In an Inquirer interview, Kristina Mendoza, a human rights lawyer and member of the DPRI, noted that while drugs were a concern for the country to address, its magnitude was exaggerated by Duterte, given the global average. | INQjacobreports /PDI
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.
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.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.
“Actually he did [exaggerate],” Mendoza said, and the solutions he espoused were thus “out of proportion to a problem that doesn’t merit that kind of attention and spending.”Mendoza said the government’s punitive approach to the problem—launching a crackdown on suspected drug users and peddlers that left thousands dead, mostly in questionable police operations in the slums—only gave rise to larger social concerns.
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