essay about drug abuse in the philippines

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Ann Glob Health
v.85(1); 2019

The Manila Declaration on the Drug Problem in the Philippines

Nymia simbulan.

1 University of Southern California, US

Leonardo Estacio

Carissa dioquino-maligaso, teodoro herbosa, mellissa withers.

2 University of the Philippines, PH

When Philippine President Rodrigo R. Duterte assumed office in 2016, his government launched an unprecedented campaign against illegal drugs. The drug problem in the Philippines has primarily been viewed as an issue of law enforcement and criminality, and the government has focused on implementing a policy of criminalization and punishment. The escalation of human rights violations has caught the attention of groups in the Philippines as well as the international community. The Global Health Program of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), a non-profit network of 50 universities in the Pacific Rim, held its 2017 annual conference in Manila. A special half-day workshop was held on illicit drug abuse in the Philippines which convened 167 participants from 10 economies and 21 disciplines. The goal of the workshop was to collaboratively develop a policy statement describing the best way to address the drug problem in the Philippines, taking into consideration a public health and human rights approach to the issue. The policy statement is presented here.

When Philippine President Rodrigo R. Duterte assumed office on June 30, 2016, his government launched an unprecedented campaign against illegal drugs. He promised to solve the illegal drug problem in the country, which, according to him, was wreaking havoc on the lives of many Filipino families and destroying the future of the Filipino youth. He declared a “war on drugs” targeting users, peddlers, producers and suppliers, and called for the Philippine criminal justice system to put an end to the drug menace [ 1 ].

According to the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) (the government agency mandated to formulate policies on illegal drugs in the Philippines), there are 1.8 million current drug users in the Philippines, and 4.8 million Filipinos report having used illegal drugs at least once in their lives [ 2 ]. More than three-quarters of drug users are adults (91%), males (87%), and have reached high school (80%). More than two-thirds (67%) are employed [ 2 ]. The most commonly used drug in the Philippines is a variant of methamphetamine called shabu or “poor man’s cocaine.” According to a 2012 United Nations report, the Philippines had the highest rate of methamphetamine abuse among countries in East Asia; about 2.2% of Filipinos between the ages 16–64 years were methamphetamines users.

The drug problem in the Philippines has primarily been viewed as an issue of law enforcement and criminality, and the government has focused on implementing a policy of criminalization and punishment. This is evidenced by the fact that since the start of the “war on drugs,” the Duterte government has utilized punitive measures and has mobilized the Philippine National Police (PNP) and local government units nationwide. With orders from the President, law enforcement agents have engaged in extensive door-to-door operations. One such operation in Manila in August 2017 aimed to “shock and awe” drug dealers and resulted in the killing of 32 people by police in one night [ 3 ].

On the basis of mere suspicion of drug use and/or drug dealing, and criminal record, police forces have arrested, detained, and even killed men, women and children in the course of these operations. Male urban poor residents in Metro Manila and other key cities of the country have been especially targeted [ 4 ]. During the first six months of the Duterte Presidency (July 2016–January 2017), the PNP conducted 43,593 operations that covered 5.6 million houses, resulting in the arrest of 53,025 “drug personalities,” and a reported 1,189,462 persons “surrendering” to authorities, including 79,349 drug dealers and 1,110,113 drug users [ 5 ]. Government figures show that during the first six months of Duterte’s presidency, more than 7,000 individuals accused of drug dealing or drug use were killed in the Philippines, both from legitimate police and vigilante-style operations. Almost 2,555, or a little over a third of people suspected to be involved in drugs, have been killed in gun battles with police in anti-drug operations [ 5 , 6 ]. Community activists estimate that the death toll has now reached 13,000 [ 7 ]. The killings by police are widely believed to be staged in order to qualify for the cash rewards offered to policeman for killing suspected drug dealers. Apart from the killings, the recorded number of “surrenderees” resulting in mass incarceration has overwhelmed the Philippine penal system, which does not have sufficient facilities to cope with the population upsurge. Consequently, detainees have to stay in overcrowded, unhygienic conditions unfit for humans [ 8 ].

The escalation of human rights violations, particularly the increase in killings, both state-perpetrated and vigilante-style, has caught the attention of various groups and sectors in society including the international community. Both police officers and community members have reported fear of being targeted if they fail to support the state-sanctioned killings [ 9 ]. After widespread protests by human rights groups, Duterte called for police to shoot human rights activists who are “obstructing justice.” Human Rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have said that Duterte’s instigation of unlawful police violence and the incitement of vigilante killings may amount to crimes against humanity, violating international law [ 10 , 11 ]. The European Union found that human rights have deteriorated significantly since Duterte assumed power, saying “The Philippine government needs to ensure that the fight against drug crimes is conducted within the law, including the right to due process and safeguarding of the basic human rights of citizens of the Philippines, including the right to life, and that it respects the proportionality principle [ 12 ].” Despite the fact that, in October 2017, Duterte ordered the police to end all operations in the war on drugs, doubts remain as to whether the state-sanctioned killings will stop [ 13 ]. Duterte assigned the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) to be the sole anti-drug enforcement agency.

Duterte’s war on drugs is morally and legally unjustifiable and has created large-scale human rights violations; and is also counterproductive in addressing the drug problem. International human rights groups and even the United Nations have acknowledged that the country’s drug problem cannot be resolved using a punitive approach, and the imposition of criminal sanctions and that drug users should not be viewed and treated as criminals [ 14 ]. Those critical of the government’s policy towards the illegal drug problem have emphasized that the drug issue should be viewed as a public health problem using a rights-based approach (RBA). This was affirmed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on the 2015 International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illegal Trafficking when he stated, “…We should increase the focus on public health, prevention, treatment and care, as well as on economic, social and cultural strategies [ 15 ].” The United Nations Human Rights Council released a joint statement in September 2017, which states that the human rights situation in the Philippines continued to cause serious concern. The Council urged the government of the Philippines to “take all necessary measures to bring these killings to an end and cooperate with the international community to pursue appropriate investigations into these incidents, in keeping with the universal principles of democratic accountability and the rule of law [ 16 ].” In October 2017, the Philippines Dangerous Drug Board (DDB) released a new proposal for an anti-drug approach that protects the life of the people. The declaration includes an implicit recognition of the public health aspect of illegal drug use, “which recognizes that the drug problem as both social and psychological [ 16 ].”

Workshop on Illicit Drug Abuse in the Philippines

The Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) is a non-profit network of 50 leading research universities in the Pacific Rim region, representing 16 economies, 120,000 faculty members and approximately two million students. Launched in 2007, the APRU Global Health Program (GHP) includes approximately 1,000 faculty, students, and researchers who are actively engaged in global health work. The main objective of the GHP is to advance global health research, education and training in the Pacific Rim, as APRU member institutions respond to global and regional health challenges. Each year, about 300 APRU GHP members gather at the annual global health conference, which is hosted by a rotating member university. In 2017, the University of the Philippines in Manila hosted the conference and included a special half-day workshop on illicit drug abuse in the Philippines.

Held on the first day of the annual APRU GHP conference, the workshop convened 167 university professors, students, university administrators, government officials, and employees of non-governmental organizations (NGO), from 21 disciplines, including anthropology, Asian studies, communication, dentistry, development, education, environmental health, ethics, international relations, law, library and information science, medicine, nutrition, nursing, occupational health, pharmaceutical science, physical therapy, political science, psychology, public health, and women’s studies. The participants came from 10 economies: Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Nepal, the Philippines, Thailand, and the US. The special workshop was intended to provide a venue for health professionals and workers, academics, researchers, students, health rights advocates, and policy makers to: 1) give an overview on the character and state of the drug problem in the Philippines, including the social and public health implications of the problem and the approaches being used by the government in the Philippines; 2) learn from the experiences of other countries in the handling of the drug and substance abuse problem; and 3) identify appropriate methods and strategies, and the role of the health sector in addressing the problem in the country. The overall goal of the workshop was to collaboratively develop a policy statement describing the best way to address this problem in a matnner that could be disseminated to all the participants and key policymakers both in the Philippines, as well as globally.

The workshop included presentations from three speakers and was moderated by Dr. Carissa Paz Dioquino-Maligaso, head of the National Poison Management and Control Center in the Philippines. The first speaker was Dr. Benjamin P. Reyes, Undersecretary of the Philippine Dangerous Drugs Board, who spoke about “the State of the Philippine Drug and Substance Abuse Problem in the Philippines.” The second speaker was Dr. Joselito Pascual, a medical specialist from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, at the University of the Philippines General Hospital in Manila. His talk was titled “Psychotropic Drugs and Mental Health.” The final speaker was Patrick Loius B. Angeles, a Policy and Research Officer of the NoBox Transitions Foundation, whose talk was titled “Approaches to Addressing the Drug and Substance Abuse Problem: Learning from the Experiences of Other Countries.” Based on the presentations, a draft of the Manila Declaration on the Drug Problem in the Philippines was drafted by the co-authors of this paper. The statement was then sent to the workshop participants for review and comments. The comments were reviewed and incorporated into the final version, which is presented below.

Declaration

“Manila Statement on the Drug Problem in the Philippines”

Gathering in this workshop with a common issue and concern – the drug problem in the Philippines and its consequences and how it can be addressed and solved in the best way possible;

Recognizing that the drug problem in the Philippines is a complex and multi-faceted problem that includes not only criminal justice issues but also public health issues and with various approaches that can be used in order to solve such;

We call for drug control policies and strategies that incorporate evidence-based, socially acceptable, cost-effective, and rights-based approaches that are designed to minimize, if not to eliminate, the adverse health, psychological, social, economic and criminal justice consequences of drug abuse towards the goal of attaining a society that is free from crime and drug and substance abuse;

Recognizing, further, that drug dependency and co-dependency, as consequences of drug abuse, are mental and behavioral health problems, and that in some areas in the Philippines injecting drug use comorbidities such as the spread of HIV and AIDS are also apparent, and that current prevention and treatment interventions are not quite adequate to prevent mental disorders, HIV/AIDS and other co-morbid diseases among people who use drugs;

Affirming that the primacy of the sanctity/value of human life and the value of human dignity, social protection of the victims of drug abuse and illegal drugs trade must be our primary concern;

And that all health, psycho-social, socio-economic and rights-related interventions leading to the reduction or elimination of the adverse health, economic and social consequences of drug abuse and other related co-morbidities such as HIV/AIDS should be considered in all plans and actions toward the control, prevention and treatment of drug and substance abuse;

As a community of health professionals, experts, academics, researchers, students and health advocates, we call on the Philippine government to address the root causes of the illegal drug problem in the Philippines utilizing the aforementioned affirmations . We assert that the drug problem in the country is but a symptom of deeper structural ills rooted in social inequality and injustice, lack of economic and social opportunities, and powerlessness among the Filipino people. Genuine solutions to the drug problem will only be realized with the fulfillment and enjoyment of human rights, allowing them to live in dignity deserving of human beings. As members of educational, scientific and health institutions of the country, being rich and valuable sources of human, material and technological resources, we affirm our commitment to contribute to solving this social ill that the Philippine government has considered to be a major obstacle in the attainment of national development.

The statement of insights and affirmations on the drug problem in the Philippines is a declaration that is readily applicable to other countries in Asia where approaches to the problem of drug abuse are largely harsh, violent and punitive.

As a community of scholars, health professionals, academics, and researchers, we reiterate our conviction that the drug problem in the Philippines is multi-dimensional in character and deeply rooted in the structural causes of poverty, inequality and powerlessness of the Filipino people. Contrary to the government’s position of treating the issues as a problem of criminality and lawlessness, the drug problem must be addressed using a holistic and rights-based approach, requiring the mobilization and involvement of all stakeholders. This is the message and the challenge which we, as members of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities, want to relay to the leaders, policymakers, healthcare professionals, and human rights advocates in the region; we must all work together to protect and promote health and well being of all populations in our region.

Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

Just how big is the drug problem in the Philippines anyway?

essay about drug abuse in the philippines

PhD candidate in Medical Anthropology, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam

Disclosure statement

For his research on drug use in the Philippines, Gideon Lasco received funding from the University of Amsterdam's Global Health Research Priority Area.

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“Hitler massacred three million Jews … there’s three million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them.”

These words, spoken by Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte in September, have become notorious worldwide.

Duterte has since apologised for the reference to the Holocaust. But alongside continued concern about the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines drug war, questions remain about whether there are actually three million drug users in the country – and whether they are addicts.

If true, drug users would represent 3% of the nation’s population – even higher than Thailand’s 1.8% (based on a recent estimate of 1.2 million), or Indonesia’s 1.8% based on an official (but questionable) estimate of 4.5 million .

Are there really three million “drug addicts” in the Philippines?

The official statistics show a much lower figure. In 2015, the Philippine Dangerous Drugs Board estimated a total of 1.8 million drug users . Of this number, 859,150 were thought to be users of shabu or crystal methamphetamine – the drug of particular concern in the country.

The term “user” was defined in the report as someone who had used drugs at least once in the past year. Of all drug users, 85% reported using at least once monthly and 50% cited weekly use. Thus the number of drug “abusers” or “addicts” is necessarily lower than that.

Still, we can’t dismiss Duterte’s claims on the sole basis of the 2015 survey or previous ones, given the variability of their results.

In 2005, the drugs board reported five million regular users of methamphetamine alone - amounting to a prevalence of 6% of the country. This prompted the UN Office on Drugs and Crime to suggest that the Philippines has the “the world’s highest methamphetamine prevalence rate” at the time.

But just three years later, the prevalence was reported to be only 1.9% .

Given the poor quality of the reports themselves (the 2008 report cites Wikipedia as reference), it’s unclear whether they reflect actual changes, or merely methodological flaws.

Duterte’s philosophy of drug use

While Duterte’s figures cannot be definitively dismissed, his view of drug users can be. His use of the term adik (addict) - a word that has very negative connotations in the Philippines - is in line with his conviction that users of illicit drugs, particularly methamphetamines, are beyond redemption.

He has claimed, for instance, that the continuous use of shabu would “ shrink the brain ”, making users “ no longer viable as human beings in this planet ”. Based on these statements, and contrary to his own government’s official stance and efforts , Duterte seems to think rehabilitation is not an option.

Numerous studies present a far more complex picture. While methamphetamine has indeed been demonstrated to cause damage to neurons and the brain’s white matter , various therapies, such as cognitive-behavioural therapy and to a lesser extent, pharmacotherapy , have shown promise as forms of rehabilitation.

What’s more, alternative models of dealing with substance abuse, including those that employ demand-reduction and harm-reduction frameworks , strongly suggest that drug use is embedded in, and in part determined by, users’ social and physical environment .

My own ethnographic research among young drug users in a poor urban community in the Philippines resonates with these perspectives. Caught in an informal economy where income opportunities are scarce and living conditions are harsh, shabu allows the youths to stay awake and work at night, gives them energy, alleviates their hunger, and provides them with moments of euphoria amid their difficult lives.

While some of them exhibit signs of addiction (they have gaunt, hollowed-out faces, for instance), most remain functional. And while some of them admit to resorting to crime (such as stealing mobile phones), the only crime most commit is taking drugs.

Educational and economic opportunities, I found, can help them move away from drug use – and prevent many others from using drugs in the first place.

A widely held view

Duterte’s philosophy of drug use is shared by many Filipinos, and has common since the very beginning of the “war on drugs” in the early 1970s. In 1972, Filipino bishops described drug users as “mental and physical wrecks”, calling them “worst saboteurs” who were “worthy of the highest punishments”.

In 1988, the Philippine Supreme Court, foreshadowing Duterte’s assertions, wrote in one of its decisions that it was:

Common knowledge that drug addicts become useless if not dangerous members of society and in some instances turn up to be among the living dead.

In many towns and cities in the Philippines, anti-drug posters (with messages like “Get high on God, not on drugs”) are displayed prominently, as if to demonstrate public’s resolve to get rid of what they see as society’s great menace.

These sentiments underwrite the widespread support that Duterte’s war on drugs enjoys. And although a majority of Filipinos think drug suspects should not be killed , many see the extrajudicial killings as a necessary evil to get rid of the far worse menace of drug addicts and the criminality associated with them.

In light of this attitude, what must be most urgently addressed is the lack of understanding about drug use and the dearth of information about the true extent and nature of drug use in the country. That means scholarly and journalistic investigations that fill these gaps must be communicated effectively to the public.

Otherwise, the official discourse and popular understandings of drug use will remain unchallenged - and the “three million addicts” in the Philippines will all be deserving of the “highest punishment” in the eyes of their fellow Filipinos.

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The human rights consequences of the war on drugs in the Philippines

Subscribe to this week in foreign policy, vanda felbab-brown vanda felbab-brown director - initiative on nonstate armed actors , co-director - africa security initiative , senior fellow - foreign policy , strobe talbott center for security, strategy, and technology.

August 8, 2017

18 min read

On August 2, 2017, Vanda Felbab-Brown submitted a statement for the record for the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the human rights consequences of the war on drugs in the Philippines. Read her full statement below.

I am a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution. However, as an independent think tank, the Brookings Institution does not take institutional positions on any issue. Therefore, my testimony represents my personal views and does not reflect the views of Brookings, its other scholars, employees, officers, and/or trustees.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines is morally and legally unjustifiable. Resulting in egregious and large-scale violations of human rights, it amounts to state-sanctioned murder. It is also counterproductive for countering the threats and harms that the illegal drug trade and use pose to society — exacerbating both problems while profoundly shredding the social fabric and rule of law in the Philippines. The United States and the international community must condemn and sanction the government of the Philippines for its conduct of the war on drugs.

THE SLAUGHTER SO FAR

On September 2, 2016 after a bomb went off in Davao where Duterte had been mayor for 22 years, the Philippine president declared a “state of lawlessness” 1 in the country. That is indeed what he unleashed in the name of fighting crime and drugs since he became the country’s president on June 30, 2016. With his explicit calls for police to kill drug users and dealers 2 and the vigilante purges Duterte ordered of neighborhoods, 3 almost 9000 people accused of drug dealing or drug use were killed in the Philippines in the first year of his government – about one third by police in anti-drug operations. 4 Although portrayed as self-defense shootings, these acknowledged police killings are widely believed to be planned and staged, with security cameras and street lights unplugged, and drugs and guns planted on the victim after the shooting. 5 According to the interviews and an unpublished report an intelligence officer shared with Reuters , the police are paid about 10,000 pesos ($200) for each killing of a drug suspect as well as other accused criminals. The monetary awards for each killing are alleged to rise to 20,000 pesos ($400) for a street pusher, 50,000 pesos ($990) for a member of a neighborhood council, one million pesos ($20,000) for distributors, retailers, and wholesalers, and five million ($100,000) for “drug lords.” Under pressure from higher-up authorities and top officials, local police officers and members of neighborhood councils draw up lists of drug suspects. Lacking any kind transparency, accountability, and vetting, these so-called “watch lists” end up as de facto hit lists. A Reuters investigation revealed that police officers were killing some 97 percent of drug suspects during police raids, 6 an extraordinarily high number and one that many times surpasses accountable police practices. That is hardly surprising, as police officers are not paid any cash rewards for merely arresting suspects. Both police officers and members of neighborhood councils are afraid not to participate in the killing policies, fearing that if they fail to comply they will be put on the kill lists themselves.

Similarly, there is widespread suspicion among human rights groups and monitors, 7 reported in regularly in the international press, that the police back and encourage the other extrajudicial killings — with police officers paying assassins or posing as vigilante groups. 8 A Reuters interview with a retired Filipino police intelligence officer and another active-duty police commander reported both officers describing in granular detail how under instructions from top-level authorities and local commanders, police units mastermind the killings. 9 No systematic investigations and prosecutions of these murders have taken place, with top police officials suggesting that they are killings among drug dealers themselves. 10

Such illegal vigilante justice, with some 1,400 extrajudicial killings, 11 was also the hallmark of Duterte’s tenure as Davao’s mayor, earning him the nickname Duterte Harry. And yet, far from being an exemplar of public safety and crime-free city, Davao remains the murder capital of the Philippines. 12 The current police chief of the Philippine National Police Ronald Dela Rosa and President Duterte’s principal executor of the war on drugs previously served as the police chief in Davao between 2010 and 2016 when Duterte was the town’s mayor.

In addition to the killings, mass incarceration of alleged drug users is also under way in the Philippines. The government claims that more than a million users and street-level dealers have voluntarily “surrendered” to the police. Many do so out of fear of being killed otherwise. However, in interviews with Reuters , a Philippine police commander alleged that the police are given quotas of “surrenders,” filling them by arresting anyone on trivial violations (such as being shirtless or drunk). 13 Once again, the rule of law is fundamentally perverted to serve a deeply misguided and reprehensible state policy.

SMART DESIGN OF DRUG POLICIES VERSUS THE PHILIPPINES REALITY

Smart policies for addressing drug retail markets look very different than the violence and state-sponsored crime President Duterte has thrust upon the Philippines. Rather than state-sanctioned extrajudicial killings and mass incarceration, policing retail markets should have several objectives: The first, and most important, is to make drug retail markets as non-violent as possible. Duterte’s policy does just the opposite: in slaughtering people, it is making a drug-distribution market that was initially rather peaceful (certainly compared to Latin America, 14 such as in Brazil 15 ) very violent – this largely the result of the state actions, extrajudicial killings, and vigilante killings he has ordered. Worse yet, the police and extrajudicial killings hide other murders, as neighbors and neighborhood committees put on the list of drug suspects their rivals and people whose land or property they want to steal; thus, anyone can be killed by anyone and then labeled a pusher.

The unaccountable en masse prosecution of anyone accused of drug trade involvement or drug use also serves as a mechanism to squash political pluralism and eliminate political opposition. Those who dare challenge President Duterte and his reprehensible policies are accused of drug trafficking charges and arrested themselves. The most prominent case is that of Senator Leila de Lima. But it includes many other lower-level politicians. Without disclosing credible evidence or convening a fair trial, President Duterte has ordered the arrest of scores of politicians accused of drug-trade links; three such accused mayors have died during police arrests, often with many other individuals dying in the shoot-outs. The latest such incident occurred on July 30, 2017 when Reynaldo Parojinog, mayor of Ozamiz in the southern Philippines, was killed during a police raid on his house, along with Parojinog’s wife and at least five other people.

