaport means there’s $4.2 million worth of “ice” that will not find their way to CNMI neighborhoods. Department of Public Safety Commissioner James C. Deleon Guerrero himself said this means DPS will “not collect” this amount of drugs on the islands.

Law enforcement, public health, public education, and other critical resources that could have been used to address the menace of a $4.2 million “ice” on the streets could instead go toward other critical needs instead such as funding the hospital. Hiring more government administrative staffers, special assistants for just about everything and more relatives with no relevant skills isn’t one of them.

The “ice epidemic,” as officials call it, is nothing new in the CNMI. Federal and local reports show that in fiscal year 1992, there was $437,866 worth of “ice” confiscated. In fiscal 1993, the confiscated “ice” was worth $116,240. Then in fiscal 1994, the amount of “ice” seized was over $3.028 million. There was a functioning X-ray at the time to help Customs.

Other reports claimed that Saipan is slowly turning into a major importer of “ice” with Customs reporting to have confiscated over $2.5 million worth of highly-prohibited drugs in 1998 alone. The U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center, in an October 2003 report on the CNMI, said the DEA/CNMI Task Force seized a total of 25 kilograms of “ice” from 1996 through February 2002. We can go on and on with statistics but the point is “ice” continues to be brought in, and it’s up to the CNMI to more efficiently prevent them from finding their way into streets.

As for the recent major drug bust, the case is still ongoing so the seized “ice” still cannot be disposed of. Whether it is currently with Customs for safekeeping or with DPS evidence room that the Office of the Public Auditor has repeatedly found to be unsafe is another matter.

It would be a shame if at least a portion of the Customs-seized $4.2 million “ice” goes missing and eventually find their way to individual homes, neighborhoods, businesses, and schools.