Duterte deploys dubious data in his war on drugs
Claims continue to drive policy
MANILA, Oct 24, (RTRS): Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte ended a recent speech in Manila with a now-familiar claim: Two policemen were dying every day in his violent battle to rid the country of illegal drugs.
But police statistics have shown that figure to be exaggerated. From July 1, when Duterte launched his “war on drugs,” to Oct 12, when he spoke in Manila, 13 police officers were killed. That’s an average of one every eight days.
This is not the only dubious claim Duterte has used to justify his bloody anti-narcotics campaign, according to a Reuters review of official government data and interviews with the president’s top anti-drug officials.
These officials say that data on the total number of drug users, the number of users needing treatment, the types of drugs being consumed and the prevalence of drug-related crime is exaggerated, flawed or non-existent. But they say the problematic statistics don’t matter because the campaign has focused attention on a long-neglected crisis in the Philippines.
“I don’t see it as a problem,” said Wilkins Villanueva, the Metro Manila regional director for the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), the country’s leading anti-narcotics agency. “Before, our fight against dangerous drugs was a lonely battle Now, everybody’s helping us — the community’s helping us.”
Nearly 2,300 people have been killed in police operations or by suspected vigilantes since Duterte took office on June 30, according to the Philippines police. That figure was revised down this month by the police from an original tally of 3,600 deaths.
In response to questions from Reuters, Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said the story was “malicious” and referred Reuters to the Philippine National Police.
The crackdown has been criticised abroad but enjoys widespread support in the Philippines, which Duterte has said faces collapse if the “drug menace” isn’t tackled.
In his inaugural State of the Nation Address on July 25, Duterte declared that there were 3.7 million “drug addicts” in the Philippines.
“The number is quite staggering and scary,” he said. “I have to slaughter these idiots for destroying my country.”
But according to a 2015 survey by the Office of the President’s Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB), the main drug policy and research unit, the Philippines has fewer than half that many drug users.
Addicts
And rather than being “addicts,” as Duterte refers to all drug users, about a third of the 1.8 million users identified in the DDB survey had taken drugs only once in the previous 13 months. Fewer than half of them — 860,000 — had consumed crystal meth, or shabu, the highly addictive stimulant widely blamed by officials for high crime rates and other social ills. Most were marijuana users.
PDEA’s Villanueva said he didn’t care if President Duterte “overestimates” the number of drug users as long as it made people aware of the problem.
Officials in the president’s media office contacted by Reuters could not say where the data came from to back up another of the government’s central claims: that 75 percent of serious crimes in the Philippines are drug-related.
Police and senior officials have used the claim to justify tough measures against drug users and pushers, and say those measures have been vindicated by a drop in crime since the antidrug campaign began.
The faulty figures have other real-world implications. They determine, for instance, how many people the government says must be targeted to eradicate drug demand in the Philippines. That has led to the drawing up of police “watch lists” with the names of drug suspects, hundreds of whom have been shot dead either in police operations or by unknown gunmen.
The president’s statistical claims continue to drive policy. In September, Duterte said the number of “addicts” would rise to four million by the end of the month and vowed to extend his drug war for another six months — to June 2017. That statement came after remarks on Sept 30, when Duterte seemed to compare himself to Hitler and said he would be “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts.
A senior Philippines law enforcement officer said Duterte’s “arbitrary” figures had put pressure on police and government officials.
“The problem is, every time the president says something, it’s already some sort of a policy statement,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We have to toe the line.”
The officer pointed, for example, to the more than 700,000 people who have registered in the past three months with the authorities as drug users or pushers, a process known as “surrendering.” But, he said, authorities were expected to produce at least 1.8 million “surrenderers” to match the number of users cited in the DDB report.
Produce
“That’s the reason we are having a hard time. We need to produce,” he said. “Even if we add up everything... we are not even close to 1.8 million.”
PDEA’s Villanueva said the president’s assessment of the drug problem was reasonable, and he felt no pressure.
“He just exaggerates it so we will know that the problem is very big,” Villanueva said of Duterte. “The implication is that we have to work hard to solve the problem and we have to work hard so that ... occasional drug users do not turn into regular drug users.”
Statements by Duterte and other officials not only fail to distinguish between users and problem users, say drug-treatment specialists, but also between users of shabu and marijuana. Shabu is a highly addictive stimulant with side effects that can include aggression and psychosis.
“They are completely different substances in terms of risk profiles and harms,” said Robert Ali, director of a University of Adelaide research centre on drug and alcohol treatment who works with the World Health Organization. “Shabu has a higher risk of addiction. It is associated with a greater range of physical and psychological harms.”
While drug abuse is a real problem in the Philippines, said Ali, it was hard to devise an effective national response based on flawed data. “With public health, whether it’s diabetes or drug use, you need a sense of the burden of harm to understand how to use your resources,” he said.
Joanne Csete, a specialist in health and human rights at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York, said that the term “current drug users” usually refers to those who have used drugs in the past month. However, the DDB survey counts anyone who has used drugs in the past 13 months, which Csete says could inflate the number of users.
“So the president can make up whatever numbers he likes — the survey does not adequately estimate current use,” she said.
The claim that 75 percent of “heinous crime” in the Philippines is drug-related features in an official booklet called “Winning the First Phase of the Drug War.” It was handed out by the president’s media team in September at a regional summit in Laos attended by world leaders.
According to the booklet, heinous crimes include murder, rape, human trafficking and treason.
It is not clear where the president’s media team got the 75 percent figure. The booklet identifies the source of the number as the Philippines National Police Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management (DIDM). But six officials in the office responsible for the booklet and at the DIDM were unable to point to a specific study or explain how the figure was calculated.
Nimfa Reloc, who monitors heinous crime cases for DIDM, said the office had released no such data or analysis and did not know where the number came from. She said 15 percent of heinous crimes are drug-related.
Benjamin Reyes, the DDB’s chairman, said there was “actually no data” on crimes committed under the influence of drugs.