By Dean Aubrey Caratiquet
Lower House’s Quad-Committee reported Thurday that PBBM’s “bloodless” anti-drug campaign from 2022 to 2024 netted P49.82 billion worth of drugs and at least 800 drug-related deaths.
This is in comparison to the P25.19 billion worth of drugs seized and more than 20,000 drug personalities killed from 2016 to 2018, during the tenure of then-President Rodrigo Duterte.
According to Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, Quad-Comm overall chair and chairperson of the House Committee on Dangerous Drugs, these figures were obtained from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), the Philippine National Police (PNP), the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), and other concerned government agencies.
“Those statistics clearly refute the claim by some quarters that the previous bloody drug war was a more effective approach or strategy than the bloodless anti-drug campaign. While both administrations aimed to reduce drug-related crimes, their methods and resulting outcomes reflect significant strategic and operational differences,” Barbers emphasized.
“The recent drug seizures were almost double the value of drugs seized during the previous administration’s first two years in office, indicating that the larger volume and variety of drugs seized under the current dispensation was due to enhanced intelligence and operational precision, focusing more on major drug trafficking networks rather than street-level dealers,” the official added.
In 2018, all 23,327 drug-related killings were reclassified as “homicide under investigation” cases due to mounting complaints from human rights groups and families of victims of extrajudicial killings (EJKs), coupled by the alleged inaction of police on said cases.
However, under the current administration, the data indicated 73 deaths from legitimate operations and an additional 822 drug-related killings, which were far fewer deaths compared to Duterte’s first two years in office.
-iro/av