PDEA chief says drug war not a failure

October 27, 2019

The head of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) on Sunday defended the Duterte administration’s “war on illegal drugs” after Vice President Leni Robredo called it a “failure”.

In a radio interview, PDEA Director General Aaron Aquino said the government's campaign was not a failure, as he cited a recent survey showing that eight of 10 Filipinos were satisfied on the war against illegal drugs.

“So if we stop now, our campaign will go back to zero,” he said.

Aquino said since July 2016, the government already confiscated P36 billion worth of illegal drugs and out of the more than 125,000 anti-drug operations, around 200,000 drug suspects were arrested.

He added around 15,000 barangays were already considered clear of illegal drugs.

Aquino said for the past three years since the intensified campaign against nartcotics was launched, "we have so much accomplishments.”

The PDEA chief said the only reason why there were calls for the campaign to stop was because of the allegations of extrajudicial killings.

Aquino noted that as far as PDEA is concerned, there were only 63 deaths that were recorded in its anti-drug operations.

“And we have proved that our operations against the 63 (suspects) were legit(imate) and transparent,” he said.

Aquino said both the PDEA and the Philippine National Police have been investigating the recorded deaths during operations to ensure that those who responsible for the lapses would face sanctions.

“Every time there is a reported death, we conduct investigation to ensure the case folder will be complete and we can check if there are defects, lapses or problems. Those not legit (operations) will be sanctioned. We will investigate it, file an administrative or criminal case and if there is a need to be removed or dismiss from service, we will do it,” he said.

“Hopefully in a matter of weeks, we can harmonize the more than 5,700 operations with alleged EJK incidents,” he added.

On Saturday, the Dangerous Drugs Boards, in a statement, expressed sadness over Robredo's remarks.

“It seems that up until now, the Vice President is misled in understanding the anti-drug campaign. Authorities continue to address the domestic drug issues using a holistic, balanced and comprehensive approach. Though much of the agencies of the government have been diligent in performing their roles and responsibilities under the Philippine Anti-Illegal Drugs Strategy (PADS) which is institutionalized by virtue of Executive Order No. 66, series of 2018, there are still institutions in the government and sectors in the society that need to be informed on PADS,” DDB said.

The organization said the campaign against illegal drugs is guided by the PADS framework which puts significant premium on both drug supply and drug demand reduction initiatives.

“It appears that VP Robredo is only looking at the one side of the campaign. While enforcement issues are more evident, we cannot discount the successes we have gained in the demand reduction part of the campaign,” it said.

In a recent interview, Robredo urged President Rodrigo Duterte to stop his bloody campaign against illegal drugs as nothing much has been achieved and yet so many people have already died. Ella Dionisio/DMS