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<img loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-9/general-ver-marcos-sm.webp" alt="President Marcos and General Ver"/>
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(President Ferdinand Marcos and General Fabian Ver)
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General Ver's intervention to transform the previously inefficient Constabulary Anti-Narcotic Unit into a branch of the AFP, represented a major threat to the international dope cartel, for from 1972 to 1983, the Philippines has been judged an excellent transshipment point for drug-trafficking and a ripe area for marijuana and cocaine cultivation for domestic consumption as well as export. 
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In response to an enormous leap in marijuana cultivation between 1979-81 and again between 1981-1983, marijuana went from 77,395 seedlings and plants to 433,612 and then to 908,995, General Ver began to investigate the relationship between the growth of the NPA and drugs. His personal commitment to uncovering the relationship between drugs and communist terror began in 1952 when, as a captain in the Criminal Investigation Service of the Constabulary Police, he found links between the communists and drugs coming from the People's Republic of China. Upon assuming the position of Chief of Staff in 1981, Ver began his reorganization of the War on Drugs.
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On February 1, 1983, he appointed then-Colonel Ramon Montaño, as commander of the NARCOM unit at Camp Crame. AFP intelligence and NISA ascertained that the hotbeds of NPA activity and marijuana cultivation overlapped, especially in the Tinglayan, KalingaApayao, and Cordillera ranges. The ,first major crackdown against marijuana cultiv,ation by the NPA met with stiff resistance. The 41st Infantry Battalion, augmented by two companies of the elite First Scout Rangers Regiment, went into action in the Kalinga-Apayao area. Deployed in support of the operation were helicopter gunships from both the Philippine Air Force and the Constabulary Integrated National Police (PC/INP). After the success of this operation, General Ver sent the NARCOM into action.
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On July 18, 1984, elements of the NARCOM and AFP units, composed of the Scout Ranger Company of the 5th
Infantry Division, were deployed to hit the NPA production base in the border areas of Bugnay, Tinglayan, Kalinga-Apayao, and Barangay Bituagan. The operation successfully uprooted 200,000 full-grown marijuana plants in a threehectare region, In the same general vicinity, AFP/NARCOM operations eradicated 350,000 plants and 300,000 seedlings.

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During the year-and-a-half between the founding of NARCOM and the successful July 1984 operation, the AFP and General Ver were the subjects of continued political warfare. By 1985, discovered marijuana production in the Philippines rose to 9,907,885, alongside an expansion of NPA terrorism, just at the point that the pressure and cutoff from the United States of military assistance began in earnest, weakening the internal situation. These successful military operations were conducted with only two helicopter gunships! 
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The Qaddafi-backed insurgency in the southern Philippines, the Moro National Liberation Front, has expanded its marijuana operations into the Sulu Province, selling the product in the Malaysian province of Sabah. Given the targeting of the northern Luzon area by NARCOM, the government was faced with the, second-largest area for drug-growing on the island of Cebu in the central Visayans. To cope with the war, Ver set up the Drug Intelligence Cordination Committee, where all law enforcement intelligence services, including Interpol, cooperate. Unlike the situation that prevailed in the United States, in the Philippines there was great cooperation among the various agencies because of Ver's centralizing role.
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The international drug syndicates from the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia were operating in the Philippines. However, the Philippines had one of the toughest laws internationally on heroin and drug-smuggling in general. During the martial-law period between 1972-76, when the drug problem was reduced to virtually nothing, President Marcos ordered the execution, after a trial, of one of the leading drug smugglers of the Triad secret society, Lim Seng, in 1973. 
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The leading Golden Triangle/Golden Crescent network operating in the Philippines then was an Australian one based in Thailand, where yachts were loaded and shipped to Hong Kong, then exported into the Philippines and finally transshipped to Europe and the United States. NARCOM busted the Colombian-Philippines connection for cocaine distribution headed by Peter Vizcardi a.k.a. Silvio Costa, an Australian national ofitalian descent. Vizcardi was the financier of the Italian "Colombian-Philippines" cocaine trafficking group. Cotaine production in the Philippines is not as extensive as marijuana; however, General Montaño said that it had been reaching into the upper echelons of Philippine society within the last two years, as a result of the influence of U.S. jet-set types. The major area of cocaine production was the Central Visayans and Ilolio. 
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Among the key distribution vehicles for heroin from the Golden Crescent were Philippipe Airlines and Pakistan International Airlines. The Pakistan's consul general was kicked out of the Philippines for coordinating the drug operation. NARCOM intelligence found out that some of the Pakistani revenues from heroin were being invested into Iranian assets throughout the Mideast. 
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NARCOM: The war on drugs and NPA's narco-terrorism of President Marcos and General Ver