Another crucial goal of drug policy should be to enhance public health and limit the spread of diseases linked to drug use. The worst possible policy is to push addicts into the shadows, ostracize them, and increase the chance of overdoses as well as a rapid spread of HIV/AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and hepatitis. In prisons, users will not get adequate treatment for either their addiction or their communicable disease. That is the reason why other countries that initially adopted similar draconian wars on drugs (such as Thailand in 2001 16 and Vietnam in the same decade 17 ) eventually tried to backpedal from them, despite the initial popularity of such policies with publics in East Asia. Even though throughout East Asia, tough drug policies toward drug use and the illegal drug trade remain government default policies and often receive widespread support, countries, such as Thailand, Vietnam, and even Myanmar have gradually begun to experiment with or are exploring HARM reduction approaches, such as safe needle exchange programs and methadone maintenance, as the ineffective and counterproductive nature and human rights costs of the harsh war on drugs campaign become evident.

Moreover, frightening and stigmatizing drug users and pushing use deeper underground will only exacerbate the spread of infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and tuberculosis. Even prior to the Duterte’s brutal war on drugs, the rate of HIV infections in the Philippines has been soaring due to inadequate awareness and failure to support safe sex practices, such as access to condoms. Along with Afghanistan, the Philippine HIV infection rate is the highest in Asia, increasing 50 percent between 2010 and 2015. 18 Among high-risk groups, including injection- drug users, gay men, transgender women, and female prostitutes, the rate of new infections jumped by 230 percent between 2011and 2015. Duterte’s war on drugs will only intensify these worrisome trends among drug users.

Further, as Central America has painfully learned in its struggles against street gangs, mass incarceration policies turn prisons into recruiting grounds for organized crime. Given persisting jihadi terrorism in the Philippines, mass imprisonment of low-level dealers and drug traffickers which mix them with terrorists in prisons can result in the establishment of dangerous alliances between terrorists and criminals, as has happened in Indonesia.

The mass killings and imprisonment in the Philippines will not dry up demand for drugs: the many people who will end up in overcrowded prisons and poorly-designed treatment centers (as is already happening) will likely remain addicted to drugs, or become addicts. There is always drug smuggling into prisons and many prisons are major drug distribution and consumption spots.

Even when those who surrendered are placed into so-called treatment centers, instead of outright prisons, large problems remain. Many who surrendered do not necessarily have a drug abuse problem as they surrendered preemptively to avoid being killed if they for whatever reason ended up on the watch list. Those who do have a drug addiction problem mostly do not receive adequate care. Treatment for drug addiction is highly underdeveloped and underprovided in the Philippines, and China’s rushing in to build larger treatment facilities is unlikely to resolve this problem. In China itself, many so-called treatment centers often amounted to de facto prisons or force-labor detention centers, with highly questionable methods of treatment and very high relapse rates.

As long as there is demand, supply and retailing will persist, simply taking another form. Indeed, there is a high chance that Duterte’s hunting down of low-level pushers (and those accused of being pushers) will significantly increase organized crime in the Philippines and intensify corruption. The dealers and traffickers who will remain on the streets will only be those who can either violently oppose law enforcement and vigilante groups or bribe their way to the highest positions of power. By eliminating low-level, mostly non-violent dealers, Duterte is paradoxically and counterproductively setting up a situation where more organized and powerful drug traffickers and distribution will emerge.

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Inducing police to engage in de facto shoot-to-kill policies is enormously corrosive of law enforcement, not to mention the rule of law. There is a high chance that the policy will more than ever institutionalize top-level corruption, as only powerful drug traffickers will be able to bribe their way into upper-levels of the Philippine law enforcement system, and the government will stay in business. Moreover, corrupt top-level cops and government officials tasked with such witch-hunts will have the perfect opportunity to direct law enforcement against their drug business rivals as well as political enemies, and themselves become the top drug capos. Unaccountable police officers officially induced to engage in extrajudicial killings easily succumb to engaging in all kinds of criminality, being uniquely privileged to take over criminal markets. Those who should protect public safety and the rule of law themselves become criminals.

Such corrosion of the law enforcement agencies is well under way in the Philippines as a result of President Duterte’s war on drugs. Corruption and the lack of accountability in the Philippine police l preceded Duterte’s presidency, but have become exacerbated since, with the war on drugs blatant violations of rule of law and basic legal and human rights principles a direct driver. The issue surfaced visibly and in a way that the government of the Philippines could not simply ignore in January 2017 when Philippine drug squad police officers kidnapped a South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo and extorted his family for money. Jee was ultimately killed inside the police headquarters. President Duterte expressed outrage and for a month suspended the national police from participating in the war on drugs while some police purges took places. Rather than a serious effort to root out corruption, those purges served principally to tighten control over the police. The wrong-headed illegal policies of Duterte’s war on drugs were not examined or corrected. Nor were other accountability and rule of law practices reinforced. Thus when after a month the national police were was asked to resume their role in the war on the drugs, the perverted system slid back into the same human rights violations and other highly detrimental processes and outcomes.

WHAT COUNTERNARCOTICS POLICIES THE PHILIPPINES SHOULD ADOPT

The Philippines should adopt radically different approaches: The shoot-to-kill directives to police and calls for extrajudicial killings should stop immediately, as should dragnets against low-level pushers and users. If such orders are issued, prosecutions of any new extrajudicial killings and investigations of encounter killings must follow. In the short term, the existence of pervasive culpability may prevent the adoption of any policy that would seek to investigate and prosecute police and government officials and members of neighborhood councils who have been involved in the state-sanctioned slaughter. If political leadership in the Philippines changes, however, standing up a truth commission will be paramount. In the meantime, however, all existing arrested drug suspects need to be given fair trials or released.

Law-enforcement and rule of law components of drug policy designs need to make reducing criminal violence and violent militancy among their highest objectives. The Philippines should build up real intelligence on the drug trafficking networks that President Duterte alleges exist in the Philippines and target their middle operational layers, rather than low-level dealers, as well as their corruption networks in the government and law enforcement. However, the latter must not be used to cover up eliminating rival politicians and independent political voices.

To deal with addiction, the Philippines should adopt enlightened harm-reduction measures, including methadone maintenance, safe-needle exchange, and access to effective treatment. No doubt, these are difficult and elusive for methamphetamines, the drug of choice in the Philippines. Meth addiction is very difficult to treat and is associated with high morbidity levels. Instead of turning his country into a lawless Wild East, President Duterte should make the Philippines the center of collaborative East Asian research on how to develop effective public health approaches to methamphetamine addiction.

IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. POLICY

It is imperative that the United States strongly and unequivocally condemns the war on drugs in the Philippines and deploys sanctions until state-sanctioned extrajudicial killings and other state-authorized rule of law violations are ended. The United States should adopt such a position even if President Duterte again threatens the U.S.-Philippines naval bases agreements meant to provide the Philippines and other countries with protection against China’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea. President Duterte’s pro-China preferences will not be moderated by the United States being cowed into condoning egregious violations of human rights. In fact, a healthy U.S.-Philippine long-term relationship will be undermined by U.S. silence on state-sanctioned murder.

However, the United States must recognize that drug use in the Philippines and East Asia more broadly constitute serious threats to society. Although internationally condemned for the war on drugs, President Duterte remains highly popular in the Philippines, with 80 percent of Filipinos still expressing “much trust” for him after a year of his war on drugs and 9,000 people dead. 19 Unlike in Latin America, throughout East Asia, drug use is highly disapproved of, with little empathy for users and only very weak support for drug policy reform. Throughout the region, as well as in the Philippines, tough-on-drugs approaches, despite their ineffective outcomes and human rights violations, often remain popular. Fostering an honest and complete public discussion about the pros and cons of various drug policy approaches is a necessary element in creating public demand for accountability of drug policy in the Philippines.

Equally important is to develop better public health approaches to dealing with methamphetamine addiction. It is devastating throughout East Asia as well as in the United States, though opiate abuse mortality rates now eclipse methamphetamine drug abuse problems. Meth addiction is very hard to treat and often results in severe morbidity. Yet harm reduction approaches have been predominately geared toward opiate and heroin addictions, with substitution treatments, such as methadone, not easily available for meth and other harm reduction approaches also not directly applicable.

What has been happening in the Philippines is tragic and unconscionable. But if the United States can at least take a leading role in developing harm reduction and effective treatment approaches toward methamphetamine abuse, its condemnation of unjustifiable and reprehensible policies, such as President Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines, will far more soundly resonate in East Asia, better stimulating local publics to demand accountability and respect for rule of law from their leaders.

Neil Jerome Morales, “Philippines Blames IS-linked Abu Sayyaf for Bomb in Duterte’s Davao,” Reuters , September 2, 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-blast-idUSKCN11824W?il=0.
Rishi Iyengar, “The Killing Time: Inside Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s War on Drugs,” Time , August 24, 2016, http://time.com/4462352/rodrigo-duterte-drug-war-drugs-philippines-killing/.
Jim Gomez, “Philippine President-Elect Urges Public to Kill Drug Dealers,” The Associated Press, June 5, 2016, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/58fc2315d488426ca2512fc9fc8d6427/philippine-president-elect-urges-public-kill-drug-dealers.
Manuel Mogato and Clare Baldwin, “Special Report: Police Describe Kill Rewards, Staged Crime Scenes in Duterte’s Drug War,” Reuters , April 18, 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-duterte-police-specialrep-idUSKBN17K1F4.
Clare Baldwin , Andrew R.C. Marshall and Damir Sagolj , “Police Rack Up an Almost Perfectly Deadly Record in Philippine Drug War,” Reuters , http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/philippines-duterte-police/.
See, for example, Human Rights Watch, “Philippines: Police Deceit in ‘Drug War’ Killings,” March 2, 2017, https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/02/philippines-police-deceit-drug-war-killings ; and Amnesty International, “Philippines: The Police’s Murderous War on the Poor,” https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/01/philippines-the-police-murderous-war-on-the-poor/.
Reuters , April 18, 2017.
Aurora Almendral, “The General Running Duterte’s Antidrug War,” The New York Times , June 2, 2017.
“A Harvest of Lead,” The Economist , August 13, 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21704793-rodrigo-duterte-living-up-his-promise-fight-crime-shooting-first-and-asking-questions.
Reuters, April 18, 2017.
Vanda Felbab-Brown and Harold Trinkunas, “UNGASS 2016 in Comparative Perspective: Improving the Prospects for Success,” The Brookings Institution, April 29, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2015/04/global-drug-policy/FelbabBrown-TrinkunasUNGASS-2016-final-2.pdf?la=en.
See, for example, Paula Miraglia, “Drugs and Drug Trafficking in Brazil: Trends and Policies,” The Brookings Institution, April 29, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2015/04/global-drug-policy/Miraglia–Brazil-final.pdf?la=en .
James Windle, “Drugs and Drug Policy in Thailand,” Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives and UNGASS 2016, The Brookings Institution, April 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2015/04/global-drug-policy/WindleThailand-final.pdf?la=en .
James Windle, “Drugs and Drug Policy in Vietnam,” Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives and UNGASS 2016, The Brookings Institution, April 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/WindleVietnam-final.pdf.
Aurora Almendral, “As H.I.V. Soars in the Philippines, Conservatives Kill School Condom Plan,” The New York Times , February 28, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/world/asia/as-hiv-soars-in-philippines-conservatives-kill-school-condom-plan.html?_r=0.
Nicole Curato, “In the Philippines, All the President’s People,” The New York Times , May 31, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/opinion/philippines-rodrigo-duterte.html.

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The manila declaration on the drug problem in the philippines.

Nymia Simbulan
Leonardo Estacio
Carissa Dioquino-Maligaso
Teodoro Herbosa
Mellissa Withers

Workshop on Illicit Drug Abuse in the Philippines

Declaration

“Manila Statement on the Drug Problem in the Philippines”

Gathering in this workshop with a common issue and concern – the drug problem in the Philippines and its consequences and how it can be addressed and solved in the best way possible;

Affirming that the primacy of the sanctity/value of human life and the value of human dignity, social protection of the victims of drug abuse and illegal drugs trade must be our primary concern;

Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

Xu M. Human Rights and Duterte’s War on Drugs. Council on Foreign Relations ; 16 December, 2016. https://www.cfr.org/interview/human-rights-and-dutertes-war-drugs . Accessed December 20, 2017.

Gavilan J. Duterte’s War on Drugs: The first 6 months. Rappler ; 2016. https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/rich-media/rodrigo-duterte-war-on-drugs-2016 . Accessed January 18, 2018.

Holmes O. Human rights group slams Philippines president Duterte’s threat to kill them. The Guardian ; 17 August, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/17/human-rights-watch-philippines-president-duterte-threat . Accessed January 18, 2018.

Almendral A. On patrol with police as Philippines battles drugs. New York Times ; 2016. 21 December 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/world/asia/on-patrol-with-police-as-philippines-wages-war-on-drugs.html . Accessed January 18, 2018.

Bueza M. In Numbers: The Philippines’ ‘war on drugs.’ Rappler ; 13 September 2017. https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/145814-numbers-statistics-philippines-war-drugs . Accessed January 18, 2018.

Mogato M and Baldwin C. Special Report: Police Describe Kill Rewards, Staged Crime Scenes in Duterte’s Drug War. Reuters ; 18 April, 2017. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-duterte-police-specialrep-idUSKBN17K1F4 . Accessed January 18, 2018.

Al Jazeera. Thousands demand end to killings in Duterte’s drug war; 21 August, 2017. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/thousands-demand-killings-duterte-drug-war-170821124440845.html Published 2017. Accessed January 18, 2018.

Worley W. Harrowing photos from inside Filipino jail show reality of Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs. The Independent ; 30 July, 2016. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/filipino-philippines-prison-jail-presidentrodrigo-duterte-war-on-drugs-a7164006.html . Accessed January 18, 2018.

Baldwin C, Marshall ARC and Sagolj D. Police Rack Up an Almost Perfectly Deadly Record in Philippine Drug War. Reuters ; 5 December, 2016. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/philippines-duterte-police/ . Accessed January 20, 2018.

Amnesty International. Philippines: The police’s murderous war on the poor; 31 January, 2017. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/01/philippines-the-police-murderous-war-on-the-poor/ . Accessed January 18,2018.

Human Rights Watch. Philippines: Duterte threatens human rights community; 17 August, 2017. https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/08/17/philippines-duterte-threatens-human-rights-community . Accessed January 18, 2018.

Andadolu News Agency. EU: Human rights worsened with Duterte’s drug war. Al Jazeera ; 24 October, 2017. www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/eu-human-rights-worsened-duterte-drug-war-171024064212027.html . Accessed January 18, 2018.

Holmes O. Rodrigo Duterte pulls Philippine police out of brutal war on drugs. Reuters ; 2017b. 11 October, 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/12/philippines-rodrigo-duterte-police-war-drugs . Accessed January 18, 2018.

International Drug Policy Consortium. A Public Health Approach to Drug Use in Asia; 2016. https://fileserver.idpc.net/library/Drug-decriminalisation-in-Asia_ENGLISH-FINAL.pdf . Accessed April 5, 2018.

United Nations Secretary-General. Secretary-General’s message on International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking; 26 June, 2015. https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2015-06-26/secretary-generals-message-international-day-against-drug-abuse-and . Accessed January 18, 2018.

Kine P. Philippine Drug Board Urges New Focus To Drug Campaign. Human Rights Watch ; 30 October, 2017. https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/10/30/philippine-drug-board-urges-new-focus-drug-campaign . Accessed January 18, 2018.

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> Journals
> Asian Journal of Law and Society
> Volume 5 Issue 2
> Governing through Killing: The War on Drugs in the...

Article contents

INTRODUCTION
STATE KILLING IN THE PHILIPPINES BEFORE DUTERTE
EXTRA-JUDICIAL KILLING IN DUTERTE’S WAR ON DRUGS
KILLING AND REFORM?

Governing through Killing: The War on Drugs in the Philippines

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 May 2018

This article focuses on the war on drugs in the Philippines in order to explore issues related to extra-judicial killing, which remains common in many countries that have abolished the death penalty and in many more that retain it but seldom carry out judicial executions. In the first year of Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency (2016–17), thousands of people were killed by police or by vigilantes who were encouraged to prosecute his war on drugs. At a time when democracy is in retreat in many parts of the world, this case illustrates how popular harsh punishment can be in states that have failed to meet their citizens’ hopes for freedom, economic growth, and security.

1. INTRODUCTION

Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun — you have my support. Shoot [the drug dealer] and I’ll give you a medal (President elect Rodrigo Duterte, 6 June 2016). Footnote 1

Hitler massacred three million Jews …. There’s three million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them (President Rodrigo Duterte, 30 September 2016). Footnote 2

In the name of eliminating drug crime, President Rodrigo Duterte has plunged the Philippines into a nightmare of brutal slaughter. The police say that since July 1 [2016], they have killed more than 2000 people suspected of drug-related crimes. In addition, more than 3500 homicides remain unsolved, many at the hands of unknown vigilantes. Footnote 3

Labels such as “state killing” and “the killing state” are often used to describe the legally permitted judicial killing that occurs in systems of capital punishment. Footnote 4 But states kill extra-judicially too, and sometimes the scale so far exceeds the number of judicial executions that death-penalty reductions and abolitions seem like small potatoes. Footnote 5

This article focuses on extra-judicial killing in the Philippines during the first year and a half of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs (June 2016–January 2018), for three reasons. First, the Philippines is a large country whose systems of punishment have seldom been studied. With more than 100 million people, it is the thirteenth most populous country in the world, and it has more people than any country in Europe. Second, extra-judicial killing in the Philippines has attracted much attention because of its large scale and the impunity enjoyed by its perpetrators. In January 2018, Philippine police acknowledged that approximately 4,000 suspected drug users or sellers had been killed in the war on drugs, while Human Rights Watch put the number at 12,000 Footnote 6 and Philippine human rights advocates claimed it was more than 16,000. Footnote 7 Despite thousands of slayings, only a handful of investigations have occurred, and not a single government official has been convicted. Third, we aim to focus attention on extra-judicial killing because it a neglected subject in scholarship on punishment. By our count, the journal Punishment & Society published 35 articles and 20 book reviews about capital punishment in its first 19 years, but only two articles on extra-judicial killing. Footnote 8 There has been a huge increase in the range and depth of scholarly work on the punishment of offenders who violate the criminal law. Footnote 9 There is also a growing literature on the so-called “justice cascade”—how offenders against human rights norms are increasingly punished and called to account. Footnote 10 But these two bodies of work “barely overlap” Footnote 11 and both of them neglect the ways in which politicians, police, and members of the military frequently construe their own violence as morally justified acts of punishment and social control. Footnote 12 For these reasons, we want to encourage research that will “expand criminology’s domain” to include a subject that is interesting, important, and marginalized. Footnote 13 In studies of law and society, too, extra-judicial killing has largely flown under the radar. Footnote 14

Some analysts argue that the “abolition of capital punishment in all countries of the world will ensure that the killing of citizens by the state will no longer have any legitimacy and so even more marginalize and stigmatize extra-judicial executions.” Footnote 15 Others claim that the abolition of capital punishment is “one of the great, albeit unfinished, triumphs of the post-Second World War human rights movement” Footnote 16 and that “abolition is a prerequisite for any regime aspiring to dissociate itself from those dark forces known for their hostility to democracy, equality and human dignity.” Footnote 17 This article suggests that these views are too sanguine. What is happening in the Philippines—thousands of executions in a country without capital punishment—represents a pattern that has been seen before and that will be seen again in polities with weak law, strong executives, and fearful and frustrated citizens. State killing often survives and sometimes thrives after capital punishment is abolished (see Mexico, Brazil, Nepal, and Cambodia). And in countries where capital punishment has not been abolished, extra-judicial executions have frequently been carried out after the number of judicial executions fell to near zero (as in Bangladesh, India, and Indonesia).

The rest of this article proceeds as follows. First, we summarize state killing in the Philippines—judicial and extra-judicial—from the time Ferdinand Marcos became president in 1965 until 2016, when Duterte was elected. During this half-century, capital punishment rose and fell while extra-judicial executions remained a regular feature of Philippine society. Then we describe extra-judicial killing during the first year of Duterte’s war on drugs and show its continuity with the practices of a “death squad” that was organized and orchestrated by Duterte when he was mayor of the city of Davao in the southern part of the country. In Section 4, we explain extra-judicial killing in the Philippines by presenting three main causes: the problem of impunity in Philippine criminal justice, which has frustrated large segments of the public; a Philippine form of penal populism in which governing through killing remains popular even though it is ineffective as crime control; and a form of democratic underdevelopment that is perpetuated by a narrow elite who rule Philippine society for their own benefit. In Section 5, we briefly summarize major developments in the first half of the second year of Duterte’s presidency, including a new offensive in his war on drugs, a pause in extra-judicial killing that was precipitated by public protests over the murder of a young man in Manila, and an announcement that Philippine police would conduct their renewed crackdown on drugs in accordance with a new set of guidelines designed to encourage compliance with laws and human rights norms. In the concluding section, we suggest five lessons that students of punishment and society should learn from this case-study. Foremost among them is the possibility that the decline of democracy in many parts of the world may encourage tolerance of executions in states that have capital punishment—and in some states that do not.

2. STATE KILLING IN THE PHILIPPINES BEFORE DUTERTE

The Philippines has abolished the death penalty twice: in 1987, after dictator Ferdinand Marcos fell from power, and then again (after the death penalty was reinstated in 1993) in 2006, following a push by the Roman Catholic Church and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Under President Duterte in 2016–17, there was an effort in the Philippine Congress to resurrect the death penalty again Footnote 18 but, as of this writing (January 2018), no law had been enacted.

