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problem during the Duterte administration should now give way to more humane, less
stigmatizing and proportionate strategies that treat substance addiction more as a
health issue rather than a criminal menace.
Drug reform advocates made this call as they noted that the prevalence of drug use in
the country was statistically lower than—or even less than half of—the global average
when then President Rodrigo Duterte was waging his “war on drugs.”
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In a recent media fellowship, the Drug Policy Reform Initiative (DPRI) cited a 2019
survey conducted by the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) showing that only 2.05
percent (1.68 million) of the Filipino population were into drug use. The DDB survey
was based on face-to-face interviews with 9,341 Filipinos age 10 to 69 across all the
17 regions.
The World Drug Report released in 2022 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime (UNODC), on the other hand, placed the global average at 5 percent.
The UNODC study also noted that only 11 percent of “persons who use drugs”
worldwide may be considered “problematic” or whose condition leads to physical,
mental and social damage. The vast majority, 89 percent, were not deemed
problematic, it noted.
To justify his brutal anti-drug campaign, Duterte, in his public pronouncements,
claimed that there are 7 to 8 million drug users in the country in 2019.
Yet three years earlier, in his first State of the Nation Address delivered in July 2016,
Duterte cited a much smaller figure—3.7 million.
DDB chief resignation
In November 2017, then DDB chief Dionisio Santiago was forced to resign on
Duterte’s orders after saying that the sprawling drug rehabilitation facility built in
Nueva Ecija was a mistake and that the government should have instead pursued a
community-based program to help users end their addiction.
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