COUNTER ARGUMENT --- WAR ON DRUGS

“No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law nor shall
any person be denied of the equal protection of the laws”.
- Art. 3, Sec.1 of the 1987 Constitution

The term “war on drugs” was coined by then US President Nixon for his campaign
to to reduce the illegal drug trade in the United States in the late early 70’s. The said campaign
includes a set of drug policies that were intended to discourage the production, distribution, and
consumption of psychoactive drugs that the participating governments and the UN have made
illegal. However, to no avail, drug abusers continued to fill the courts, hospitals, and
prisons. The drug trade caused violent crime that ravaged within neighborhoods. Children of
drug abusers were neglected, abused, and even abandoned. In the end, the war on drugs
turned out to be an utter failure.

Fast forward to the present, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte was elected as President
of the Republic. Upon assuming office, he promised to eradicate drugs in the country within 3-
6 months of his administration, however, like all promises, the same was made to be broken.
His promise is not only morally and legally unjustifiable, it also resulted in the conspicuous and
large-scale violations of human rights, it amounted to a state-sanctioned murder. Several
reports of alleged drug addicts being killed without any trace of evidence that would prove their
guilt or innocence. The police were given autonomy to perform extra-judicial killings and were
even given rewards for their unscrupulous acts. Although some are portrayed as self-defense
shootings, these police killings are widely believed to be planned and staged, with security
cameras and street lights unplugged, and drugs and guns planted on the victim after the
shooting. These killings not only involved adults but also minors, teenagers, and even a 3 year
old and of which the killing in the word of our very own Senator “Bato” dela Rosa was a result
of ,“Sh*t happens.”

Local police officers and members of the local councils draw up lists of drug suspects
and lacking any kind of transparency or accountability ends up as an actual hit lists. The
subsequent acts in support of the nationwide campaign against drugs violates our basic human
right to not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Our fellow
Filipinos are killed in cold-blood without being accorded their right to be presumed innocent
until proven guilty and to be heard. Moreover, inducing policemen to engage in de facto shoot-
to-kill policies is a grave mistake of law enforcement, not to mention the rule of law.

Furthermore, there is a high chance that such will only establish top-level corruption
and that only powerful drug traffickers will be able to bribe their way into upper-levels of the
Philippine law enforcement. Corrupt police officers and government officials tasked with the
duty to uphold the law and bring those people who commits an offense to justice,themselves,
become the top drug capos. Ultimately, those who should protect public safety and the rule of
law themselves become criminals.