Under Marcos, who ruled the country from 1965 to 1986, the Philippines carried out 31 judicial executions and at least 3,000 extra-judicial executions—a ratio of 1 to 100. Footnote 19 Even under martial law (September 1972–January 1981), there were only 12 judicial executions in the Philippines, and there were no judicial executions at all during the last nine years of Marcos’s rule (1977–86). After Marcos was overthrown by the People Power Movement, the Constitution of 1987 abolished capital punishment “unless for compelling reasons involving heinous crimes, the Congress hereafter provides for it.” In 1993, the Philippine Congress reinstated the death penalty by passing one of the most expansive capital statutes in Asia and soon the Philippines had one of the largest death rows in Asia: more than 1,200 people were sentenced to death under the new death-penalty law, but only seven were executed. All were men and all were lethally injected between February 1999 and January 2000, during the administration of President Joseph Estrada, who was driven from power by a second “People Power” movement and subsequently convicted of plunder and sentenced to life in prison (later he was pardoned by President Arroyo). On Easter Sunday in 2006, President Arroyo commuted more than 1,200 death sentences in one of the largest mass death sentence commutations the world has ever seen. Two months later, she signed a Bill into law that abolished capital punishment in the Philippines for the second time in 20 years. The Bill had easily passed both chambers of Congress: 120 to 20 in the House and 16 to 0 in the Senate. Footnote 20

From 1993 to 2006, while death sentences were common and judicial executions were rare, extra-judicial executions continued to occur frequently in the Philippines, as they had throughout much of the twentieth century. Footnote 21 For example, the non-governmental organization (NGO) Karapatan found that, from 2001 to 2006, 819 people were victims of “extra-judicial, summary, or arbitrary execution” under the Arroyo government—an average of 137 non-judicial state killings per year during the first half of her presidency. Footnote 22 Arroyo pushed for the abolition of capital punishment, but she also stressed her own prerogatives of power, as when she asserted in her state of the nation address in 2007 that “From where I sit, I can tell you, a President is always as strong as she wants to be.” Footnote 23 After leaving office in 2010, Arroyo was arrested on charges of plunder. In 2016, the Supreme Court acquitted her by a vote of 11 to 4.

Extra-judicial killings in the Philippines seemed to decline under Arroyo’s successor, President Benigno Acquino III, but at least 300 leftist activists, human rights defenders, and alleged supporters of communist rebels were killed during his six-year term (2010–16). Those killings rarely resulted in criminal prosecution. Near the end of Acquino’s presidency, the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch warned that “while the number of serious violations has declined during Aquino’s administration, ongoing killings of prominent activists and the lack of successful prosecutions mean there’s nothing to prevent an upsurge of abuses in the future. ” Footnote 24 This warning would prove to be prescient.

3. EXTRA-JUDICIAL KILLING IN DUTERTE’S WAR ON DRUGS

It is impossible to know how many people have been killed by police and other government officials in the first year of Duterte’s war on drugs, because the Philippine state is neither transparent nor consistent about how often it kills extra-legally. Footnote 25 There also are different degrees of state involvement, from (1) tolerating, condoning, and encouraging the killing of drug users and sellers, to (2) the fiction of buy-bust operations in which the targets of a sting resist arrest and are killed in a shoot-out, to (3) cold-blooded assassination as an act of governmental terrorism. Footnote 26 Moreover, some ordinary murders are staged to look like extra-judicial executions in order to prevent police investigation into the killing, thereby further complicating efforts to count. In many cases, there is little real distinction between a buy-bust killing and an extra-judicial one. Footnote 27 If the victim did not have a gun, one can be given to him after he is killed—and it frequently is. Footnote 28

Although accurate counts of extra-judicial killing are hard to come by, even the lowest estimates are large, and so are the figures provided by state officials. According to the Philippine National Police, as of 30 June 2017 (one year after Duterte took office), nearly 5,000 drug suspects had been killed, including 3,151 in reported gun battles with the police, and 1,847 others had been killed in drug-related attacks by masked gunmen on motorcycles and other vigilante assailants. Footnote 29 Non-governmental sources report much higher death tolls. According to one, in the first two months after Duterte became president, over 7,000 people were killed by police or by vigilantes encouraged to prosecute the war on drugs. Footnote 30 That would be more than 1,000 times the number of people judicially executed in the 13 years (1993–2006) that the Philippines had capital punishment before it abolished it the second time. Ten months into Duterte’s six-year presidency, the New York Times published an editorial reporting the number of dead at more than 9,400—an average of 32 per day. This is approximately three times more extra-judicial executions than the world’s leading judicial executing state (the People’s Republic of China, with a population 13 times that of the Philippines) executed in 2016. Footnote 31 Even by the most conservative estimates, the frequency of extra-judicial killing in Duterte’s war on drugs is far higher than the frequency of extra-judicial killing under the martial law imposed by Marcos in the 1970s (see Table 1 ). Footnote 32

Table 1 Drug-related killings reported in the first year of the Philippine war on drugs

Sources : Philippine National Police, www.pnp.gov.ph ; Rappler , 2 March 2017; Amnesty International (AI) (2017); Human Rights Watch (HRW) (2017); ABS-CBN , 5 May 2017; New York Times , 25 April 2017; Bloomberg , 30 June 2017; ABC News , 24 July 2017.

After Duterte became president, he began gathering the names of drug suspects from local police and elected officials. This is called a “watch list” and there are (in Duterte’s various tellings) anywhere from 600,000 to 1 million names on it, including at least 6,000 police officers, 5,000 local village leaders, and 23 mayors. Footnote 33 Most of the people on the list have been targeted by “Operation Knock & Plead” ( Oplan Tokhang ), which resulted in surrendering of 687,000 people across the country to police, Footnote 34 further burdening an already overburdened criminal justice system. Footnote 35 People who do not surrender are more likely to be targeted for extra-judicial execution, and many of the people who do surrender are made to sign a form pledging to stay off drugs. As reported by one man who was addicted to methamphetamines and who surrendered on the day Duterte took office, the form he signed said: “If you’re caught the first, second, and third time, there are warnings and conditions. If you’re caught a fourth time, we’ll have nothing to do with whatever happens to you.” Footnote 36

The war on drugs also employs “mass interrogations” ( sona ) in which tens or hundreds of (mostly poor) men are called out of their homes, lined up, arrested, and questioned. Some of them end up dead. Footnote 37

There is apparently “no certain or easy way to get off Duterte’s list,” Footnote 38 even for those who are powerful and well connected. Consider three examples. On 28 October 2016, a southern mayor named Samsudin Dimaukom was stopped at a checkpoint by police who claimed Dimaukom opened fire first. The mayor and all nine of his aides and guards were killed, and no police were injured. Twelve days later, on 5 November, police entered the jail cell of Albuera mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr, who had implicated police in the drug trade. Espinosa and his cellmate (Raul Yap) were shot dead in what the National Bureau of Investigation and a Senate investigation subsequently found to be murder. Footnote 39 Twenty-four police were arrested for these two killings, including Police Superintendent Marvin Marcos, but eight months later they were all reinstated on Duterte’s orders, perhaps because the president feared that “these policemen might rat out on him for what they know about his involvement in the Espinosa murder.” Footnote 40 On 30 July 2017, Ozamiz city mayor Reynaldo Parojinog, his wife, brother, sister, and 11 of their security personnel were killed after they allegedly opened fire on police—and after police had disabled CCTV in the mayor’s home and three nearby residences during their pre-dawn raid. No police were killed or injured in the encounter. Mayor Parojinog had denied any ties to illegal drugs, but he was widely believed to be a “narco-politician” involved in robbery, extortion, illegal gambling, and drug trafficking. Since some Ozamiz residents regarded the mayor’s ruling clan as Robin Hoods, there was mourning in the city for some of those who were slain but, outside the city, the most common reactions to the killings seemed to be “good riddance” and “why did it take so long?”. Footnote 41 To Duterte’s supporters, the elimination of politicians such as Dimaukom, Espinosa, and Parojinog demonstrates their president’s resolve to reform a country that some call “a gangster’s paradise.” Footnote 42

Duterte has made many pronouncements about how to prosecute the war on drugs. While campaigning for the presidency, he promised to rid the country of crime and drug use within 3–6 months. After he was elected, he compared himself to Hitler and said he would be “happy to slaughter 3 million drug addicts.” Footnote 43 On numerous occasions, he has publically encouraged police to “go ahead and kill them [drug users]” and promised to protect police killers from legal accountability. He has said: “Rich or poor, I do not give a shit. My order is to destroy.” Footnote 44 He has declared: “I don’t care about human rights, believe me. There is no due process in my mouth.” Footnote 45 He has promised that “the fish will grow fat” from the bodies dumped in Manila Bay. Footnote 46 He has taken aim at lawyers who defend drug suspects, threatening to include them in his drug war. He encouraged 19 police officers implicated in the death of an alleged drug lord to plead guilty so that he could pardon them. Footnote 47 And when US President Barack Obama cancelled a meeting with Duterte out of concerns over extra-judicial killing in the Philippines, Duterte called him a “son of a whore,” said “we have long ceased to be a colony,” and stressed that he is “only answerable to the Filipino people who elected me president.” Footnote 48

In addition to Duterte’s provocative pronouncements, there are other performative aspects of extra-judicial killing in the Philippines. Footnote 49 Abundant theatricality accompanies many things in the country, from karaoke and religious processions to the soap operas and melodramas on TV. Footnote 50 So, too, in the war on drugs. Corpses are found bearing cardboard signs that say “I am a pusher” or “I am a drug user, don’t be like me.” Victims have their heads mummified in packing tape, with cartoon expressions drawn on their faces. Dead bodies are posed in positions and places to maximize public viewing. And photojournalists who cover extra-judicial killing stage their own performances by chasing “The Shot”—an image powerful enough to capture the crackdown’s human costs. But in the first year of the war on drugs, even the most moving images of death did little to fuel public outrage. In fact, the crowds that form around victims of extra-judicial killing are “often festive, treating the whole scene as if it were entertainment.” Footnote 51 People laugh, mug for the cameras, make jokes, and take bets on whether they knew the victim. In some ways, the rompish atmosphere is reminiscent of public hangings in eighteenth-century Europe Footnote 52 and lynching scenes in the Jim Crow south. Footnote 53

For his part, Duterte has frequently accused the media of “doing dramatics” and practising “yellow journalism” (reporting that relies on sensationalistic headlines instead of real research). He also has alleged that critical journalists are being paid by his enemies—and perhaps even by drug lords. Footnote 54 Since Marcos was overthrown in 1986, more than 170 journalists have been assassinated in the Philippines, and Duterte apparently believes many of them deserved to die. In a press conference shortly after he was elected, he said: “Most of those [journalists] killed, to be frank, have done something. You won’t be killed if you don’t do anything wrong. Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination if you’re a son of a bitch.” Footnote 55

When one of Duterte’s fiercest critics, Senator Leila De Lima, called for an investigation of extra-judicial killing, Duterte threatened to throw her in jail—and then he had her arrested on three counts of drug trafficking with prisoners in the New Bilibid Prison on the outskirts of Manila, which holds more than 20,000 inmates. Footnote 56 She was jailed based on the testimony of prisoners, with no evidence of drugs. She is ineligible for bail, and Duterte has said that she should “just hang herself” and that he expects to “see her in hell.” Footnote 57 Duterte also revealed details of an affair between De Lima and her bodyguard/driver, who allegedly collected money from inmates to fund her senatorial campaign while she was secretary of the Department of Justice. Her attorneys have filed a case with the Supreme Court to prevent Duterte from further degrading her dignity. It is the first case to challenge a sitting president’s behaviour as “psychological violence, sexual harassment, and slut-shaming against women.” Footnote 58 One of her lawyers has wondered: “If this can happen to a senator, what more to an ordinary Filipino?” Footnote 59 Duterte has threatened and harassed other prominent women as well, including Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales, Rappler editor Maria Ressa, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Maria Lourdes Sereno.

Duterte has been called the “Donald Trump of the Philippines.” Footnote 60 Like his American counterpart (who hosted The Apprentice on NBC TV for 14 seasons), Duterte has a nose and knack for publicity. He also has his own TV shows. In Davao, From the Masses, for the Masses aired every Sunday on local TV while Duterte was mayor of that city, and the president recently launched his own national TV show with a similar name on government-owned People’s Television. The aim of both shows is “to communicate the policies of the Duterte administration to the masses” straight from the president himself. Footnote 61 If the new TV show is like the old one, Duterte will not only discuss his government’s programmes and policies; he will announce the names of people suspected to be involved in the drug trade—and some of them will then be killed.

Duterte ran for president against four other candidates and won handily, with 39% of the vote (more than 15% ahead of his nearest competitor). After he was elected, Time magazine featured a smiling Duterte on its cover under the title “The Punisher.” He also has been called “Duterte Harry.” Footnote 62 Despite criticism at home and abroad of the extra-judicial killing that has been perpetrated in his war on drugs, opinion polls in his first year consistently showed that he was liked, trusted, and supported by large majorities of the Filipino people (see Table 2 ). In fact, public support for Duterte is higher than for any previous Filipino president. His strongest support is among the poor, who also comprise the vast majority of victims in his war on drugs, Footnote 63 but he is also supported by majorities of the middle and upper classes. Footnote 64 In the last quarter of 2016, Duterte’s approval and trust ratings were both above 80% Footnote 65 and, in April 2017, 78% of Filipino adults said they were satisfied with the government’s crackdown on drugs, while only 12% said they were dissatisfied (see Table 2 ). Footnote 66

Table 2 Public approval ratings for President Rodrigo Duterte, July 2016–June 2017

Source : Pulse Asia Research public opinion polls as reported in Rappler , www.rappler.com . Note : Pulse Asia Research’s Ulat ng Bayan survey is a nationwide public opinion poll for the Philippines that measures public approval of the Philippine president’s performance.

But there is also ambivalence in public attitudes toward Duterte’s war on drugs. In survey results released in December 2016, for example, 85% of respondents said they were satisfied with the administration’s campaign against legal drugs and 88% said that the drug problem had declined after Duterte became president, but 69% considered extra-judicial killing a serious problem, and 78% worried that they, or someone they know, would become a victim of extra-judicial killing. Footnote 67 These mixed feelings suggest that public opinion on this subject will vary considerably depending on the context and the wording of questions. Footnote 68 The ambivalence also reflects value conflicts within individuals who want to enjoy the benefits of crime control without being plagued by the knowledge or guilt that people are being killed extra-judicially.

Duterte has been called “a liberal’s worst nightmare” Footnote 69 and a “serial killer president” Footnote 70 but, in the country where he rules, he remains highly popular. His supporters, who are sometimes pejoratively called “Dutertardes,” are not simply ignorant prey for demagoguery and propaganda. Footnote 71 They sincerely believe he cares about their concerns Footnote 72 and they are pleased with his policies and moved by his stories. Footnote 73 Public support for Duterte is also rooted in the anger, frustration, and helplessness that people feel about the dysfunctions of Philippine criminal justice. As long as they believe the justice system is broken, they seem likely to support the president’s heavy-handed approach to threats to the social order. Footnote 74

In the courtroom of public opinion, the war on drugs is believed to be working even after Duterte suspended it for a month early in 2017 (30 January–27 February) following the revelations that Filipino police had kidnapped and strangled a South Korean businessman named Jee Ick-joo and then flushed his cremated ashes down a toilet in the national police headquarters. Footnote 75 This killing apparently occurred during an effort to obtain a USD 100,000 ransom from Jee’s family. National police chief Ronald dela Rosa said this death was not part of the war on drugs, but critics claimed police had been emboldened by Duterte’s promise to shield from prosecution those involved in the crackdown. Footnote 76 Following Jee’s murder, police chief dela Rosa was neither replaced nor reprimanded, and Duterte made many statements in support of the man who also had served as chief of police in Davao when Duterte ruled that city. A survey at the midpoint of Duterte’s first year in office found that 88% of Filipino adults perceived a decrease in the country’s drug problem since he became president Footnote 77 and, according to official statistics, crime in the country dropped by more than a quarter in Duterte’s first year. Drug abuse is a serious concern to many Filipinos. In a country that has failed to fix the circumstances that foster demand for drugs, Duterte’s harsh approach is widely considered a necessary evil. Footnote 78

The war on drugs that commenced in 2016 replayed on a national scale many of the policies that Duterte promoted while he was mayor of Davao (population 1.6 million) on the island of Mindanao. Duterte was elected mayor of that city seven times (he has never lost an election) and he served in the position for a total of 22 years. During his mayorship, the so-called Davao Death Squad killed at least 1,400 persons—an average of five people per month. Not a single person was successfully prosecuted for any of those killings. Duterte has been called “the Death Squad mayor” Footnote 79 and he has done little to deny the appropriateness of the appellation. While running for president, he declared: “Am I the Death Squad? Yes.” He also confessed to killing three kidnappers in Davao in 1988, the first year he was mayor. As he told the BBC: “I don’t know how many bullets from my gun went inside their bodies. It happened, and I said, I cannot lie about it.” Footnote 80 Some analysts believe there “has yet to be actionable evidence linking Duterte to the killings beyond his tolerance, if not support, for summary execution” Footnote 81 but, in our view, the available evidence strongly suggests that he organized the Davao Death Squad and ordered many of the extra-judicial killings it committed.

Two members of the Davao Death Squad have publicly described their own participation in extra-judicial killings while Duterte was mayor of that city. In September 2016, 57-year-old Edgar Matobato testified in the Philippine Senate that he had killed approximately 50 people in Davao, many at the direction of Duterte. And, in a press conference at the Philippine Senate in February 2017, a retired policeman named Arthur Lascanas confessed to killing 200 people while he was on the Davao Death Squad. Lascanas also reported that members of the Squad were typically paid 20,000–50,000 Philippine pesos (USD 400–1,000) for each killing, “depending on the status” of the target. Footnote 82 Two of his victims were his own drug-using brothers and a third was Jun Pala, whose critical radio commentaries angered Duterte.

Duterte has denied connections to Matobato and Lascanas and has refused responsibility for other extra-judicial killings in Davao. He also has denied claims of extra-judicial killing in his presidential war on drugs that were provided by 12 active and five former police officers in a 26-page report released to leaders of the Philippine Catholic Church and to the government-funded Commission on Human Rights in January 2017. Footnote 83 But Duterte is hardly a model of consistency, and he also has claimed credit for both killing campaigns on numerous occasions. In 2009, for example, he said:

If you are doing an illegal activity in my city [Davao], if you are a criminal or part of a syndicate that preys on the innocent people of the city, for as long as I am the mayor, you are a legitimate target of assassination. Footnote 84

And in a stump speech in front of 300,000 supporters in 2016, he said:

If I make it to the Presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor. All of you who are into drugs, you sons of bitches, I will really kill you. I have no patience, I have no middle ground, either you kill me or I will kill you idiots. Footnote 85

Before Duterte became mayor of Davao, it was known as “Murder City.” Footnote 86 Subsequently, many residents of Davao came to believe that governance Duterte-style brought safety and calm to a city that is “surrounded by areas where violence is rife.” Footnote 87 Nationally, “millions of Filipinos look at Davao’s transformation with envy—whatever the cost.” Footnote 88 They believe the Davao Death Squad helped deter crime and drug use, making the city one of the safest and most orderly in the Philippines. After 10 p.m., juveniles are not allowed on city streets unless an adult is accompanying them. Liquor cannot be sold after 1 a.m. Smoking is banned almost everywhere. Strict enforcement of low speed limits has reduced the number of motor vehicle accidents. Hundreds of closed-circuit TV cameras are constantly monitored at the city’s Public Safety and Security Command Center. Public works projects are often done on time and within budget—a rare achievement in the Philippines. And so on. Inside the city and out, Davao is seen as an “enclave of peace and relative prosperity” and a “blueprint” for taming the rest of the country. Footnote 89 It also has been named one of the Top 20 Most Liveable Cities in Asia. Footnote 90

But perception and reality can be two different things. We have found little solid evidence supporting the view that the Death Squad made Davao safer. In fact, according to police statistics, when Duterte became president in 2016, Davao had the highest murder rate and the second highest rape rate among 15 large Philippine cities. Footnote 91 Nonetheless, many people regard the city as an oasis of safety surrounded by a sea of violence, and public belief in the efficacy of Duterte’s policies in Davao—including governing through killing—helped propel him into the presidency. Footnote 92 While campaigning for that office, Duterte promised that thousands of criminals and drug users would be killed under his leadership. By all appearances, he has been trying to make good on that promise. Footnote 93

Like many penal practices, extra-judicial killing in the Philippines is “overdetermined” in the sense that it is shaped by a wide range of forces. Footnote 94 In this section, we take three passes at explaining this complex penal practice. First and most narrowly, we describe impunity in Philippine criminal justice in order to reveal some of the sources of public support for Duterte’s extra-legal policies. Then we step back to consider the politics of penal populism in the Philippines. Duterte realized long ago that governing through killing appeals to large segments of the public and wins votes, regardless of its effectiveness at reducing crime or deterring drug use. Our final pass takes a broad view of democratic underdevelopment in the Philippines in order to suggest that Duterte’s war on drugs is rooted in the economic and political failures that have plagued the country for decades. Since none of these causes is easy to change, extra-judicial killing could continue to occur long after Duterte leaves office.

