One step back in the drug war

Allow me to write something about the drug war, and yes, Kian delos Santos. At the risk of sounding hackneyed, there's a need to clarify or sort things out amid the noise.

Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma, in an interview with reporters the other day, has said it himself: The Church backs the anti-drug war, if done the right way.

There should be no doubt that the people support President Rodrigo Duterte's tough stance against illegal drugs. But when it results to brazen abuses by some in the police force, like planting of evidence and summary executions against drug suspects, the public will start to squirm in their living room seats.

That was shown in the renewed criticisms the government faced after the killing of Delos Santos allegedly by Caloocan City police. Had it not been for the CCTV footage showing two cops dragging the teenager along the street, Delos Santos' death would have become part of the statistic of suspected drug traders presumed to have been killed in the course of legitimate or regular police operations.

But there was no presumption of regularity in the performance of duty this time. President Duterte admitted so himself after being shown the CCTV footage. He promised Delos Santos' parents that justice will be served.

Since Duterte's assumption into office, there have been close to 3,500 suspected illegal drug traders killed by the police presumably in the course of their regular operations. Another 2,000 deaths in drug-related crimes were reported and thousands more murdered in still mysterious circumstances. Those figures are based on government data. Human rights watchdogs assert there could be thousands more.

On the other hand, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency has now estimated that there are 4.7 million drug personalities in the country. PDEA based the figure on estimates that there is one drug personality in every eight households in the country.

If the figures do not seem alarming to you, here is something that I personally encountered that might lend some perspective on the extent of the drug problem. In a court hearing that I attended yesterday, there were 64 cases in the list to be heard that day, 43 of which are illegal drugs cases. That's a whopping two-thirds of all the cases!

The debate on the drug problem and the drug war, however, has been largely focused on the arguments advocated by forces seen as pro-Duterte or anti-Duterte.

It does not help that people who usually get heard speaking against Duterte's drug war speak with hypocritical tongues. They speak about the killings without even a hint of conceding the fact of the equally wicked dehumanization of the country's youth caused by shabu addiction. Fumbling opposition personalities like Sen. Antonio Trillanes could even be secretly hoping that Duterte's violent drug war will sooner or later bring down this government.

Pro-Duterte fanatics, on the other hand, speak like Duterte and his systemically dysfunctional police force can make no mistakes big enough to call to task a relentless bloody war against this enormous drug problem.

There is no doubt about the drug problem being a very serious and complex problem. That is why it may serve everyone best -the administration and opposition included- to stop barking at each other, take a step back, and assess the situation properly before we can even expect ourselves to deal with the problem the right way. That is, if we're really serious in solving this problem.

‘There is no doubt about the drug problem being a very serious and complex problem. That is why it may

serve everyone best -the administration and opposition included- to stop barking

at each other’