DRUG ISSUE AND RESPONSES

I. INTRODUCTION
Through the years, illegal drugs and drug addiction have been
considered as one the major problems in the Philippines. We
cannot deny the fact that this matter has grown immensely
among our society affecting a lot of people most especially
the youth. The youth that is said to be “the hope of the future
generations” is now slowly being eaten up by this common
vice.
ABSTRACT
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.

“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.
Go to:

Conclusion

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.