4.1 Criminal Injustice

For decades before the slaughter that started in the summer of 2016, the Philippines had one of the highest rates of homicide in the world. Footnote 95 In 2014, it had the highest homicide rate among 51 countries in “Asia.” Footnote 96 With 9.8 homicides per 100,000 population, its homicide rate was twice as high as the rate for the US, three times higher than the average rate in Europe, and four times higher than the average rate for ten other countries in Southeast Asia. Because of underreporting and other data difficulties, it is hard to tell whether the Philippines has high rates for crimes such as theft, robbery, and rape but, in the years leading up to Duterte’s election in 2016, official crime rates soared, at least partly because of increased reporting by police. Footnote 97

The Philippines may also have higher rates of drug use and abuse than other countries in East and Southeast Asia, especially for methamphetamines ( shabu ). In 2014, 89% of drug seizures in the country involved methamphetamines, 8.9% involved marijuana, and 2.1% involved other drugs. Footnote 98 In 2011, the US State Department reported that 2.1% of Filipinos aged 16–64 abused methamphetamines. Footnote 99 It is hard to tell because the data are of poor quality, but there may be more than 1 million methamphetamine users in the country, Footnote 100 and Duterte and others have claimed there are more than 3 million. Footnote 101 Some methamphetamine users exhibit signs of addiction and acknowledge committing crimes in order to support their habit, but the best ethnographic work on this subject finds that most users remain functional and that the only crime many commit is taking drugs. Footnote 102

But, for some Filipinos, methamphetamine is personally destructive and criminogenic. Trafficking is organized and financed mainly by ethnic Chinese gangs. Because the Philippines is located near large nations such as China, Indonesia, and Japan, it is a major hub for methamphetamines in the region. The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines 2015 Footnote 103 released a pastoral letter calling methamphetamine the “poor man’s cocaine” and warning that the drug is “dangerously ubiquitous” and “peddled openly in parks, bars, and street corners.” Years earlier, Filipino bishops described drug users as “mental and physical wrecks” who were the “worst saboteurs” and who deserved “the highest punishments”—views that are shared by many Filipinos. Footnote 104 There are few rehabilitation facilities in the country, and treatment is all but impossible to obtain for the vast majority of drug users and addicts. Footnote 105 To most Filipinos and many outside observers, the failure of Philippine drug policy is obvious. Footnote 106

Although methamphetamine often harms individuals, families, and communities, it also performs positive functions, especially for the poor. Footnote 107 It empowers manual labourers to work for long hours. It alleviates hunger. It provides emotional escape from the grinding conditions of daily life that millions of Filipinos endure. Footnote 108 And, as Clarke Jones of Australian National University observes, “A lot of the people involved in the [methamphetamine] drug market have no other opportunity for income, so a lot of [the drug] money [they earn] also goes to support families in communities.” Footnote 109 In a country that has failed to address the circumstances that generate demand for methamphetamine, Duterte’s war on drugs is considered a necessary evil by many Filipinos—including many who live in locations that are being targeted by this campaign. Unless the social and human sources of the country’s drug problems are addressed, reduced drug use seems unlikely. Footnote 110 The Philippines may well need a “war on drugs,” but the war it has been fighting under Duterte seems to be the wrong war, fought with the wrong weapons, and against the wrong enemies. Footnote 111 The root causes of the country’s drug problem are poverty and corruption. Footnote 112 If it does not reckon with the social and economic deficits that push people into drug use and trafficking, it will not be able to discourage demand for a substance that so many find appealing.

In addition to high rates of lethal violence, strong public demand for drugs, and deep public concern about drug-related problems, support for extra-judicial killing in the Philippines is fostered by the dysfunctions of its criminal justice system. Footnote 113 Countries such as the US and Japan have serious criminal justice problems but, in many respects, they pale in comparison to those found in the Philippines. Footnote 114 Most Filipinos believe there is little justice to be had from its “injustice system.” Footnote 115 Its criminal process proceeds at a glacial pace. Its judiciary has a backlog of 600,000 cases and at least 20% of the country’s trial courts lack judges. The average prosecutor handles 500 cases per year and the average public defender 5,000. The police are understaffed by about 50,000 officers and some analysts believe they are “the biggest criminal institution in the Philippines.” Footnote 116 Many persons accused of crime languish in jail for years, only to be released when police fail to testify or the evidence against them proves unreliable. Under Duterte’s predecessor as president, Benigno Aquino III, only about 25% of criminal cases in the country ended in conviction—and that was an improvement over the previous administration of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. During Duterte’s war on drugs, Philippine courts—including the Supreme Court—have proved “incapable of asserting their independence and doing their work in a credible way,” which motivated prosecutors in the International Criminal Court (ICC) to initiate their own investigations. Footnote 117

In short, criminal justice in the Philippines is ineffective, inefficient, and corrupt. It is also toothless. Footnote 118 According to Mexico’s Center for Studies on Impunity and Justice, the Philippines has the highest Global Impunity Index of any country in the world—just above Mexico, where the drug trade and extra-judicial killing also flourish. Footnote 119 These failures of criminal justice seem to be “at the root of broad acceptance of Duterte’s draconian drug war.” Footnote 120 They also help explain why millions of Filipinos cheer extra-judicial killing or passively acquiesce to it, even though there is little evidence that it actually deters drug use. Footnote 121

4.2 Penal Populism

A sign in Davao reads: “Rody Duterte. The People’s last hope.” It is a message that resonates in the city and throughout many of the 7,000 islands in the Philippine archipelago. The country cannot kill its way out of its drug and crime crisis, but Duterte and associates can exploit it for their own ends and in ways that serve the interests of many Filipinos. They have been doing just that in a display of penal populism that is both familiar and unique.

At its core, “penal populism” consists of the pursuit of punishment policies based primarily on their anticipated popularity rather than their effectiveness. Footnote 122 Penal populism varies from place to place, but it also has qualities that are common in many countries, including the Philippines. Penal populism tends to be strongest when it is directed at an unpopular enemy—“others” who are defined as deviant and whose existence unites the public in indignation against them. In the Philippines, this group consists mainly of drug users and traffickers. Penal populism tends to be rooted in resentment against political elites and the existing political establishment. In the Philippines, there is little trust in the establishment to protect the interests or advance the wellbeing of ordinary people (two of the three presidents before Duterte were prosecuted for plunder). Penal populism tends to see the rights of offenders as favoured over those of victims and the law-abiding public. In the Philippines, criminal justice routinely fails to hold offenders accountable for their conduct. Penal populism turns the punishment of offenders into a spectacle for degrading them and for expressing the public’s vengeful impulses. In the Philippines, extra-judicial killing is often staged in these ways. Penal populism informs and misinforms the public by relying on media representations that privilege “commonsensical” understandings of crime and punishment. In the Philippines, the media routinely reflect and reinforce the prevailing common sense. Penal populism implies little faith in government to solve crime problems, making vigilantism an appealing alternative response. In the Philippines, the war on drugs blurs the line between killing by government and killing by vigilantes. And penal populism undermines the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, thereby strengthening the executive’s hand. In the Philippines, these effects have been striking in Duterte’s war on drugs. Footnote 123

But if penal populism in the Philippines shares many qualities with penal populism in other countries, including its underlying causes, Footnote 124 it is also distinctive, in four ways. First, Duterte’s brand of penal populism is driven by both a politics of fear of crime and by a politics of hope that posits a better future once crime problems are under control. Footnote 125 Central to both of these appeals is a posture that Duterte packs with “hyper masculinity.” Footnote 126 He disdains formality, is given to profanity, is a confessed womanizer, and frequently “stands as the toughie ready to fight, kill, or die.” Footnote 127 All of these qualities make him seem “authentic,” in contrast to the duplicity of the “decent” politicians who have traditionally ruled the country. Footnote 128

Second, in countries such as Japan and the US, much populist anger is directed at immigrants who are said to pose a serious threat to the social order. In the Philippines, by contrast, immigration barely registers on the public radar. The presumed enemies of Philippine society are said to be internal: drug users and sellers, street criminals, and communist rebels. Emigration is a far more salient issue in the Philippines than immigration. Approximately 10 million people of Filipino descent work abroad and send back to their families tens of billions of dollars in remittances each year. Footnote 129

Third, in most countries, the central tool of penal populism is imprisonment Footnote 130 but, in the Philippines under Duterte, extra-judicial killing has become its most salient feature. The Philippine imprisonment rate did increase in recent years, from 83 inmates per 100,000 population in 2002 to 140 in 2016. But almost all of this rise occurred before Duterte’s war on drugs started and, even after the rise, the country’s imprisonment rate remained lower than the average imprisonment rate (174) of the countries in Southeast Asia for which evidence is available, and it was less than one-third the imprisonment rate of Thailand (445), the leading incarcerator in the region. Footnote 131 At present, imprisonment in the Philippines is distinctive mainly because its seven national prisons and 1,130 local jails are operating at more than 300% of official capacity, making its correctional system far and away the most crowded one in the region. Prison and jail conditions in the country are brutal Footnote 132 but, in comparative perspective, what stand out in the Philippine form of penal populism are the frequency of its extra-judicial killing and the open acknowledgement of state acts that are clearly illegal (see Table 3 ). Footnote 133

Table 3 Imprisonment rates and prison overcrowding in ten countries of Southeast Asia, 2017

Source : World Prison Brief ( 2017 ), hosted by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, www.prisonstudies.org . Note : The imprisonment rate is the number of inmates in prison and jail per 100,000 population. The occupancy level is the total number of inmates in prison and jail divided by the official capacity of the prison and jail system. No figures are available for Timor-Leste.

The fourth Philippine distinctive is the connection between penal populism in the present and the long tradition of extra-judicial killing in the “local bossism” of the past. Footnote 134 Traditionally, who was targeted for extra-judicial killing (and for what activities) was largely determined by dynastic political bosses who ruled like feudal lords in “an anarchy of families.” Footnote 135 Local bosses and their extended families dominated their domains by engaging in predatory, kleptocratic, rent-seeking behaviour, and by committing murders with impunity. Footnote 136 Local bosses also resembled gang leaders in several ways. They engaged directly in crime. They provided protection for associates who were involved in criminal activities (including the drug trade). They practised passive non-interference in illegal activities—a form of tacit support that protected them from legal culpability. And they allowed the criminal and entrepreneurial activities of local police to go unchecked (blackmails, kidnaps, corruption, and so on). When Duterte was mayor of Davao, he played all of these local boss roles and, even after he left the second most populous city in the country to be governed by his daughter Sara and son Paolo (mayor and vice-mayor, respectively), Davao is still known as “Duterte city.” Footnote 137

Although the war on drugs in the Philippines seems singular in some ways, its commonalities with drug wars in other countries are especially significant. Indeed, in directing his war on drugs, Duterte—a former prosecutor—is “governing through crime” much as his American counterparts have done, albeit with far more lethality. Footnote 138 Three similarities are striking. First, when Duterte orders and condones extra-judicial killing, he is seen as acting legitimately because he claims to be trying to prevent crime and other bothersome behaviour. This is one hallmark of “governing through crime.” Footnote 139 Second, Duterte frequently deploys the problems of “crime” and “drug abuse” to legitimate governmental interventions (such as the arrest and killing of critics and rivals) that have other motivations. This, too, has been common in American efforts to govern through crime. Footnote 140 Most fundamentally, Duterte’s government fosters fear in Filipinos—fear of crime, fear of drugs, and fear of official responses to both—because he realizes that this emotion is an effective instrument of governance. In America, too, the lives of many citizens have been transformed not so much by crime per se as by fear of crime. Footnote 141 In short, the war on drugs in the Philippines may seem uniquely horrifying in its bloodiness and brutality but, in many of its essentials, it is surprisingly familiar.

4.3 Democratic Underdevelopment

The scale of extra-judicial killing in Duterte’s war on drugs reflects fundamental economic and political failures in Philippine society. The country is not a “failed state” like North Korea, Sierra Leone, or Zimbabwe, but it is dysfunctional in significant ways. In 2017, its GDP per capita (Purchasing Power Parity) of USD 7,700 placed Asia’s oldest democracy 154th out of the 230 countries in the CIA World Factbook—a little below Jamaica and Guatemala, and a little above India and the Republic of the Congo—to name four countries that also have had problems with extra-judicial executions. According to Freedom House, Footnote 142 the Philippines earns a score of only 4 out of 16 for the “Rule of Law” because the application of law and justice in the country are “haphazard” and “heavily favor ruling dynastic elites.”

In addition to the problems of economic and legal underdevelopment, there are also the legacies of colonialism. The Philippines is “America’s only major colonial experience” Footnote 143 and, before the half-century of repressive American rule (1898–1946), there was exploitation by the Spanish for nearly four centuries (1521–1898) and a brutal occupation by the Japanese during the Pacific War (1942–45). Few countries are more “shackled by the past.” Footnote 144 After one of the longest continuous periods of colonial rule in world history, the Philippines is now doubly dependent: on a colonial mentality produced by its experiences with America, Spain, and Japan; and on its own entrenched oligarchy.

The extent of dynastic rule in the Philippines is stunning, exceeding even those that are found in the countries of Latin America. Footnote 145 The Dutertes—father Rodrigo and eldest daughter Sara—have held the mayorship of Davao for the last 30 years and the dynastic share of governors in the rest of the country exceeds 80%. The dynastic shares for other elected positions are also high: 81% for vice-governors, 77% for the House of Representatives, 69% for mayors, and 57% for vice-mayors. Footnote 146 In many parts of the Philippines, only the rich and those with the correct last name enjoy the entitlement of leadership, and leaders routinely exercise their powers to feather their own nests rather than to promote the common good. As Alan Berlow observed in his trenchant analysis of murder and revenge on the island of Negros, the Philippines is a society

with no functioning system of law or justice, where government was either absent or irrelevant, and the rules regulating everyday life were dictated by a revolving cast of vigilantes, fanatical cultists, Communist revolutionaries, private armies, and the military. The Philippines may have proclaimed itself a democracy, but in Negros [and other parts of the country] almost everyone vying for power was equally committed to the subversion of democratic institutions. Footnote 147

Ultimately, the post-colonial Republic of the Philippines remains poor because it continues to be ruled by a narrow elite that organizes society for its own benefit, at the expense of the vast majority of its citizens. Part of this problem is corruption, which is so extensive that many leaders and local governments resemble glorified gangs. Footnote 148 In the Philippines, as in some other societies, “thieves of state” present grave threats to both development and security. Footnote 149 But the root of the country’s most serious problems is political. Economic institutions are critical for determining whether a country becomes poor or prosperous, but it is politics and political institutions that determine what economic institutions and incentives a country has. Footnote 150 Similarly, if one central conservative truth is that culture largely determines the success of a society, “the central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.” Footnote 151 Politics also underlies the problem of extra-judicial killing in the Philippines. It is no coincidence that politics and state institutions are central in explanations for the trajectory of that other type of state killing known as “capital punishment.” Footnote 152

5. KILLING AND REFORM?

On 24 July 2017, in his second state of the nation address, President Duterte stressed that his war on drugs would be “unremitting” and “unrelenting”:

[P]rogress and development will sputter if criminals, illegal drugs, and illegal users of drugs are allowed to roam the streets freely, victimizing seemingly with impunity, the innocent and the helpless … I have learned that the economy surges only when there is peace and order prevailing in places where investors can pour in their capital and expertise. I have learned from my experience in Davao City that investor confidence is bolstered and fortified, only if, a potent force and mechanism for the protection of local and foreign investments are in place. That is why I have resolved that no matter how long it takes, the fight against illegal drugs will continue, because that is the root cause of so much evil and so much suffering that weakens the social fabric and deters foreign investments from pouring in. The fight will be as unremitting as it will be unrelenting. Despite international and local pressures, the fight will not stop until those who deal in it understand that they have to cease, they have to stop, because the alternatives are either jail or hell …. Neither will I be immobilized into inaction by the fear that I will commit an act that will expose me to public condemnation or legal prosecution. You harm the children in whose hands the future of this Republic is entrusted, and I will hound you to the very gates of hell … Do not try to scare me with prison or the International Court of Justice. I am willing to go to prison for the rest of my life. Footnote 153

Three weeks after this speech, Duterte’s war on drugs produced what may have been its “bloodiest days on record.” Footnote 154 In the province of Bulacan, seven miles north of Manila, 32 “drug suspects” were killed and 109 were arrested over a 24-hour period on 14 and 15 August. The next day in Manila, 26 people were killed in a crackdown that police called a “one-time, big-time” operation against illegal drugs, and Duterte declared that police should shoot human rights activists if they try to obstruct justice. National police chief Ronald dela Rosa said there would be no let-up in the war on drugs. “This is unrelenting,” he stated. “We will continue to operate until the end.” Footnote 155

We do not expect extra-judicial killing in the Philippines to end anytime soon, for it has been a prominent feature of the country’s political landscape for decades, and it has been a major source of Duterte’s popularity. But in the second year of Duterte’s presidency, there was a significant pause in governing through killing. The precipitating circumstance was the extra-judicial execution of 17-year-old Kian Loyd delos Santos in the 16 August crackdown in Caloocan City in metro Manila. Delos Santos had never been in trouble with the law and was not on any police watch list. According to family and friends, he wanted to become a police officer, he did not use or sell drugs, and he supported the war on drugs. After his execution, the police claimed that he had fled when they approached him and then had shot at them during the ensuing chase. The right-handed delos Santos was found dead in an alley with a 45-calibre pistol in his left hand and two sachets of methamphetamine on his person. He had three gunshot wounds: one in the back of his head, another behind his left ear, and a third inside his left ear. The usual police story—“we fired because we were fired upon”—might have prevailed if not for a CCTV video taken in the ward where delos Santos lived. It showed him being dragged away by two men in plainclothes at 8:24 p.m., just minutes before he was found dead. Several residents of the ward also came forward with eyewitness accounts that contradicted the police version of events. These revelations received intense coverage in the Philippine media (including Facebook and Twitter) and many public protests occurred in the weeks that followed, led by the Catholic Church and by activists who denounced Duterte’s drug crackdown. Footnote 156 Several senators publicly condemned the killing of delos Santos and the war on drugs, as did prominent Catholic priests. Opinion polls showed rising levels of public concern about police conduct in the war on drugs and falling levels of public support for Duterte. In October, domestic and international criticism prompted Duterte to announce that he was ending the war or drugs. Footnote 157 For the rest of 2017, while Duterte’s popularity rebounded, there was little clear evidence of extra-judicial killing, though the president did occasionally proclaim that his war on drugs would continue. In a speech on 8 December, he said:

I don’t care if you call me killer …. Who would not be a killer? So is it wrong to say now, “Do not destroy my country because I will destroy you?” …. There will be no drugs. I don’t care if I lose my job, the presidency, or if I get killed. I promised the Filipino people during the campaign and I will do it whether you like it or not. Sorry but I don’t care about your opinion about me. Footnote 158

On 29 January 2018, Philippine National Police Director General Ronald dela Rosa announced that the war on drugs would resume with a new and improved Operation Knock-and-Plead. He expressed hope that police operations would be less violent this time, but he stressed that he could not guarantee that the renewed campaign would be bloodless. The behaviour of police would depend on the reactions of the people they targeted. “Don’t fight back,” he said. “[We] have to preserve our own lives.” Footnote 159

Dela Rosa also emphasized that the new and improved war on drugs would respect human rights and be governed by the rule of law. He even released an instruction manual with guidelines describing how drug operations should proceed. Among other promised reforms, the drug watch list (the “Bible” of Knock-and-Plead) should be kept accurate and updated, police who participate in drug crackdowns should receive one day of training, anti-drug operations should be carried out only between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Mondays to Fridays, police should remember to wear their uniforms during these operations, and there should be “command responsibility” for the failures of subordinates that can be traced to the negligence or misconduct of police leaders. Footnote 160 Dela Rosa even invited the public to come along on the new Knock-and-Plead operations, saying that “anybody who wants to join” is welcome to do so because police “aren’t hiding anything.” Footnote 161 In support of this new approach to the war on drugs, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said: “We are hoping it will be [less bloody] and we welcome the statement by the PNP as reaffirming [the police] commitment to the rule of law.” Footnote 162

Controversy about the war on drugs is undesirable, Roque observed, because it blurs the government’s real intention, which is “the fight against dangerous drugs.” Footnote 163 Romulo Valles, the Archbishop of Davao and the new president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines—as well as a close friend of Duterte—stressed that police should “follow the prescribed steps” in the new guidelines so that “as much as possible we must make sure that we do not waste any lives.” Footnote 164

Time will tell how much extra-judicial killing occurs in the Philippines under new guidelines that purportedly leave “no space for possible abuse.” Footnote 165 Time will tell, too, whether capital punishment will be reinstated in the Philippines once again, as Duterte is trying to do. In his second state of the nation address, he stressed that death-penalty revival was his top legislative priority Footnote 166 and he said he wants five or six legal executions carried out every day, by hanging. Footnote 167 Unless Duterte dies, is removed from office, or is able to change the term limit rule for presidents, his one and only presidential term will end in June 2022. There is also the ICC in The Hague, which, in February 2018, opened an investigation into accusations that Duterte and other Philippine officials had committed crimes against humanity during the government’s deadly crackdown on drugs. Footnote 168 This chapter in the history of state killing in the Philippines is far from finished, but we can identify five lessons from it that students of law and society should learn.

First, extra-judicial killing deserves more study than it has so far received. Compared with the number of studies of judicial killing through institutions of capital punishment, studies of extra-judicial killing are few and far between, especially in the field of punishment and society. In some ways, this imbalance resembles the extreme imbalance between the salience of capital punishment (high) and the salience of killings by police (low) in academic and media works about the US. Footnote 169 Historians, area studies scholars, and NGOs have frequently described extra-judicial killing, but their works have rarely informed thinking about extra-judicial killing as a form of social control or a type of punishment. The best sociological accounts of genocide and governmental violations of human rights tend to focus on judicial responses to such offences, not on the offences themselves. Footnote 170 If law is usefully conceived as “governmental social control,” as one classic account argues, Footnote 171 then the failure to connect with works in other fields is unfortunate for the study of law and society. Similarly, if studies of penality should be broad, both substantively and comparatively, Footnote 172 then the failure to connect with works in other fields is unfortunate for students of punishment and society too. The study of extra-judicial killing does face empirical and conceptual challenges. Footnote 173 For one thing, governments that kill extra-legally are seldom as brazen about it as Duterte has been. Footnote 174 For another, there are different types of “extra-judicial killing” that use of one broad label obscures. Footnote 175 We leave these and other challenges for future researchers to address. The subject is so interesting, important, and neglected that we hope the challenges will do more to spur further study than to discourage it.

