An Essay on the Philippine Drug War: Analysis and Impact

This essay examines the Philippine Drug War initiated by President Rodrigo Duterte, focusing on its intense crackdown against drug distribution networks and cartels. It discusses the controversial approach of the government, including the involvement of vigilante groups like the Davao Death Squads, and the resulting extrajudicial killings. The essay highlights the fear among citizens, the public support for the President's policies, and the reported decline in crime rates. It also addresses the widespread drug abuse in the country and the concerns raised by international agencies regarding human rights violations. The essay references various sources to provide a comprehensive overview of the Philippine Drug War, its impact on society, and the ethical dilemmas it presents.

ESSAY
Philippine Drug War

The Current Philippine drug war
The current Philippine Drug War, as the name is given to it, is an intense countrywide
crackdown against a massive network of drug distribution and drug cartels. This chain of events
started when President Rodrigo Duterte started a war against this social evil. It was an election
campaign of President Duterte to considerably bring down the drug related crimes which the
people had been enduring for far too long. So, he sworn to punish tens of thousands of drug
criminals during the intense campaign. Davao Death Squads is a group of vigilantes that has
been given the task of cleansing the streets of the country which are filled with drug criminals.
The president has even asked the general public to kill those drug criminals who are resisting the
arrest (Euan McKirdy, 2016). However, such an approach has been termed as counter-productive
because it could push the society to the brink of self-destruction. Their reasoning is when a group
of people is singled out and termed to be the root cause of all the evil, then such an unbalanced
situation will not help people in any way to experience less significant problems and lead
productive lives.
Fear Taking Over
It was the first address on the part of the national government to the people of the country that it
is not going to spare the last drug lord. So, there is also a fear of extrajudicial killings and the
intensity with which death toll is increasing and despite that some reports have shown that the
police operations, the actions taken by vigilantes are nowhere near the state of getting abated.
One of the citizen’s in the country was quoted as saying that he doesn’t know for sure where the
more grave threats are coming from police and vigilantes or drug criminals themselves, but they
are afraid.

War on a 'National Scale'
The overpowering fact is that the Philippine’s war on drugs is getting a wider support among the
masses and according to a latest survey conducted by Pulse Asia, a really huge number of people
are putting their trust in their new leader as far as the drug problem in the country is concerned.
The results of the investigations of the killings of Davao Death Squad have been welcomed by
the public because they consider this crackdown as something good for peace and order for the
country (Hincks, 2016). The general public is ready to credit the President of the fact that Davao
is now one of the safest cities in the world because he enforced the discipline by killing hundreds
of criminals. An another report has suggested that because of the war on drugs going in on a
countrywide scale, the incidents of crime have been falling significantly for some time now.
Also, robbery, rape, assault, theft and other crimes are on decline. As a matter of fact, drugs like
methamphetamines are abused very extensively in the country. This particular drug has even the
highest usage in whole of the East Asia and apart from that there is a prevalence of other
pervasive drugs as well. As per a recent survey carried out by Dangerous Drug Board (DDB), it
was established that around 2 million Philippines are using illegal drugs. It was also found that
before the President came to power, there were as many as three to seven million number of
people who were hooked on to the drugs. The words like pandemic and narco state were the
euphemism used for the country in the context of rising level of drug abuse. For the last few
months, a number of reporters have published a number of photographs depicting the various
suspect killings that are taking place in the name of anti-criminality killings (Paddock, 2016).
From the viewpoint of human right violations, some international agencies have made it clear
that the extra-judicial killings of suspected drug dealers and abusers is completely unacceptable
crime control mechanism that is going under way because it is not safe for the security of the

people at large. People will always be living in fear and the criminals will wage war against the
nation. Some people are also afraid that the bloodthirsty mood on the part of enforcement
agencies will get them nowhere because the wild west form of justice being meted out will find
no comfort then.

References
Euan McKirdy, C. (2016). The Philippines' war on drugs: Outrage over extrajudicial
killings. CNN. Retrieved 15 September 2016, from
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/03/asia/philippines-war-on-drugs/
Hincks, J. (2016). Philippines: Inside Duterte's killer drug war. Aljazeera.com. Retrieved 15
September 2016, from http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/09/philippines-
duterte-killer-drug-war-160905094258461.html
Paddock, R. (2016). Chilling Tale in Duterte’s Drug War: Father and Son Killed in Police
Custody.Nytimes.com. Retrieved 15 September 2016, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/world/asia/philippines-duterte-drug-killings.html?_r=0