Second, students of capital punishment should be less sanguine about the consequences of abolition. The authors of this article oppose capital punishment and want to see it abolished everywhere, but we are also realists about the effects of abolition. The record suggests that state killing does not necessarily decline after the death penalty is abolished—as the Philippines illustrates. One analysis of the second abolition of capital punishment in the Philippines was entitled “A Lesson Learned?”. Footnote 176 The authors’ answer to the titular question was “probably” and their prediction was that the Philippines would not attempt to reinstate capital punishment again. They were wrong. Their 43-page chapter also had little to say about extra-judicial killing. A similar form of death-penalty myopia can be seen in studies of India, Footnote 177 Indonesia, Footnote 178 China, Footnote 179 countries with majority Muslim populations, Footnote 180 and countries in Africa Footnote 181 —just to name a few. More generally, the persistence of extra-judicial killing after death penalties are abolished or moratoria on judicial executions are declared suggests that there is reason to wonder whether “violence” has really declined as broadly and deeply as some scholars have argued. Footnote 182

Third, penal populism and governing through crime are common not only in developed societies, but also in those that are developing. Most studies that have employed these perspectives have focused on developed democracies in the West, and they have greatly improved our understanding of the politics of punishment. Footnote 183 But there are many less developed societies where penal populism is practised, and there are many more where leaders have realized that governing through crime brings large benefits. Footnote 184 In our view, students of punishment and society have much to learn about the politics of punishment in societies that are not WEIRD—not Western, educated, industrialized, rational, and democratic—much as students of moral psychology have gained new insights by analyzing the attitudes of people who are not WEIRD in these five ways. Footnote 185 Extending studies of penal populism to non-WEIRD societies will produce knowledge about how it differs from context to context, such as the finding that extra-judicial killing is a far more prominent feature of penal populism in the Philippines and Thailand than it is in (say) the US and Japan. At the same time, studies of non-WEIRD societies may replicate findings from the research on penal policy in modern and post-modern societies, such as the discovery that, in some Western societies, public concern about crime and media coverage of crime are closely connected to actual crime trends. Footnote 186

Fourth, scholars have long recognized that there are tensions and tradeoffs between crime-control values and due-process values, Footnote 187 but less appreciated is the fact that failures of crime control can motivate disregard for due process. The problem of impunity in Philippine criminal justice—the failure to catch and convict criminals—is so severe that many Filipinos believe ignoring rights is both justified and imperative. Footnote 188 This is the fertile ground of public opinion in which Duterte’s brand of penal populism finds root, and it can be found in other societies where extra-judicial killing is common, from India and Indonesia to Mexico and Honduras. Law and society is a large tent in which a wide variety of good research gets done but, in our view, the field would be enriched if more scholars took seriously the crime-control failures that help explain why violence is “far more serious, pervasive, and devastating in some places than others.” Footnote 189

Finally, the number of democracies in the world increased markedly after World War II, from 30 or so to more than 100. Since 2000, however, nation-states of major significance, including Russia, Turkey, Thailand, and the Philippines, have gone in the opposite, authoritarian direction. Footnote 190 More broadly, many analysts believe that liberal democracy is “retreating” in the West and elsewhere Footnote 191 and that authoritarianism is “going global.” Footnote 192 As democracy declines, so, too, might resistance to state killing, both judicial and extra-judicial. In the twentieth century, the “character of government” shaped death-penalty policy in three ways, especially in Europe. Fascist and totalitarian governments such as Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union had obvious affection for high rates of execution. Europe’s remarkably rapid movement toward abolition occurred mainly during two political transitions: one following the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945 and the other following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. And shifts of government from right-of-centre to left-of-centre precipitated death-penalty decline in countries such as England, France, and Spain. We do not know whether the current “democratic recession” will turn into a “global depression” Footnote 193 but, if it does, there could be surges in state killing in various countries. In this context, the case of the Philippines illustrates two political truths of broad relevance: that it is difficult to make a real democratic revolution succeed and that nations do not shed their pasts like snakes their skins. Footnote 194 The Philippines is the only Christian nation in Asia—and the most Westernized one as well. Yet, in many ways, it remains a feudal society dominated by a small oligarchy. Footnote 195 Unless the country undergoes deeper democratic development than it has experienced since Marcos was overthrown three decades ago, eruptions of extra-judicial killing will probably continue to occur, and another revival of capital punishment could occur as well. In the rest of the world, the erosion of democracy may augur ill for people who believe states should not kill their own citizens.

Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The authors thank all the Philippine journalists whose reporting made this article possible and Professor Patricio Abinales (University of Hawaii at Manoa), who provided much helpful advice.

1. Kaiman ( Reference Kaiman 2016a ).

2. Lasco ( Reference Lasco 2016 ).

3. New York Times ( 2016 ).

4. Sarat ( Reference Sarat 1999 ).

5. Johnson & Zimring ( Reference Johnson and Zimring 2009 ), pp. 443–51.

6. Villamor ( Reference Villamor 2018c ).

7. Romero ( Reference Romero 2017 ).

8. The two articles on extra-judicial killing are on the Rwandan genocide and on populist punitiveness in South Africa; see Drumbl ( Reference Drumbl 2000 ); Super ( Reference Super 2016 ).

9. Garland ( Reference Garland 2018 ).

10. Sikkink ( Reference Sikkink 2011 ).

11. Savelsberg ( Reference Savelsberg 2018 ).

12. Black ( Reference Black 1983 ); Robinson & Robinson ( Reference Robinson and Robinson 2018 ).

13. LaFree ( Reference LaFree 2006 ).

14. In the twentieth century, government actors were responsible for an estimated 180 million human killings in the world, which is about ten times more than the number of victims of violence in civil society; Savelsberg ( Reference Savelsberg 2017 ), p. 86; see also Kaufman & Fagan ( Reference Kaufman and Weiss Fagan 1981 ); Hagan & Rymond-Richmond ( Reference Hagan and Rymond-Richmond 2009 ).

15. Hood & Hoyle ( Reference Hood and Hoyle 2008 ), p. 6.

16. Hodgkinson ( Reference Hodgkinson 2004 ), p. 1.

17. Schabas ( Reference Schabas 2004 ), p. 62; Schabas ( Reference Schabas 2002 ), pp. V and 377.

18. Gil ( Reference Gil 2017 ).

19. Fenton ( Reference Fenton 2017a ).

20. Johnson & Zimring, supra note 5, pp. 103–45.

21. Abinales & Amoroso ( Reference Abinales and Amoroso 2017 ); Parreno ( Reference Parreno 2011 ); McCoy ( Reference McCoy 2009 ).

22. Hilbay ( Reference Hilbay 2009 ), p. 2.

23. Ibid ., p. 1.

24. Arceo ( Reference Arceo 2016 ), emphasis added.

25. The best analysis of the difficulties counting the number of extra-judicial killings has been provided by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, which reported that “the government’s drug war narrative so far has not only been bloody, it has also been blurry. Although government officials have not denied that lives have been lost in the anti-drug campaign, they have yet to explain its narrative that is crowded with constantly changing concepts and terms, even as it is decked in numbers inflated then deflated and later inflated again. Indeed, it is a narrative defined from a war waged mainly as a police operation, its ‘accomplishments’ or success pegged on an ever-lengthening trail of bodies and victims, but with no certain answers for whence or how it should end, and bereft of solid baselines and firm targets”; see Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism ( 2017 ).

26. Kaufman & Fagan, supra note 14; Belur ( Reference Belur 2010 ).

27. Fenton ( Reference Fenton 2017b ).

28. After a person is killed in Duterte’s war on drugs, the police routinely claim that they fired their guns only because they were fired upon first. Policing in the Philippines is dangerous. In the 18 months from July 2016 through December 2017, 86 police officers were killed and 226 were wounded in a Philippine police force with approximately 170,000 officers. The probability of a police officer in the Philippines being killed is thus about 4.5 times higher than the probability of a police officer being killed in the US; see Zimring ( Reference Zimring 2017 ), p. 94. However, a Reuters review of 51 drug-related shooting incidents in Manila found that police killed a total of 100 suspects and wounded only three—two of whom played dead; see Baldwin ( Reference Baldwin 2016 ). This lopsidedly lethal ratio suggests that Philippine police are either amazingly accurate shooters or else they are determined to kill the citizens they target in the war on drugs; see also Special Report ( 2017 ).

29. Gomez & Cerojano ( Reference Gomez and Cerojano 2017 ).

30. Bueza ( Reference Bueza 2017 ).

31. The source for this estimate of 9,400 extra-judicial executions is Filipino lawyer Jude Josue Sabio, who submitted it to the ICC when he formally asked the ICC to charge Duterte and 11 other officials with mass murder and crimes against humanity. New York Times ( 2017a ); New York Times ( 2017b ).

32. For death tolls and related statistics based on data provided by the Philippine National Police as of January 2018, those numbers had not been updated since April 2017. As of 30 January 2017, the Rappler web site reported that there had been 7,080 people killed in the war on drugs in the preceding seven months; Bueza, supra note 30. After Duterte became president, the Inquirer published an updated “kill list” until 16 February 2017, when it stopped because the war on drugs was temporarily halted. According to the list, there were at least 1,104 killings by police and 1,022 killings by unknown hitmen as of 16 February 2017; see Inquirer ( 2017 ).

33. Symmes ( Reference Symmes 2017 ).

34. Chen ( Reference Chen 2016 ).

35. Jones ( Reference Jones 2016 ).

36. Kaiman ( Reference Kaiman 2016b ).

37. Syjuco ( Reference Syjuco 2017 ).

38. Symmes, supra note 33.

40. Tordesillas ( Reference Tordesillas 2017 ).

41. Pamintuan ( Reference Pamintuan 2017a ).

42. Pamintuan ( Reference Pamintuan 2017b ).

43. Lasco, supra note 2.

44. Iyengar ( Reference Iyengar 2016 ).

46. Symmes, supra note 33.

47. Weiss ( Reference Weiss 2017 ).

48. Gayle ( Reference Gayle 2016 ).

49. Brown ( Reference Brown 2009 ).

50. Symmes, supra note 33.

51. Rodis ( Reference Rodis 2017 ).

52. Spierenburg ( Reference Spierenburg 2008 ).

53. Garland ( Reference Garland 2005 ).

54. Kaiman, supra note 1.

55. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, in the decade between August 2006 and August 2016, 41 journalists were “killed with complete impunity” in the Philippines, giving the country the fourth worst record for assassinated journalists in the world, behind Somalia, Iraq, and Syria. At least 34 of those journalists were killed in the Maguindanao Massacre of 23 November 2009, which may be the single deadliest event for journalists in history. See Witchel ( Reference Witchel 2016 ).

56. Villamor ( Reference Villamor 2017d ); Santos ( Reference Santos 2017 ); Jones, supra note 35.

59. Some analysts think Duterte has a personal vendetta against De Lima. In 2009, when he was mayor of Davao, De Lima was head of the Commission on Human Rights, which investigated Duterte’s involvement in extra-judicial killings in that city. De Lima admits berating him then, and she believes he has never forgotten it. Witchel, supra note 55.

60. Symmes, supra note 33.

61. de Guzman ( Reference de Guzman 2017 ).

62. Curato ( Reference Curato 2016a ).

63. Kaiman, supra note 1; Mogato & Baldwin ( Reference Mogato and Baldwin 2017 ).

64. Heydarian ( Reference Heydarian 2018 ).

65. Ranada ( Reference Ranada 2017 ).

66. Cupin ( Reference Cupin 2017 ).

67. Abinales & Amoroso, supra note 21, p. 344.

68. Zimring ( Reference Zimring 2003 ), p. 12.

69. Demick ( Reference Demick 2016 ).

70. Gonzales ( Reference Gonzales 2016 ).

71. Heydarian, supra note 64.

72. Curato ( Reference Curato 2017b ).

73. Barrera ( Reference Barrera 2017 ).

74. Pamintuan, supra note 41.

75. After this brief moratorium on extra-judicial killing, the war on drugs was resumed in two stages: first with small drug-enforcement task forces (deployed on 27 February 2017) and then more aggressively when “Oplan Double Barrel Alpha Reloaded” was launched (on 6 March 2017). The “Double Barrel” phrase represents a drug policy that is supposed to be aimed in two directions simultaneously, with one barrel directed upwards at high-level drug traffickers and the other pointed downwards at poor drug sellers and users. In reality, however, most victims of extra-judicial killing are poor. One study found that more than half of victims were unemployed and that men outnumbered women by a ratio of 14:1; see Abinales & Amoroso, supra note 21, p. 343.

76. Villamor ( Reference Villamor 2017e ).

77. Fenton, supra note 27.

78. Pamintuan, supra note 74.

79. Rauhala ( Reference Rauhala 2016 ).

80. BBC ( 2016 ).

81. Curato, supra note 62, p. 9.

82. Villamor ( Reference Villamor 2017b ).

83. Special Report, supra note 28; Mogato & Baldwin, supra note 63.

84. Ali & Zanab ( Reference Ali and Zanab 2017 ).

85. Campbell ( Reference Campbell 2016 ).

86. Rauhala, supra note 79; see also Democracy Now (2016).

87. Whaley ( Reference Whaley 2016 ).

88. Rauhala, supra note 79.

89. Whaley, supra note 87.

90. Curato, supra note 62.

91. Baldwin and Marshall ( Reference Baldwin and Marshall 2016 ).

92. Paddock ( Reference Paddock 2017 ).

93. Duterte is a man of multiple contradictions. He has been called a “mass murderer” (New York Times, supra note 32) but is also seen as a champion of the little guy. He is a promoter of women’s rights who called his daughter a “drama queen” after she said she was raped. During his presidential campaign, he told a packed stadium in Quezon City that, when he saw the corpse of Jacqueline Hamill, an Australian missionary who was gang-raped and murdered in Davao in 1989, “I got angry. That she was raped? Yes, that too. But it was that she was so beautiful—the mayor should have been first. What a waste.” See Curato, supra note 62, p. 93. Space does not permit a detailed description of Duterte’s life, but here are a few more salient facts. He was elected president at age 71, making him the oldest of the country’s 16 presidents—and the first to come from the south. His father was a lawyer and governor of Davao province. His mother was a school teacher and political activist who frequently whipped her son. He was sexually abused by a Catholic priest when he was a boy. He was expelled from two high schools. He claims to have killed his first person at the age of 17 and thereafter he apparently shot a law-school classmate for being a bully. He was a prosecutor for about ten years before becoming mayor of Davao for 22 years. After a motorcycle accident in 2013, he became addicted to the opioid fentanyl (a painkiller), which is far more potent than heroin and which, Duterte says, made him feel like he was on “cloud nine … with nothing to worry about”; see ABS-CBN News ( 2017 ). For more details about Duterte’s life, see Chen, supra note 34; Heydarian, supra note 64; and, for a collection of critical essays on Duterte’s early presidency, see Curato ( Reference Curato 2017a ).

94. Garland ( Reference Garland 1990 ), p. 125.

95. Johnson & Zimring, supra note 5, p. 109.

96. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime ( 2014 ).

97. Ranada ( Reference Ranada 2016 ).

99. United Nations World Drug Report ( 2012 ).

100. Iyengar, supra note 44.

101. Lasco, supra note 2.

102. Ibid .; Lasco ( Reference Lasco 2014 ).

103. Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines ( 2015 ).

104. Lasco, supra note 2.

105. Rahman & Crofts ( Reference Rahman and Crofts 2013 ).

106. Lasco, supra note 102.

107. Ibid .

108. Symmes, supra note 33.

109. Iyengar, supra note 44.

110. Jones, supra note 35.

111. Currie ( Reference Currie 1993 ).

112. Kaiman ( Reference Kaiman 2017 ).

113. Alston ( Reference Alston 2008 ); Alston ( Reference Alston 2009 ).

114. Narag ( Reference Narag 2005 ).

115. Syjuco, supra note 37.

116. Narag ( Reference Narag 2017b ).

117. David ( Reference David 2018 ).

118. Syjuco, supra note 37.

119. Inzunza & Veiras ( Reference Inzunza and Veiras 2017 ).

120. Syjuco, supra note 37.

121. Rodis, supra note 51. In fact, as extra-judicial killings have increased in the Philippines, so, too, have the government’s estimates of drug use; Tree ( Reference Tree 2018 ).

122. Pratt ( Reference Pratt 2007 ), p. 2.

123. Houle & Kenny ( Reference Houle and Kenny 2018 ).

124. In the Philippines and other societies, penal populism arises out of deep social changes that have been taking place since the 1970s, including: (1) a decline of deference to elites, which has weakened the authority of criminal justice officials; (2) a decline of trust in politicians and political processes, mainly because of the failure of politics-as-usual to address the needs of ordinary people; (3) globalization, which has fuelled the perception that no one is in control of the country; and (4) heightened concerns about crime and insecurity and a perceived decline in social cohesion. Pratt ( Reference Pratt 2007 ), pp. 36–65.

125. Curato ( Reference Curato 2016b ).

126. Gutierrez ( Reference Gutierrez 2017 ).

127. Ibid .

128. Heydarian, supra note 64.

129. Ibid .

130. Roberts et al. ( Reference Roberts, Stalans, Indermaur and Hough 2003 ), p. 50.

131. World Prison Brief ( 2017 ).

132. Narag, supra note 114.

133. Compared to some other countries in Southeast Asia, these are differences of degree, not kind. For example, Thailand’s prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, initiated a war on drugs in 2003 that killed 2,800 people in its first three months, more than half of whom had no connection to illicit drugs; see Human Rights Watch ( 2017 ). And, in 2017, Indonesian President Joko Widodo instructed police to shoot drug traffickers “because we are indeed in a narcotics emergency position now.” See Bangkok Post ( 2017 ).

134. Berlow ( Reference Berlow 1996 ).

135. McCoy ( Reference McCoy 1993 ).

136. Abinales ( Reference Abinales 2000 ).

137. Rauhala, supra note 79.

138. Simon ( Reference Simon 2007 ).

139. Ibid ., p. 4.

140. Ibid ., p. 5.

141. Ibid ., p. 6.

142. Freedom House ( 2018 ), p. 6.

143. Karnow ( Reference Karnow 1989 ), p. xi.

144. Ibid ., p. 25.

145. Heydarian, supra note 64. In most democracies, the proportion of elected offices controlled by dynastic families rarely exceeds 10%; Smith ( Reference Smith 2018 ).

146. Abinales & Amoroso, supra note 21, p. 339.

147. Berlow, supra note 134, p. xiv.

148. President Duterte is often praised for living a life of apparent simplicity, but the Philippine Office of the Ombudsman is investigating complaints that he amassed 2.2 billion pesos (USD 43 million) in wealth while he was mayor of Davao and his son Paolo (the vice-mayor of Davao) was investigated by the Senate for allegedly helping to import USD 125 million worth of narcotics from China. See Reuters Staff ( 2017 ); Lema ( Reference Lema 2017 ). It is impossible for us to discern whether these allegations have merit, but there is no doubt about the more general matter: the Philippines is corrupt. In Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index for 2016, the country received the same ranking as Thailand and Timor-Leste (101 out of 176 countries) and was deemed more corrupt than Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia; see Transparency International ( 2016 ).

149. Chayes ( Reference Chayes 2015 ).

150. Acemoglu & Robinson ( Reference Acemoglu and Robinson 2012 ).

151. Huntington ( Reference Huntington 2000 ), p. xiv.

152. Zimring, supra note 68, p. 22; Johnson & Zimring, supra note 5, p. 295; Garland ( Reference Garland 2010 ), p. 127.

153. In this speech, Duterte (2017) also discussed a bloody two-month uprising by pro-Islamic State militants in the southern city of Marawi that led to the deaths of 421 militants, 99 soldiers, and 45 civilians—a much smaller death toll than that caused by the crackdown on drugs in the first two months of his presidency. At the time of this speech, the Philippine Congress, which was dominated by Duterte’s supporters, had just granted his request to extend martial law in the southern part of the country through the end of 2017, which Duterte claimed would help restore “public safety and law and order in the whole of Mindanao”; see Villamor ( Reference Villamor 2017f ). Critics said martial law powers were unnecessary to defeat the fewer than 100 militants who remained in Marawi, and they worried that Duterte was using the crisis as an excuse to impose authoritarian rule throughout the country. In a news conference after this speech, Duterte threatened to order airstrikes against tribal schools he accused of teaching students to become communists; see Honolulu Star-Advertiser ( 2017 ).

154. Asian Correspondent Staff ( 2017 ).

155. Ibid .

156. Villamor ( Reference Villamor 2017c ).

157. On 31 August 2017, the National Bureau of Investigation filed a complaint against four Caloocan City police for the murder of delos Santos and the planting of evidence; see Buan ( Reference Buan 2017 ). Five months later, the Department of Justice indicted three of those officers (plus one civilian) for those crimes and for raiding delos Santos’s home without a search warrant, but the complaint against their station commander was dropped for lack of evidence; see Buan ( Reference Buan 2018 ). For a case in which a drug-raid survivor took the police to court, see Villamor ( Reference Villamor 2017a ).

158. Gita ( Reference Gita 2017 ).

159. Cabico ( Reference Cabico 2018 ).

160. The new guidelines for Knock-and-Plead are organized in seven steps, as follows: (1) the creation and updating of the drug watch list; (2) the creation and training of police teams; (3) pre-deployment preparations; (4) knock then plead; (5) documentation and referral; (6) the submission of “after activity reports” to regional police authorities, the sharing of “best practices,” and performance evaluations; and (7) increased accountability for front-line police and their superiors; Talabong ( Reference Talabong 2018a ).

161. Talabong ( Reference Talabong 2018b ).

162. Ranada ( Reference Ranada 2018b ).

163. Roque has impressive human rights credentials. He is a lawyer and former law professor who taught constitutional law and international law at the University of the Philippines for 15 years and who worked on cases involving human rights violations in the Maguindanao massacre of 2009. He has stood up to Duterte on some matters of principle (e.g. “I’ll resign if Duterte tramples press freedom”), but in his role as presidential spokesperson he has also made compromises with human rights and defended Duterte’s attack on Rappler, the domestic media organization that has provided the most comprehensive coverage of the war on drugs; Ranada ( Reference Ranada 2018a ); Ranada ( Reference Ranada 2018b ).

164. Cabrera ( Reference Cabrera 2018 ).

165. Talabong, supra note 160.

166. Mendez & Regalado ( Reference Mendez and Regalado 2017 ).

167. The Nation & AFP ( 2016 ).

168. Villamor ( Reference Villamor 2018b ). In March 2018, Duterte declared that the Philippines would withdraw from the treaty that established the ICC because the ICC was “being utilized as a political tool” against his country; Villamor ( Reference Villamor 2018a ). Some scholars believe the war on drugs in the Philippines constitutes “an act of genocide” because it satisfies the eight stages of genocide described by Gregory. The stages are: classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination, and denial; see Stanton ( Reference Stanton 2018 ); Simangan ( Reference Simangan 2017 ).

169. Zimring, supra note 28, pp. 6–12.

170. For a foundational work of world history that could be used to further develop the study of extra-judicial killing, see Kiernan ( Reference Kiernan 2007 ), on righteous, religious, and racial genocides, and exterminations from Sparta to Darfur; see also Hagan ( Reference Hagan 2003 ); Savelsberg ( Reference Savelsberg 2015 ).

171. Black ( Reference Black 1976 ), p. 2.

172. Garland ( Reference Garland 1999 ).

173. Belur, supra note 26.

174. Campbell & Brenner ( Reference Campbell and Brenner 2002 ).

175. Kaufman & Fagan, supra note 14.

176. Johnson & Zimring, supra note 5, Chapter 4.

177. Deva ( Reference Deva 2013 ).

178. Lubis ( Reference Lubis 2014 ).

179. Liu ( Reference Liu 2013 ).

180. Habash ( Reference Habash 2014 ).

181. Novak ( Reference Novak 2016 ).

182. Pinker ( Reference Pinker 2011 ); Cirillo & Taleb ( Reference Cirillo and Taleb 2015 ).

183. Pratt, supra note 122; Simon, supra note 138.

184. Curato, supra note 62; Curato, supra note 125; McCargo ( Reference McCargo 2016 ); Gutierrez, supra note 126.

185. Haidt ( Reference Haidt 2012 ), pp. 95–111.

186. Miller ( Reference Miller 2016 ).

187. Packer ( Reference Packer 1968 ); Narag ( Reference Narag 2017a ).

188. Syjuco, supra note 37.

189. Currie ( Reference Currie 2016 ), p. 33.

190. Remnick ( Reference Remnick 2017 ).

191. Luce ( Reference Luce 2017 ); Diamond & Plattner ( Reference Diamond and Plattner 2015 ).

192. Diamond et al. ( Reference Diamond, Marc and Walker 2016 ); Levitsky & Ziblatt ( Reference Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018 ).

193. Luce, supra note 191.

194. Berlow, supra note 134.

195. Abinales & Amoroso, supra note 21.

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Volume 5, Issue 2
David T. JOHNSON (a1) and Jon FERNQUEST (a2)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/als.2018.12

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Human Rights and Duterte’s War on Drugs

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has led to thousands of extrajudicial killings, raising human rights concerns, says expert John Gershman in this interview.

Interview by Michelle Xu , Interviewer John Gershman , Interviewee

December 16, 2016 3:56 pm (EST)

Since becoming president of the Philippines in June 2016, Rodrigo Duterte has launched a war on drugs that has resulted in the extrajudicial deaths of thousands of alleged drug dealers and users across the country. The Philippine president sees drug dealing and addiction as “major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress,” says John Gershman, an expert on Philippine politics. The drug war is a cornerstone of Duterte’s domestic policy and represents the extension of policies he’d implemented earlier in his political career as the mayor of the city of Davao. In December 2016, the United States withheld poverty aid to the Philippines after declaring concern over Duterte’s war on drugs.

How did the Philippines’ war on drugs start?

When Rodrigo Duterte campaigned for president, he claimed that drug dealing and drug addiction were major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress. He promised a large-scale crackdown on dealers and addicts, similar to the crackdown that he engaged in when he was mayor of Davao, one of the Philippines’ largest cities on the southern island of Mindanao. When Duterte became president in June, he encouraged the public to “go ahead and kill” drug addicts. His rhetoric has been widely understood as an endorsement of extrajudicial killings, as it has created conditions for people to feel that it’s appropriate to kill drug users and dealers. What have followed seem to be vigilante attacks against alleged or suspected drug dealers and drug addicts. The police are engaged in large-scale sweeps. The Philippine National Police also revealed a list of high-level political officials and other influential people who were allegedly involved in the drug trade.

“When Rodrigo Duterte campaigned for president, he claimed that drug dealing and drug addiction were major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress.”

Philippines

Rodrigo Duterte

Drug Policy

The dominant drug in the Philippines is a variant of methamphetamine called shabu. According to a 2012 United Nations report , among all the countries in East Asia, the Philippines had the highest rate of methamphetamine abuse. Estimates showed that about 2.2 percent of Filipinos between the ages of sixteen and sixty-four were using methamphetamines, and that methamphetamines and marijuana were the primary drugs of choice. In 2015, the national drug enforcement agency reported that one fifth of the barangays, the smallest administrative division in the Philippines, had evidence of drug use, drug trafficking, or drug manufacturing; in Manila, the capital, 92 percent of the barangays had yielded such evidence.

How would you describe Duterte’s leadership as the mayor of Davao?

After the collapse of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, there were high levels of crime in Davao and Duterte cracked down on crime associated with drugs and criminality more generally. There was early criticism of his time as mayor by Philippine and international human rights groups because of his de facto endorsement of extrajudicial killings, under the auspices of the “Davao Death Squad.”

Duterte was also successful at negotiating with the Philippine Communist Party. He was seen broadly as sympathetic to their concerns about poverty, inequality, and housing, and pursued a reasonably robust anti-poverty agenda while he was mayor. He was also interested in public health issues, launching the first legislation against public smoking in the Philippines, which he has claimed he will launch nationally.

What have been the outcomes of the drug war?

By early December , nearly 6,000 people had been killed: about 2,100 have died in police operations and the remainder in what are called “deaths under investigation,” which is shorthand for vigilante killings. There are also claims that half a million to seven hundred thousand people have surrendered themselves to the police. More than 40,000 people have been arrested.

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Although human rights organizations and political leaders have spoken out against the crackdown, Duterte has been relatively successful at not having the legislature engaged in any serious oversight of or investigation into this war. Philippine Senator Leila de Lima, former chairperson of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights and a former secretary of justice under the previous administration, had condemned the war on drugs and held hearings on human rights violations associated with these extrajudicial killings. However, in August, Duterte alleged that he had evidence of de Lima having an affair with her driver, who had been using drugs and collecting drug protection money when de Lima was the justice secretary. De Lima was later removed from her position chairing the investigative committee in a 16-4 vote by elected members of the Senate committee.

What is the public reaction to the drug war?

The war on drugs has received a high level of popular support from across the class spectrum in the Philippines. The most recent nationwide survey on presidential performance and trust ratings conducted from September 25 to October 1 by Pulse Asia Research showed that Duterte’s approval rating was around 86 percent. Even through some people are concerned about these deaths, they support him as a president for his position on other issues. For example, he has a relatively progressive economic agenda, with a focus on economic inequality.

Duterte is also supporting a range of anti-poverty programs and policies. The most recent World Bank quarterly report speaks positively about Duterte’s economic plans. The fact that he wants to work on issues of social inequality and economic inequality makes people not perceive the drug war as a war on the poor.

How is Duterte succeeding in carrying out this war on drugs?

The Philippine judicial system is very slow and perceived as corrupt, enabling Duterte to act proactively and address the issue of drugs in a non-constructive way with widespread violations of human rights. Moreover, in the face of a corrupt, elite-dominated political system and a slow, ineffective, and equally corrupt judicial system, people are willing to tolerate this politician who promised something and is now delivering.

“Drug dealers and drug addicts are a stigmatized group, and stigmatized groups always have difficulty gaining political support for the defense of their rights.”

There are no trials, so there is no evidence that the people being killed are in fact drug dealers or drug addicts. [This situation] shows the weakness of human rights institutions and discourse in the face of a popular and skilled populist leader. It is different from college students being arrested under the Marcos regime or activists being targeted under the first Aquino administration, when popular outcry was aroused. Drug dealers and drug addicts are a stigmatized group, and stigmatized groups always have difficulty gaining political support for the defense of their rights.

How has the United States reacted to the drug war and why is Duterte challenging U.S.-Philippines relations?

It’s never been a genuine partnership. It’s always been a relationship dominated by U.S. interests. Growing up in the 1960s, Duterte lived through a period when the United States firmly supported a regime that was even more brutal than this particular regime and was willing to not criticize that particular government. He noticed that the United States was willing to overlook human rights violations when these violations served their geopolitical interests. He was unhappy about the double standards. [Editor’s Note: The Obama administration has expressed concern over reports of extrajudicial killings and encouraged Manila to abide by its international human rights obligations.] For the first time, the United States is facing someone who is willing to challenge this historically imbalanced relationship. It is unclear what might happen to the relationship under the administration of Donald J. Trump, but initial indications are that it may not focus on human rights in the Philippines. President-Elect Trump has reportedly endorsed the Philippine president’s effort, allegedly saying that the country is going about the drug war "the right way," according to Duterte .

The interview has been edited and condensed.

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Drugs and Philippine Society

Drugs and Philippine Society is a collection of critical essays that look at drug use, drug wars, and drug policies in the Philippines from different angles, from the perspectives of scholars, social and cultural workers, artists and activists present and past. In doing so, it seeks to uncover societal prejudices about a long- misunderstood subject—and unmask the many contexts of how drugs are used and misused in the country.

Aside from a foreword by Sheila Coronel and a critical introduction by Gideon Lasco, the anthology gathers photographs of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs since 2016 and its effects on Philippine communities to further contextualize the urgent need to rethink drug policies not only in the country but around the world.

Published in 2021

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A World Court Inches Closer To A Reckoning In The Philippines' War On Drugs

Julie McCarthy

Relatives and friends mourn during Lilibeth Valdez's funeral on June 4 in Manila, Philippines. An off-duty police officer was seen pulling the hair of 52-year-old Valdez, before shooting her dead. The former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court recommended the court open an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed during President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images hide caption

After years of a deadly counternarcotics campaign that has riven the Philippines, the International Criminal Court is a step closer to opening what international law experts say would be its first case bringing crimes against humanity charges in the context of a drug war.

On June 14, the last day of her nine-year term as the ICC's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda announced there was "a reasonable basis to believe that the crime against humanity of murder" had been committed in the war on drugs carried out under the government of President Rodrigo Duterte. Bensouda urged the court to open a full-scale investigation into the bloody crackdown between July 1, 2016, when Duterte took office, and March 16, 2019, when the Philippines' withdrawal from the ICC took effect.

Said at first to be unfazed by the prosecutor's findings of alleged murder under his watch, Duterte went on to rail against the international court in his June 21 "Talk to the People," vowing, in an invective-filled rant, never to submit to its jurisdiction. "This is bulls***. Why would I defend or face an accusation before white people? You must be crazy," Duterte scoffed. (The 18 judges on the ICC are an ethnically diverse group from around the world . And Bensouda, from Gambia, is the first female African to serve as the court's chief prosecutor.)

The drug war has been a signature policy of President Duterte's administration, and its brutality has drawn international condemnation. But for years the world has stood by as allegations of human rights violations accumulated, and Duterte barred international investigators. The findings of the chief prosecutor represent the most prominent record to date of the killings committed under the Philippines' anti-narcotics campaign and set the stage for a potential legal reckoning for its perpetrators.

"It wasn't a rushed decision," Manila-based human rights attorney Neri Colmenares says of Bensouda's three years of examination, which "makes the case stronger." He says, "It is not yet justice, but it is a major step toward that."

The prosecutor's findings

Bensouda's final report says the nationwide anti-drug campaign deployed "unnecessary and disproportionate" force. The information the prosecutor gathered suggests "members of Philippine security forces and other, often associated, perpetrators deliberately killed thousands of civilians suspected to be involved in drug activities." The report cites Duterte's statements encouraging law enforcement to kill drug suspects, promising police immunity, and inflating numbers, claiming there were variously "3 million" and "4 million" addicts in the Philippines. The government itself puts the figures of drug users at 1.8 million.

Fatou Bensouda speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in The Hague, Netherlands, June 14, before ending her nine-year tenure as chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. Peter Dejong/AP hide caption

Fatou Bensouda speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in The Hague, Netherlands, June 14, before ending her nine-year tenure as chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.

The Philippines' Drug Enforcement Agency reports more than 6,100 drug crime suspects have been killed in police operations since Duterte became president. But Bensouda says, "Police and other government officials planned, ordered, and sometimes directly perpetrated" killings outside official police operations. Independent researchers estimate the drug war's death toll, including those extrajudicial killings, could be as high as 12,000 to 30,000 .

The international court's now former prosecutor based her findings on evidence gathered in part from families of slain suspects, their testimonials redacted from her report to protect their identities. She cited rights groups such as Amnesty International that detailed how police planted evidence at crime scenes, fabricated official reports, and pilfered belongings from victims' homes.

Colmenares, who is a former congressman, says the police appeared to have a modus operandi. "Sometimes the police would go into the house and segregate the family from the father or the son, and then later on the father and the son would be killed. The witnesses say that the husband was already kneeling or raising their hand," he says.

Colmenares says in the prevailing atmosphere of impunity in the Philippines, families are "courageous" for bearing witness.

Police self-defense debunked

Police have justified the killings by saying that the suspects put up a struggle, requiring the use of deadly force, a scenario they call nanlaban . Duterte himself said last week, "We kill them because they fight back." Duterte fears that if drastic measures were not taken, the Philippines could wind up in the sort of destabilizing narco-conflict that afflicts Mexico. "What will then happen to my country?"

Bensouda rejects police claims that they acted in self-defense, citing witness testimony, and findings of rights groups such as Amnesty International .

In February, the Philippines' own Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra conceded to the United Nations Human Rights Council that the police's nanlaban argument is often deeply flawed. His ministry had reviewed many incident reports where police said suspects were killed in shootouts. "Yet, no full examination of the weapon recovered was conducted. No verification of its ownership was undertaken. No request for ballistic examination or paraffin test was pursued," he said .

Supporters of Kian delos Santos attend a vigil on Nov. 29, 2018, outside a Manila police station where officers thought to be involved in the teenager's killing were assigned. Three Philippine policemen were sentenced to decades in prison for murdering delos Santos during an anti-narcotics sweep. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Despite that, only a single case has resulted in the prosecution and conviction of three police officers for the murder of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos in August 2017, after the incident sparked national outrage. Police accused delos Santos, a student, of being a drug-runner, a charge his family denied. When the teenager was found dead in an alley, police said they had killed him in self-defense. CCTV footage contradicted the police version of events.

"Duterte Harry"

Bensouda buttresses her case by citing Duterte's 22 years as mayor of Davao City on the island of Mindanao, where her report says he "publicly supported and encouraged the killing of petty criminals and drug dealers," ostensibly to enforce discipline on a city besieged by crime, a communist rebellion, and an active counterinsurgency campaign .

Over 120,000 People Remain Displaced 3 Years After Philippines' Marawi Battle

Former police officials testified to the existence of a death squad that acted on the orders of then-Mayor Duterte and which rights groups allege carried out more than 1,400 killings .

Bensouda's report says Duterte's central focus on fighting crime and drug use earned him monikers such as " The Punisher " and " Duterte Harry ," and in 2016 he rode that strongman image to the presidency in a country that had been battling drug syndicates for decades and was weary of crime.

A policeman comes out of the shanty home of two brothers and an unidentified man who were killed during an operation as part of the continuing war on drugs in Manila, Philippines, Oct. 6, 2016. Aaron Favila/AP hide caption

A policeman comes out of the shanty home of two brothers and an unidentified man who were killed during an operation as part of the continuing war on drugs in Manila, Philippines, Oct. 6, 2016.

In a 2016 address to the national police, he warned drug criminals who would harm the nation's sons and daughters: "I will kill you, I will kill you. I will take the law into my own hands. ... Forget about the laws of men, forget about the laws of international order."

American University international law professor Diane Orentlicher says the ICC prosecutor reached back to the ultra-aggressive approach Duterte first deployed in Davao City to show that "there were the same kind of summary executions earlier in the Philippines." Orentlicher says it identifies "continuity of certain patterns" and the threat they pose "over almost a quarter of a century."

Obstacles ahead

While the finding of possible crimes against humanity is a significant step in the ICC's scrutiny, formidable hurdles remain before any prosecutor could formally name perpetrators or issue indictments.

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Firstly, President Duterte denies any wrongdoing, unambiguously vows not to cooperate in an international court investigation, and could stonewall the effort in his last year in office. And despite the bloodshed, and mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic , Duterte's " crude everyman " image still appeals to a majority of Filipinos.

Orentlicher says building a crimes against humanity case is complex, involving potentially thousands of victims "over time [and] over territory." While human rights activists would like to see Duterte in the dock, linking the alleged crimes to individual perpetrators is a massive evidentiary undertaking.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte delivers a speech in Quezon City, Philippines, on June 25. Ace Morandante/Malacanang Presidential Photographers Division via AP hide caption

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte delivers a speech in Quezon City, Philippines, on June 25.

Powerful leaders facing scrutiny, she says, have been able to "interfere with witnesses, obstruct justice [and] intimidate people who would be key sources for the prosecutor." While the most senior officials are the ones the public expects the world court to take on, Orentlicher says they "are in the best position to keep a prosecutor from getting the evidence."

David Bosco, author of a book about the International Criminal Court titled Rough Justice, says it's also entirely possible the judges may not authorize an investigation. Bosco says it would not be because the Philippine case lacks merit, rather he says the plethora of allegations involving possible war crimes from Afghanistan to Nigeria to the Gaza Strip has the court overstretched.

"And even if the judges were to authorize an investigation, then you're talking about trying to launch an investigation when you have a hostile government," Bosco says. "So I think this is a very long road before we get to any perpetrator seeing the inside of a courtroom."

But Bosco adds prosecutors who have opened an ICC investigation have also been content to have the case lie dormant for long periods.

Why Rights Groups Worry About The Philippines' New Anti-Terrorism Law

"And then they revive," he says. "And so, we shouldn't ignore the possibility that there could be political changes in the Philippines that suddenly make a new government much more amenable to cooperating. So things could change."

Bosco says a potential investigation of the Philippines is also important because it raises the critical question: whether a state that has joined the ICC and then subsequently has come under scrutiny can "immunize itself by leaving the court." As the chief prosecutor persisted in examining the country's drug war, the Philippines withdrew as a member of the ICC.

Bosco believes the fact Bensouda sought authorization for her successor to open an investigation into the Philippines is "an important signal that the court is still going to pursue countries that have left the ICC once they've come under scrutiny."

Orentlicher says the court may look to the case of Burundi, the first country to leave the ICC. Prosecutors have continued to investigate alleged crimes against humanity committed in the country before it withdrew in 2017.

Decades of drug wars

The focus on the Philippines comes at a time when countries around the world are questioning heavy-handed counternarcotics tactics. That includes the United States, whose war on drugs dates back to at least 1971 when President Richard Nixon called for an "all-out offensive" against drug abuse and addiction.

The War On Drugs: 50 Years Later

"Over the last 50 years, we've unfortunately seen the 'War on Drugs' be used as an excuse to declare war on people of color, on poor Americans and so many other marginalized groups," New York Attorney General Letitia James said .

Likewise, the former ICC chief prosecutor Bensouda notes that the Philippines' drug fight has been called a "war on the poor" as the most affected group "has been poor, low-skilled residents of impoverished urban areas."

Drug addiction, especially crystal meth, known locally as shabu , grips the Philippines. Just this month, the national police said that security forces have been "seizing large volumes of shabu left and right," an acknowledgment that drugs remain rampant five years into the brutal drug war.

An aerial view shows Filipinos observing social distancing as they take part in a protest against President Duterte's anti-terrorism bill on June 12, 2020, in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines. Critics says the legislation gives the state power to violate due process, privacy and other basic rights of Filipino citizens. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images hide caption

Calls are mounting for greater attention to drug prevention and public health for drug users. "Heavy suppression efforts marked by extra-judicial killings and street arrests were not going to slow down demand," Jeremy Douglas, Southeast Asia representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, told Reuters .

Edcel C. Lagman, a long-serving member of the Philippine Congress, recently wrote in the Manila Times that the ammunition needed in this war includes drug-abuse prevention education, skill training and "well-funded health interventions" to "reintegrate former drug dependent into society."

The Philippine National Police's narcotics chief himself, Col. Romeo Caramat, acknowledged that the violent approach to curbing illicit drugs has not been effective. "Shock and awe definitely did not work," he told Reuters in 2020.

A long, tough process

Philippine Journalist Maria Ressa: 'Journalism Is Activism'

Even if the ICC decides to open a formal investigation, Orentlicher says Duterte's defiance should not be underestimated. Journalists who have exposed the drug war have been jailed, and human rights advocates who have spoken out, including members of the clergy, have been threatened.

"This is going to be a very tough process," Orentlicher says, "not for the faint of heart at all."

Portraits of alleged victims of the Philippine war on drugs are displayed during a protest on July 22, 2019, in Manila. Richard James Mendoza/NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption

Portraits of alleged victims of the Philippine war on drugs are displayed during a protest on July 22, 2019, in Manila.

Human rights attorney Colmenares maintains a cautious optimism that there will be a legal reckoning on behalf of the victims' families who want justice.

"It may be long and it may be arduous," Colmenares says, "but that's how struggles are fought and that's how struggles are won."

international law
Philippine drug war
The Philippines
rodrigo duterte
International Criminal Court
crimes against humanity
Philippines
Fatou Bensouda

Essay on Drugs In The Philippines

Students are often asked to write an essay on Drugs In The Philippines in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Drugs In The Philippines

Introduction to drug issues in the philippines.

In the Philippines, illegal drugs are a big problem. Many people, including the young, get caught in the trap of using drugs. This leads to health problems, crime, and even death.

Types of Drugs Used

The most common drugs in the Philippines are shabu (methamphetamine), marijuana, and ecstasy. These drugs are dangerous and can change the way a person thinks and acts.

Government Actions

The government fights hard against drugs. They make rules, arrest people who sell drugs, and try to help those who are using drugs to stop.

Community Efforts

Local groups and schools teach kids about the dangers of drugs. They want to prevent drug use by giving information and support to everyone.

250 Words Essay on Drugs In The Philippines

The drug problem in the philippines.

The Philippines, like many countries, faces a big challenge with illegal drugs. These drugs harm people’s health and cause crime and violence to go up. The most common drugs in the Philippines are methamphetamine, known locally as shabu, and marijuana.

Effects on Society

Drugs can destroy families and communities. People who use drugs can lose their jobs, get sick, or act violently. This creates fear and sadness in neighborhoods. Children can be hurt when their parents use drugs or when there is violence in their area.

Government Action

The government of the Philippines has been very strict in stopping drug use and selling. They have police and other groups working hard to catch people who break the drug laws. The government’s actions are sometimes seen as too harsh, with reports of people being hurt or killed without a fair trial.

Education and Rehabilitation

It is important to teach kids and adults about the dangers of drugs. Schools and community groups try to help people understand why they should stay away from drugs. For those who are already using drugs, getting help to stop is important. Rehabilitation centers are places where people can get support to overcome addiction.

The problem with drugs in the Philippines is serious. It affects health, safety, and families. By working together, teaching people about the risks, and helping those in need, the country can fight against this issue. It is a tough battle, but one that can make the future brighter for everyone.

500 Words Essay on Drugs In The Philippines

The problem of illegal drugs in the philippines, effects on health and families.

When people take illegal drugs, it can harm their health. They may get sick, feel weak, or have trouble thinking clearly. It’s not just the person using drugs who suffers. Their families can also be hurt by their actions. For example, when parents use drugs, they might not be able to take good care of their children. This can lead to children feeling alone or not having enough food or a safe place to live.

Crime and Violence

Drugs can also lead to more crime and violence. People might steal money to buy drugs. Sometimes, groups that sell drugs fight with each other. This can make neighborhoods unsafe. People might be scared to go outside or let their kids play in the park.

The Government’s Response

Education and awareness.

Teaching young people about the dangers of drugs is very important. Schools and community groups talk to students about why they should stay away from drugs. They also teach them what to do if they are offered drugs. Knowing the risks can help young people make good choices.

Communities are coming together to fight against drugs. Neighbors watch out for each other and report any drug activity to the police. There are also places where people who are addicted to drugs can get help. These centers give them support and advice on how to live without drugs.

The Road Ahead

By working as a team, Filipinos can hope to see a future where drugs do not harm their communities. It will be a future where people are healthy, where neighborhoods are safe, and where children can grow up without the fear of drugs. This is a goal worth working for, and it starts with each person saying no to drugs and yes to a better life.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Happy studying!

The Politics of Drug Rehabilitation in the Philippines

Volume 24/1, June 2022, pp. 147-158 | PDF

Gideon Lasco and Lee Edson Yarcia

The international consensus to end compulsory drug treatments and close forced rehabilitation facilities needs urgent transformation to country policies. In the Philippines, as with other countries in Asia, rehabilitation can be compulsory and is seen as the humane alternative to the “war on drugs.” In this paper, we present the landscape of rehabilitation and narrate the ways in which people who use drugs are forced to undergo treatment. We unpack the politics behind rehabilitation and explain the sociocultural foundations that support compulsory treatment. We argue that a transition to a human rights-based approach, including voluntary alternatives in community settings, is possible by capitalizing on the reforms that are, unwittingly, the result of the “war on drugs.”

This paper analyzes the Philippines as a case study of how politics and populism have framed the understanding and implementation of drug rehabilitation, particularly in an unstable democracy with a long history of authoritarianism and oligarchic patrimonialism. [1] The Philippines has taken global center stage since the Duterte administration’s launch of a “war on drugs” in 2016, with much attention and concern focused on extrajudicial killings—numbering at least several thousand—in connection with this campaign. [2]

Less critically examined, however, is how this period—during which drugs have been at the forefront of political and public discourse—has shaped compulsory drug interventions in the country. Compulsory treatment in the Philippines occurs inside spectacular “mega rehabilitation centers” and in the context of a growing number of public and private drug treatment facilities. [3] During the height of the “war on drugs,” the police conducted door-to-door searches in order to compel people who use drugs to “surrender”—effectively a form of forced apprehension—and undergo “voluntary” rehabilitation. [4] Philippine drug courts continued ordering people who use drugs to undergo rehabilitation in government centers or inside jails, with rehabilitation considered a penalty under the national drug law. [5] In recent years, promising community-based programs have operated in parallel with compulsory detention and involuntary treatment, but difficulties have arisen in implementing a fully autonomy-respecting system given the punitive legal environment for people whose lives include drugs. [6]

In this case study, we argue that long-standing perceptions on drugs in the Philippines have created an uncritical acceptance that people who use drugs require “rehab” and, consequently, a permissive political environment for compulsory detention and involuntary treatment. Moreover, we argue that the punitive drug regime has reinforced similarly pernicious attitudes by presenting forced “rehab” as the humane and acceptable alternative to extrajudicial killings. To support our findings, we present figurations of “rehab” in the country over the past six years, from the Duterte administration’s statements and programs to the policy pronouncements of those who are running to succeed him in the 2022 elections. We explain this fixation on treating people who use drugs as either criminals or patients—in both cases deemed as without full autonomy to make informed and moral personal decisions—as a product of exploited populism in a predominantly Catholic country. Drawing from international human rights obligations in relation to drug policy, we conclude by identifying critical leverage points and structural factors that drug policy reformists in unstable democracies can maneuver toward a public health-centered framework that respects full patient autonomy and human dignity.

The drug rehabilitation landscape in the Philippines

Duterte’s election to the highest post in the country was premised on a relentless and sustained fight against criminality, illegal drugs, and corruption. [7] On his first day in office, Duterte appointed his former city police chief Ronald dela Rosa to implement his “war on drugs” to fulfill his campaign promise of eliminating illegal drugs in three to six months. [8] As noted by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, between July 1, 2016, and November 27, 2017, there was a staggering average of nearly 40 deaths per day as a result of drug operations by the police and from homicides perpetrated by unidentified persons. [9] The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court subsequently requested authorization to open an investigation in the Philippines after finding reasonable basis to believe that the crime against humanity of murder was being committed in the context of the government’s “war on drugs.” [10]

Against the backdrop of extrajudicial killings apparently perpetrated pursuant to an official state policy of the Philippines, the drug rehabilitation landscape in the Philippines was changing in light of the threat to life and liberty of people who use drugs. [11] The 2016 statistics of the Philippine Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) showed that 6,079 individuals were admitted to residential and outpatient facilities nationwide for rehabilitation. [12] A year later, the data showed a decrease in admission to 4,045 individuals, equivalent to a 33% reduction. [13] This substantial drop in admissions is understandable in light of the threat to life and liberty of people who are identified to be using drugs. In 2018, a significant 34.55% increase in admission was reported, largely due to a court-directed policy that allowed for plea bargaining by persons charged with criminal cases, which made up 24.89% of the 5,447 admissions for the year. [14] The 2019 data showed increasing admissions due to plea bargaining agreements, but an overall slight decrease of 4.04% in total admissions was observed, attributed to individuals’ “voluntary submission” to community-based drug rehabilitation. [15] Figure 1 shows the number of persons who use drugs who were admitted to rehabilitation facilities from 2016 to 2019. Close to the end of Duterte’s term, a total of 55 treatment and rehabilitation facilities were operating, up from 31 centers before the start of his presidency. [16]

In November 2016, Duterte inaugurated a 10-hectare compound, dubbed a “mega rehab center,” designed to house as many as 10,000 persons who “surrendered” and would undergo treatment. [17] According to the compound’s chief medical officer, Nelson Dancel, a typical day in the center starts at 5:30 a.m., when residents are required to do a series of physical exercises similar to those required in the army, followed by activities meant to teach the concepts of self-acceptance, self-development, and self-formation. [18] For recreation, the mega rehab center boasts basketball and volleyball courts, chess boards, and musical instruments, with television reserved as a privilege for more senior residents. [19] Dancel explains that escapes are a natural occurrence since some residents feel homesick or worry about their families; individuals who attempt to escape but fail are segregated from other residents, but Dancel is quick to clarify that they are not in solitary confinement. [20] If violations are severe, residents receive extra physical work, such as exercises or additional chores. [21]

A year after the center’s inauguration, the DDB described it as a mistake. [22] Only 400 people were treated in the 75,000-hectare property, leading the DDB chief to push for community-based interventions. [23]

Nevertheless, the protocols in the mega rehab center reflect typical programs in drug treatment and rehabilitation centers nationwide. Guided by the Manual of Operations for Drug Abuse Treatment and Rehabilitation Centers , which sets the minimum standards for this type of facility, the Department of Health accredits rehabilitation centers—both government and nongovernment owned or operated—based on their compliance with these prescribed uniform standards. [24] Notably, the manual enumerates the prescribed services, which are replicated here for a fuller appreciation of the mandated programs in rehabilitation centers:

Medical service provides comprehensive health care services ranging from routine physical examination and screening procedure for diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of illnesses and other medical problems.
Psychiatric service provides therapy to drug abusers with behavioural and psychiatric disorders through, among others, chemotherapy, individual and group psychotherapy, family therapy and occupational therapy conducted by a psychiatric team. A psychiatric team shall include a psychiatrist, psychologist and social worker. This may include an occupational therapist and para-professional worker.
Psychological service assists the team in the assessment, diagnosis and management of drug dependents through psychological testing and evaluation as well as in conducting therapy/counselling to patients and their families.
Social service assists the drug dependents help themselves cope [with] their problems, facilitate and/or promote their interpersonal relationship and adjustment to the demands of a treatment program with the end view of helping the drug dependents’ physical, social, moral and spiritual development.
Spiritual and religious services include the development of moral and spiritual values of the drug dependent. It has been noted that the spiritual foundation of patients has been very weak that this could not provide support to them to enable them to cope with their problems and conflicts. Strengthening the spiritual foundation would involve, among others, reorientation of moral values, spiritual renewal, bible study and other charismatic sessions. It aims to bring them closer to God and better relate to their fellowmen. Various religious and civic organizations can be contacted to provide services. Spiritual counselling shall be helpful in aiding and resolution of individual and family problems.
Referral service involves the process of identifying accurately the problems of the patient and sending him to the agency that can provide the appropriate services.
Sports and recreation services provide facilities for sports and recreation to offer patients the opportunity to engage in constructive activities and to establish peer relationship as an alternative to drug abuse. The emphasis in all activities should be on developing the discipline necessary to improve skills and on gaining respect for good physical health.
Residential/house care service includes provision of basic foods, clothing and shelter.
Aftercare and follow-up services provided to the patient after the primary rehabilitation program. Aftercare activities can be viewed as the first line of defence against relapse. The activities include attending self-help programs like Narcotics Anonymous (NA) / Alcoholic Anonymous (AA) meetings, regular follow-up at treatment Center, individual and group counsellings sponsor/sponsee meetings, alumni association meetings, etc. This is for a period not exceeding eighteen (18) months and should be undertaken by the appropriate Center personnel. [25]

The manual further provides optional additional services, which may include placement service for work opportunities, volunteer service opportunities to assist the rehabilitation center, and educational opportunities. [26] Centers are mandated to contribute effectively to the goals of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, which expresses the state policy of pursuing “an intensive and unrelenting campaign against the trafficking and use of dangerous drugs and other similar substances [including provision of] effective mechanisms or measures to re-integrate into society individuals who have fallen victims to drug abuse or dangerous drugs through sustainable programs of treatment and rehabilitation.” [27]

Presently, people who use drugs undergo drug treatment and rehabilitation programs and services following the guidelines set under Board Regulation No. 7 of 2019 by the DDB. Under this regulation, a verified application must be filed to the DDB to access a treatment and rehabilitation program. The application may be made by the person who uses drugs or by parents, spouses, guardians, or relatives within the fourth degree of consanguinity. [28] Upon recommendation by an accredited physician, “taking into consideration his/her level of drug dependency and the potential danger he/she may pose to himself/herself, his/her family and the community,” the DDB shall file a petition to the appropriate court for the confinement of the person for treatment and rehabilitation. [29] The court shall then order the person to undergo a drug dependency examination by an accredited physician, and, if certified to be drug dependent, “he/she shall be ordered by the court to undergo treatment and rehabilitation in a center designated by the Board for a period of not less than six (6) months.” Notably, the examination is conducted by physicians accredited by the Department of Health, with reference to the clinical parameters of drug dependency under the International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision. [30]

Modes of compulsion in drug treatment and rehabilitation during Duterte’s administration

Under the Duterte administration, persons who use drugs may be compelled to undergo drug rehabilitation through three major modes: first, through a police and law enforcement-directed door-to-door search and “request to surrender” campaign known as Oplan Tokhang; second, through court-mandated rehabilitation of people arrested for drug use; and third, through family-initiated admission without the consent of the person who uses drugs. The second and third modes are not unique to the Duterte administration, but a significant increase in arrests have been noted in the past six years, leading to congestion in jails. [31]

On the day of his appointment as chief of the Philippine National Police, dela Rosa issued a circular entitled PNP Anti-Illegal Drugs Campaign Plan – Project “Double Barrel,” where he ordered the police “to clear all drug affected barangays across the country.” [32] The international community was shocked by this policy’s aftermath, with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reporting 5,601 killed based on information from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency; government data mentions 16,355 “homicide cases under investigation” as accomplishments in the fight against illegal drugs, while 20,322 deaths are reported from drug operations by police and homicides perpetrated by unidentified persons. [33] Less visible in the international public discourse is the plight of 223,780 persons arrested for drug-related cases, which led to massive congestion in jails—85% to 90% of those incarcerated are there for drug-related offenses. [34]

The police have also conducted house-to-house visitations, which do not require search or arrest warrants, to “encourage voluntary surrender” to the government for drug-related acts. [35] Refusal leads to an immediate case build-up and “negation,” a term appearing in the aforementioned circular that could be interpreted by the police as permission to kill. [36] The DDB has noted “unprecedented responses from both law enforcement and the public,” including “voluntary surrender of self-confessed drug personalities nationwide.” [37] Under Board Regulation No. 3 of 2016, a “surrenderer” shall subscribe to an affidavit of undertaking and waiver that authorizes a medical examination and drug test; and if the individual in question is not engaged in trafficking or sale and is just using drugs, they shall state in the affidavit that “he/she shall undergo voluntary treatment and rehabilitation.” [38]

According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, there are now 80,162 persons deprived of liberty detained for violation of the national drug law. [39] On November 8, 2021, the bureau signed a memorandum of agreement with the DDB so that such persons who have signed a plea bargain and who are classified as “low risk” or “moderate risk” for drug dependence may undergo court-mandated treatment and rehabilitation while in jail. [40]

Long-standing perception on drug rehabilitation: “Save the user, jail the pusher”

The above policies and programs cannot be disentangled from the long-standing perception—characterized by some scholars as a “moral panic”—that people who use drugs are “addicts” and societal villains. [41] This prohibitionist paradigm, which is perhaps best summed up by the popular slogan “save the user, jail the pusher,” has been reflected in various institutions throughout past half century, from the Catholic Church to broadcast and print media. [42] Essentially, this part-moralistic, part-medicalized view forges divisions between “pushers” and “addicts” who are a menace to society and “users” (often depicted as young people) who need to be “saved.” As the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines wrote in a pastoral letter that coincided with Ferdinand Marcos’ ascendancy:

A country whose youths are mental and physical wrecks will be hopelessly doomed to ignominy unredeemable until, if that is possible, a new and strong breed will rise up from the ruins. These are the worst saboteurs and are worthy of the highest punishments. For they destroy the youth, the hope of the land. [43]

Rehabilitation centers figure in this narrative as sites where this “salvation” and “healing” can take place. In the words of a Catholic leader touting the church’s rehabilitation program, “Everybody needs healing. These drug addicts, they’ve been wounded very much and what they need is someone who can help them.” [44] Indeed, many such programs are affiliated with religious organizations; those who are not nonetheless orient themselves around the same themes of healing, redemption, and salvation. [45]

Duterte’s punitive approach to drugs has arguably made rehabilitation an even more socially and politically viable position—an alternative to the extrajudicial killings that allows individuals and institutions to continue being seen as “tough” on drugs while also satisfying civil society’s clamor for human rights.

Notably, however, drug treatment and rehabilitation remains largely compulsory in the Philippines, with evidence-based initiatives in some communities seen as the exception to general forced treatments that often have little or no scientific basis. As reported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and UNAIDS, the Philippines continues to detain people who use drugs in closed settings, often against their will, without sufficient human rights safeguards and forces them to undergo rehabilitation for an average duration of ten months. [46] Government data show severe overcrowding and substandard compulsory facilities, as well as little evidence supporting the use of spiritual or religious interventions. [47] People who use drugs are coerced to undergo treatment in order to “cure” themselves of their addiction.

A number of episodes during the Duterte administration are illustrative. In response to the first few months of Duterte’s drug war, for instance, the Catholic bishops remonstrated in another pastoral letter:

Our hearts reach out in love and compassion to our sons and daughters suffering from drug dependence and addiction. Drug addicts are children of God equal in dignity with the sober ones. Drug addicts are sick brethren in need of healing deserving of new life. They are patients begging for recovery. They may have behaved as scum and rubbish but the saving love of Jesus Christ is first and foremost for them. No man or woman is ever so unworthy of God’s love. [48]

As criticism mounted, including from the political opposition, Duterte at one point appointed Vice President Leni Robredo—the highest-ranking member of the opposition—as chair of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs. Although her tenure was short-lived—17 days—her report, which she published months after, is reflective of her view. [49]

Finally, the campaign for Duterte’s successor in the May 2022 elections—still underway at the time of writing—is also reflective of the same view. Virtually all the major candidates have expressed support for an “intensified” anti-drug campaign while vowing to respect human rights and promote a “public health” approach. Invariably, however, their idea of what constitutes “public health” includes scaling up the same rehabilitation paradigm that dichotomizes between killing and “rehab.”

Tellingly, when the leading candidate—Ferdinand Marcos Jr.—was accused by Duterte as using cocaine, his opponents lost no time in calling out the contradictions in Duterte’s drug war—while also calling on Marcos to be punished, as expressed in this tweet by Leody de Guzman, standard-bearer of the progressive left:

Tiyak, kilalang kilala ni Duterte kung sino ang supplier ng kandidatong ‘yan na nagpapasok ng cocaine sa bansa. ‘Yan dapat ang pokusan para mahuli at matigil na. Kaysa itsismis lang, ipahuli na ang kandidatong ‘yan para ipa-rehab. [For sure, Duterte knows who the supplier is of that candidate who trafficks cocaine in the country. That should be the focus so that he can be arrested and stopped. Instead of rumor-mongering, the candidate should be arrested and placed in rehab.] [50]

For her part, Robredo has hewed close to the same discourse she raised as chair of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs:

In my belief, once DDB sits as the chair of DDB, its plan will not be just “kill, kill, kill” but the plan will be more comprehensive—heavy on prevention, heavy on rehabilitation. [51]

These political discourses reflect and reinforce the moral panic on drugs that sees rehabilitation as the humane (and only) way to “save the user,” precluding other initiatives such as harm reduction and decriminalization, which—notably—none of the candidates have mentioned.

Drug rehabilitation and populism

What can explain the subscription to the “save the user” narrative that has led to uncritical support for “rehabilitation” as it is (mis)understood by the Philippine public?

As discussed above, previous scholars have used the literature on “moral panic” to explain the long-standing vilification of drugs in the country. Drawing on the literature on penal and medical populisms, more recent scholarship has implicated political actors in reflecting and reinforcing public attitudes about drugs, portraying these actors as “moral entrepreneurs” who simplify, spectularize, and forge divisions between “addicts” and the virtuous public. [52]

Missing in these accounts, however, is the nuance regarding what people view as the rightful solution to the “problem.” Survey after survey has shown that Filipinos favor a strong approach to drugs—even approving of the “drug war”—despite the fact that they disapprove of the killings, suggestive that far from a monolithic dichotomy between supporting or opposing a draconian approach to drugs, people are divided on what particular draconian approach to take: either drug addicts deserve to be killed or drug addicts should be sent to compulsory rehabilitation.

Less emphasized in the scholarship is how Philippine drug policy has followed global drug policy flows; most notably, as Christopher Hobson notes, “among all the possible wrongdoing and bad things that exist in the world, it is slightly counterintuitive that drugs are the only one to be labelled as ‘evil’ in international law.” [53] Indeed, the first drug war in the 1970s coincided with the Nixon-era war on drugs and global commitments to the “drug problem,” leading to the establishment of DDB in 1972 and inaugurating a trend of increasingly punitive drug laws. The parallels in high incarceration rates in the United States and the Philippines and similar institutional configurations (e.g., a Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency patterned after a similarly named agency in the United States) speak of how this international—and particularly American—influence continues to have an impact on drug policy in the country. [54]

However, it must be pointed out that even as “Western democracies” and even international organizations are moving away from this approach, the Philippines and other countries in the region have steadfastly adhered to it (with notable exceptions such as Malaysia), suggesting that such an approach has been indigenized, likely enabled by a cultural environment that emphasizes “Asian values” such as conformity and social control, as well as the enduring valance of drugs as a populist trope in the region. [55]

Because they do not specifically address the question of why a particular form of rehabilitation has gained uncritical popular and political acceptance, these explanations are at best partial and would require corroboration through cultural histories and contemporary ethnographic accounts of rehabilitation today. However, they suffice to furnish a historical context to the figurations of rehabilitation in today’s political discourse that in turn perpetuate popular perceptions.

Compulsory rehabilitation in the Philippines an urgent human rights issue

There is a dangerous tendency for reform advocates to condemn extrajudicial killings and due process rights violations as human rights concerns, while supporting rehabilitation as an acceptable alternative. As we have observed, the motivations behind gross human rights violations and forcing people to treatment are the same: the dehumanization of people who use drugs and the removal of their autonomy to decide on the treatment approaches that respond to their felt needs. Drug policies in the Philippines remain to be “substance-centric, moralistic, and medicalized.” [56] Present drug policy from the Department of Health does not recognize non-pathological use, as substance use is classified as mild, moderate, or severe and, in any case, as requiring medical or psychological interventions. [57] Because treatments are compulsory in nature, the right to health, which includes access to voluntary and evidence-based services, is breached. [58]

Relatedly, drug testing has been transformed into a diagnostic and prosecutorial tool for treating people who use drugs. [59] A positive random drug test is enough justification to remove students from school or to terminate employment of otherwise productive employees and to force them to undergo rehabilitation. [60] Notably, random drug testing in schools violate students’ right to privacy and is inconsistent with international guidelines on the rights of children in relation to obligations arising from the human rights of particular groups. [61]

As a result, in 2015, countries from Asia and the Pacific committed to facilitate the transition away from compulsory centers toward an “evidence-informed system of voluntary community-based treatment and services that are aligned with international guidelines and principles of drug dependence treatment, drug use and human rights.” [62] Seven years after, however, the transition has yet to happen.

Moving forward: Transitioning to voluntary alternatives

Despite the problematics of drug rehabilitation in the Philippines being strongly determined by political and popular approaches to drug issues, recent developments suggest that a changing paradigm is not beyond the range of possibilities.

In the first place, the DDB has recognized the failures of closed settings in its approach to rehabilitation. The public admission that the mega rehab center was a mistake because it uproots people who use drugs from their families and the policy shift toward more community-based interventions are important concessions made as the country transitions to a more public health-based framework. More citations on community-based approaches appear in the DDB’s recent issuances that provide guidance to local government units on general interventions and programs. [63] Prior to Duterte’s time, rehabilitation programs were effectively available only in closed settings. Notably, the country has not closed down compulsory rehabilitation facilities and appears to be far from doing so. Nevertheless, at the close of Duterte’s term, we note a promising dent in the number of admissions in closed settings in favor of community-based programs.

This palpable shift in policy can be attributed largely to the work of civil society organizations, human rights groups, and academic institutions that are more sensitized to drug issues and more critical of the political discourses employed in the wake of Duterte’s war on drugs. Many of these groups still embrace a decidedly “drug-free” paradigm, but they can nonetheless serve as entry points for interrogating rehabilitation as it is practiced and understood in the Philippines today. Policy officials, too, have learned important lessons from the drug war, leading them to revise the national guidelines on rehabilitation.

Similarly, as one of the authors notes in another work, “there has been a proliferation of drug war-related researches, from the documentation of its ‘lived experiences’ to policy analyses.” [64] The academic interest in drug issues has included narratives of rehabilitation and case studies on community rehabilitation, all of which can contribute to a local evidence base for alternative interventions. Academic networks have been formed, and publications that problematize the drug war have allowed for dialogues nudging policy makers toward reform.

Second, although, as mentioned above, presidential politics have largely embraced the killings-versus-rehabilitation binary, lawmakers have in fact filed harm reduction bills and similar initiatives. [65] These legislative initiatives—though still unlikely to prosper at this stage—nonetheless represent a sea change from previous times and may signal more openness in the future. This is an important step to challenge the binary framework and to introduce a genuine option that promotes autonomy, human dignity, and health.

Nevertheless, legislative change is necessary. We can no longer avoid and delay the conversation on decriminalization of drug use, as it is apparent that the courts—supposedly the champions of human dignity—have become agents for compulsory rehabilitation. In the Philippines, people are ordered to undergo rehabilitation or face imprisonment. People arrested for drug-related offenses bargain for a lesser penalty, which includes rehabilitation. Jails are now formally considered centers for rehabilitation, putting into question the capacity of these institutions to provide the standards necessary for genuine health programs. [66]

Third, despite the defiant tone that government officials have struck in terms of Duterte’s possible trial before the International Criminal Court, international pressure has been effective in forcing government officials to reform policies that address drug-related concerns. For example, the United Nations Joint Programme for Human Rights in the Philippines has become an important platform for introducing human rights-based approaches to drug control. Among other things, it calls for the improvement of prison conditions and development of community-based programs. If it is to make further progress in the country, however, the joint program must implement the international consensus on ending compulsory rehabilitation and invest in a transition toward voluntary services, following the consensus from the Third Regional Consultation on Compulsory Centres for Drug Users in Asia and the Pacific, and further accommodating the recommendations from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and UNAIDS on adopting voluntary community-based services as the framework for drug-related programs and interventions. [67]

One caveat about international pressure, though, is that it might perpetuate policies that can be framed by populist politicians as “colonial interventions,” especially given the backdrop of how human rights and concerns over the drug war were cast by local politicians as “Western” or “colonial” impositions. [68] This goes to show that beyond “decolonizing drug policy,” drug reform must also move toward decolonizing harm reduction. [69] It is important that attempts to reshape rehabilitation be based on the perspectives of people who use drugs. Thus, international support must not be merely a transplantation of practices from abroad but a genuine privileging of the voices of the communities whose lives involve drugs. Crucial to this project is empowering local actors (e.g., academics and advocates) who can then provide local scholarship and offer localized, culturally sensitive communications efforts that can be more difficult to delegitimize. [70]

Finally, the long-standing support for forced rehabilitation ultimately rests on how people who use drugs are perceived by the public and leaders, both political and religious. Thus, any attempt to reform must involve careful thinking as to how public attitudes can be changed. The narratives that inform policies negatively portray people who use drugs, and moral leaders (predominantly Catholic) have provided the justifications for a draconian approach to drugs, including the removal of personal autonomy in decisions affecting one’s life and health. Admittedly, this sociocultural foundation that supports compulsory rehabilitation is the hardest to break. However, cultural values such as the importance of family can be important themes in counter-narratives that can support family- and community-based approaches. Similarly, amplifying narratives from people who use drugs themselves can illuminate the lived realities of drug rehabilitation for the general public. More fundamentally, however, we need to deepen our understanding of the paradigms that inform the rigid binary to be able to transition to a framework that fully embraces human rights and public health.

In the Philippines, owing to a long history of penal populism, moral panic around drugs, and long-standing moralistic views of people who use them, “drug rehabilitation” is seen as a humane and acceptable alternative to the “drug problem,” and this has been reflected in (and reinforced by) contemporary political discourse. However, as we have shown in this paper, there is very little difference between jails and rehabilitation centers in terms of both philosophy and practice; in fact, jails are now centers for compulsory treatment. Those who seek to reform this untenable status quo need to capitalize on recent policy reforms, informed by a vibrant civil society and supported by the international community, to end the era of forced rehabilitation, with local actors and stakeholders empowered to take the lead.

As the Philippines undertakes a change of leadership, advocates in the country and elsewhere must recognize the need to go beyond addressing killings and insist on a discussion about what kind of rehabilitation should exist—and for whom—and about how to genuinely expand our responses to drug-related issues in a way that goes beyond criminal and medical frameworks. Institutions that have been sensitized to what is at stake with drug policy in the country can be potential allies in this move, but it must be accompanied by international attention beyond the killings—as well as a recognition that “decolonizing drug policy” also entails decolonizing the ways we have sought to reform it. [71] Lessons learned from the Philippines are likely relevant for neighboring countries and thus for drug policy and human rights advocacy around the world.

Gideon Lasco, MD, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, University of the Philippines Diliman, and a research fellow at the Ateneo de Manila University’s Development Studies Program, Quezon City, Philippines.

Lee Edson Yarcia, MD, JD, is a senior lecturer in medical jurisprudence and constitutional law at the College of Law, University of the Philippines Diliman, Manila, Philippines, and a drug policy expert at the United Nations Joint Programme for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights in the Philippines.

Please address correspondence to Gideon Lasco. Email: [email protected].

Competing interests: None declared.

Copyright © 2022 Lasco and Yarcia. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction.

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[2] Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, Situation of Human Rights in the Philippines, UN Doc. A/HRC/44/22 (2020).

[3] A. Abando, Mega rehab gives hope to lost souls (December 2017) . Available at https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1013310.

[4] Office of the Prosecutor or the International Criminal Court, Situation in the Republic of the Philippines, ICC-01/21 (2021).

[5] Republic Act No. 9165 (2002).

[6] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, Compulsory drug treatment and rehabilitation in East and Southeast Asia (January 2022). Available at: https://unaidsapnew.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/booklet-3-12th-jan-2022.pdf.

[7] R. Duterte, Inaugural address of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte (June 2016). Available at https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/2016/06/30/inaugural-address-of-president-rodrigo-roa-duterte-june-30-2016/ .

[8] A. Tejada, Duterte vows to end criminality in 3 months (February 2016). Available at https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/02/20/1555349/duterte-vows-end-criminality-3-months .

[9] Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (see note 2).

[10] Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (see note 4).

[12] Dangerous Drugs Board, Reported cases by type of admission and sex (facility based) CY 2016 (June 2017). Available at https://www.ddb.gov.ph/research-statistics/statistics/45-research-and-statistics/329-2016-statistics .

[13] Dangerous Drugs Board, Reported cases by type of admission and sex (facility based) CY 2017 (February 2019). Available at https://www.ddb.gov.ph/research-statistics/statistics/45-research-and-statistics/396-2017-statistics .

[14] Dangerous Drugs Board, 2018 statistics (October 2019). Available at https://www.ddb.gov.ph/research-statistics/statistics/45-research-and-statistics/434-2018-statistics ; Estipona v. People of the Philippines , Philippine Supreme Court, G.R. No. 226679, August 15, 2017.

[15] Dangerous Drugs Board, Statistical analysis CY 2019 (September 2020). Available at https://www.ddb.gov.ph/research-statistics/statistics/45-research-and-statistics/499-2019-statistics .

[16] Ibid.; compare with Dangerous Drugs Board, Reported cases by type of admission and sex (facility based) CY 2015 (August 2016). Available at https://www.ddb.gov.ph/research-statistics/statistics/45-research-and-statistics/287-2015-statistics .

[17] Abando (see note 3).

[22] A. Carbonell, Mega drug rehab center in Ecija a mistake—DDB (November 2, 2017). Available at https://www.manilatimes.net/2017/11/02/todays-headline-photos/top-stories/mega-drug-rehab-center-ecija-mistake-ddb/360157.

[24] Dangerous Drugs Board, Manual of operations for drug abuse treatment and rehabilitation centers . Available at https://www.ddb.gov.ph/images/MANUAL%20OF%20OPERATIONS%20-%20DRUG%20REHAB.pdf .

[27] Republic Act No. 9165 (2002).

[28] Dangerous Drugs Board, Regulation no. 3 series of 2007 .

[30] Dangerous Drugs Board, Regulation no. 2 series of 2019 .

[31] L. Yarcia and J. Bernandas, “Articulating key obligations of states to persons deprived of liberty under a right to health framework: The Philippine case study,” International Journal of Human Rights in Healthcare (2021).

[32] Philippine National Police, Command memorandum circular no. 16-2016 . Available at https://didm.pnp.gov.ph/images/Command%20Memorandum%20Circulars/CMC%202016-16%20PNP%20ANTI-ILLEGAL%20DRUGS%20CAMPAIGN%20PLAN%20%20PROJECT%20DOUBLE%20BARREL.pdf.

[33] Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (see note 2).

[37] Dangerous Drugs Board, Regulation no. 3 series of 2016 .

[39] Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, Data on number of PDL with drug cases (as of May 31, 2021) . Available at https://www.bjmp.gov.ph/images/data_and_stats/Data_on_Number_of_PDL_with_Drug_Cases.jpg .

[40] Dangerous Drugs Board, Regulation no. 8 series of 2021 .

[41] G. Lasco, “Drugs and drug wars as populist tropes in Asia: Illustrative examples and implications for drug policy,” International Journal of Drug Policy 77 (2020); M. Tan, “The construction of drug abuse in the Philippines,” in G. Lasco (ed), Drugs and Philippine society (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2021), pp. 47–70.

[42] J. Cornelio and G. Lasco, “Morality politics: Drug use and the Catholic Church in the Philippines,” Open Theology 6/1 (2020), pp. 327–341; C. R. Soriano, C. C. David, and J. M. Atun, “Crystallising the official narrative: News discourses about the killings from the Philippine government’s campaign against illegal drugs,” Journalism 22/9 (2021), pp. 2386–2403.

[43] Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, Statement on drug abuse . Available at https://cbcponline.net/statement-on-drug-abuse/.

[44] Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, Church’s rehab program, a concrete response. Available at https://cbcpnews.net/cbcpnews/churchs-rehab-program-a-concrete-response/.

[45] See, for example, Bridges of Hope, Easter and addiction recovery: Redemption and renewal. Available at http://bridgesofhope.com.ph/index.php/easter-and-addiction-recovery-redemption-and-renewal/.

[46] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and UNAIDS (see note 6).

[48] Sangguniang Laiko ng Pilipinas, I will turn their mourning into joy. Available at https://www.cbcplaiko.org/documents/i-will-turn-their-mourning-into-joy/; see also Cornelio and Lasco (see note 42).

[49] Office of the Vice President, Vice President Leni Robredo’s report as co-chairperson of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD). Available at https://ovp.gov.ph/post/vice-president-leni-robredos-report-co-chairperson-inter-agency-committee-anti-illegal-drugs-icad.html.

[50] R. Noriega, “De Guzman: Put cocaine-using presidential bet in rehab,” GMA News (November 19, 2021). Available at https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/811583/de-guzman-put-cocaine-using-presidential-bet-in-rehab/story/.

[51] J. E. Mendoza, “Robredo to set a ‘drug war’ that focuses on rehab and prevention than ‘kill, kill, kill,’” Inquirer.net (October 30, 2021). Available at https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1508254/robredo-to-set-a-drug-war-thats-more-on-rehab-and-prevention-than-kill-kill-kill.

[52] G. Lasco and N. Curato, “Medical populism,” Social Science and Medicine 221 (2019), pp. 1–8; J. Pratt, Penal Populism (London: Routledge, 2007).

[53] C. Hobson, “Challenging ‘evil’: Continuity and change in the drug prohibition regime,” International Politics 51 (2014), pp. 525–542.

[54] G. Lasco, “Introduction: Redefining drugs and the people who use them,” in G. Lasco (ed), Drugs and Philippine society (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2021), pp. 1–26.

[55] Lasco (2020, see note 41); see, for example, United Nations, Joint Statement: compulsory drug detention and rehabilitation centers (2012) . Available at https://files.unaids.org/en/media/unaids/contentassets/documents/document/2012/JC2310_Joint%20Statement6March12FINAL_en.pdf; United Nations, Joint statement on compulsory drug detention and rehabilitation centres in Asia and the Pacific in the context of COVID-19 (2020). Available at https://unaidsapnew.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/unjointstatement1june2020.pdf; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Guidance for community-based treatment and care services for people affected by drug use and dependence in Southeast Asia . Available at www.unodc.org/documents/drug-treatment/UNODC_cbtx_guidance_EN.pdf; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and World Health Organization, Principles of drug dependence treatment (2018) . Available at www.unodc.org/documents/drug-treatment/UNODC-WHO-Principles-of-Drug-Dependence-Treatment-March08.pdf.

[56] L. Yarcia, “It’s time to decriminalize drug use: Insights from the legal history of prohibition in the Philippines,” in G. Lasco (ed), Drugs and Philippine society (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2021), pp. 298–319.

[57] Dangerous Drugs Board, Regulation no. 7, series of 2019 .

[58] International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, UNAIDS, World Health Organization, and United Nations Development Programme, International guidelines on human rights and drug policy (2019).

[59] Yarcia (see note 56).

[61] International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy et al. (see note 58).

[62] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, and UNAIDS, Report of the third regional consultation on compulsory centres for drug users in Asia and the Pacific (2015). Available at https://unaidsapnew.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/report-of-the-third-regional-consultation-on-ccdus-in-asia-and-the-pacific-21-23-september-2015.pdf.

[63] See, for example, Dangerous Drugs Board, Regulation no. 4 series of 2020 .

[64] Lasco (2021, see note 54).

[65] See, for example, House Bill No. 5567, Harm Reduction Act of 2016 , filed by Representative Jose Christopher Y. Belmonte.

[66] Dangerous Drugs Board, Regulation no. 8 series of 2021 .

[67] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and UNAIDS (see note 6).

[68] Lasco (2020, see note 41).

[69] C. Daniels, A. Aluso, N. Burke-Shyne, et al, “Decolonizing drug policy,” Harm Reduction Journal 18 (2021); G. Lasco, “Decolonizing harm reduction,” Harm Reduction Journal 19 (2022).

[70] Lasco (2020, see note 41).

[71] Ibid.

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[OPINION] How truly prevalent is drug use in the Philippines?

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[OPINION] How truly prevalent is drug use in the Philippines?

Illustration by DR Castuciano

The prevalence and causes of drug use have been politicized in the Philippines. President Duterte painted a picture of a huge menace created by drug users: that is, drug users are engaged in violent crimes, killing innocent people and raping children; they engage in robbery, theft, and other property crimes to satiate their drug cravings; and that addicts roam the streets like “zombies” creating fear in the hearts of the general public. President Duterte also claimed that drug use has destroyed the fabric of the families and the communities where drug dealing and selling has been rampant.

These dire pictures have been sold and bought by the public. Thus, President Duterte also easily sold the simple yet brutal solution: the strong use of police force to arrest and detain the drug users, and if they “fight back,” for the neutralization (killing) of the said “drug addicts.” These have resulted in at least 6,000 Filipinos killed at the hands of the police and another 25,000 or so Filipinos killed by unknown assailants. It has also translated to the extreme congestion of our already overcrowded jails .

The key issue here, however, is that very few studies have actually conducted a scientific inquiry to establish the prevalence of drug use in the Philippines. One survey study of school age students found that 1.8% of respondents admitted to drug use (defined as either marijuana or shabu use at least once in their lifetime) which was then used to extrapolate that 1.8 million of the 100 million Filipinos used drugs.

This extrapolation is erroneous on so many fronts. For example, at least 20 million Filipinos are still in pre-school, so they should have not been included in the extrapolation. Also, taking drugs at least once does not indicate regular drug use. Thus, the estimate that there were 1.8 million Filipino “drug addicts” is questionable and scientifically unsound.

The key point is without a basic knowledge of the “actual” and not the perceived prevalence of drug use, we cannot know the real magnitude of the problem. While we do not downplay the nature of the problem, it can also lead to exaggerated responses. For example, in the USA, 13% of high schoolers self-admit to the use of drugs, way higher than the 1.8% reported, but it did not translate to mass killings of drug users.

Investigating Duterte’s drug war using data: It’s ‘state-sponsored murder’

The second important issue is that very few studies try to understand why Filipinos use and abuse drugs (shabu, primarily). The few studies that have investigated show that Filipinos use shabu for “energy” – that is, to keep them awake during long hours of work (drivers, meat vendors, call center agents, etc., work late at night, and they use it as “pampagising”).

Shabu is also used due to peer pressure, lack of family monitoring, and to overcome boredom and stress. Marijuana is more likely to be used by teenagers as they try to satiate their curiosity and adventurism. Ecstacy is more likely to be used as party drugs during concerts for the rich and famous. Low-level drug dealers engage in this trade due to lack of employment opportunities.

Trying to understand the reasons for drug use provides a better sustainable and long-lasting solution to the problem of drugs. For example: if the reason for drug use is work-related, changes in the work structure should be in place. Taxi operators, for example, should evaluate the 24-hour work for taxi drivers. Call center agencies should provide respite during graveyard shifts for their employees. Schools should teach students about how to resist the negative influence of peers. Programs to improve parental skills in monitoring their children should also be introduced. Strict monitoring of concerts by establishing certain standards can be imposed on organizers. Mechanisms to improve local employment programs, such as skills development by TESDA and capital loans provided by DSWD, can all be enlarged to meet more clients.

In Duterte’s drug war, justice is ‘nearly impossible’

By understanding the prevalence and root causes of drug offending, we can provide sustainable solutions. We can realize that killing our fellow Filipinos is not the solution to this enduring problem. Even if the drug addicts are physically eliminated, the root cause of the problem stays and new drug users will simply emerge.

For the candidates in this election: What are your positions on the drug issue?

For the voters: Ask your candidates what their agenda is on the issue of drug use. – Rappler.com

Raymund E. Narag, PhD is Associate Professor at the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

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Telling the story of drugs in human health

History of Drug Misuse in the Philippines

The Philippines has a long history of illegal drug use and trafficking, dating back to the early 20th century. According to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), the first known instance of illegal drug use in the country was in 1907, when opium and marijuana were introduced to the Philippines by Chinese immigrants. These drugs were primarily used by the Chinese community and were not widely adopted by Filipinos until the 1970s and 1980s.

During this time, the Philippines became a major transit point for illegal drugs being smuggled into other Southeast Asian countries and beyond. This was due to its extensive coastline and porous borders, which made it easy for smugglers to smuggle drugs into the country. Additionally, the Philippines has a large number of islands, which made it difficult to monitor and control the flow of illegal drugs.

In the 1990s, President Fidel Ramos launched a campaign against drugs, but it had little impact. In 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte was elected on a platform that included a promise to crack down on illegal drugs and crime. Since taking office, Duterte has launched an aggressive “war on drugs” that has led to thousands of deaths and widespread human rights abuses. The tactics used by the Philippines National Police (PNP) and other security forces have been widely criticized by human rights organizations and international bodies, including the United Nations.

Human Rights Watch reported that the Philippines police have killed thousands of suspected drug users and dealers in a wave of extrajudicial executions that began in July 2016. The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Agnès Callamard, has said that Duterte’s war on drugs could constitute crimes against humanity.

Despite the ongoing efforts of the government, the drug problem in the Philippines remains a significant issue. The Philippines has one of the highest rates of methamphetamine (shabu) use in the world, and the illegal drug trade continues to fuel corruption and violence in the country. In 2021, the Philippines had one of the highest rates of methamphetamine (shabu) use in the world, with an estimated 3.7 million users, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

References:

Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA)
Human Rights Watch (HRW)
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Agnès Callamard

Years Later, Philippines Reckons With Duterte’s Brutal Drug War

A president’s vow to fight drugs unleashed violence and fostered a culture of impunity. But the crimes are finally getting a look, including from the International Criminal Court.

A woman squats in front of a wall of small doors, touching the wall with one hand. Two lit candles sit on the floor in front of her.

By Sui-Lee Wee and Camille Elemia

Reporting from Manila

When Rodrigo Duterte was running for president eight years ago, he vowed to order the police and the military to find drug users and traffickers to kill them, promising immunity for such killings. In the months after, police officers and vigilantes mercilessly gunned down tens of thousands of people in summary executions.

Even now, two years after Mr. Duterte left office, there has been little legal reckoning with the wave of killings : Only eight police officers have been given prison sentences, in connection with just four cases, with one verdict that came this month. And though rights groups say that there have been fewer such killings since Mr. Duterte left, and far fewer involving agents of the government, a culture of violence and impunity has maintained a troubling hold in the Philippines.

In recent months, the legacy of Mr. Duterte’s so-called war on drugs has slowly begun to get more official attention. Lawmakers are holding several public hearings into the violence. Senior police officers spoke at the congressional hearing, as did victims’ relatives, who relived their horrors and again pleaded for justice.

When Mr. Duterte left office, his administration said 6,252 people had been killed by security forces — all described by officials as “drug suspects.” Rights groups say the overall death toll stands at roughly 30,000.

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Article contents

Governing through Killing: The War on Drugs in the Philippines

1. INTRODUCTION

2. STATE KILLING IN THE PHILIPPINES BEFORE DUTERTE

3. EXTRA-JUDICIAL KILLING IN DUTERTE’S WAR ON DRUGS

4.1 Criminal Injustice

4.2 Penal Populism

4.3 Democratic Underdevelopment

5. KILLING AND REFORM?

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