MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine National Police (PNP) on Thursday backed President Rodrigo Duterte’s estimate that drug users in the country had reached seven to eight million.
In a briefing in Camp Crame, PNP Spokesperson Senior Superintendent Bernard Banac expressed belief that Duterte’s estimate had basis given his “wide access of information.”
“We know for a fact that the President has a wide access of information, he has unlimited sources of intelligence so the President came up with this estimate,” Banac said.
“We subscribe to that estimate because the number goes down and goes up every now and then. The estimate could be attributed to the number of users from the past to present because we know that a number is still unaccounted for,” he added.
Earlier, PNP Director General Oscar Albayalde said they don’t have an idea where Duterte’s figures came from.
“We really do not know where the President gets the statistics, because he has, as we’ve said before, unlimited sources of information,” he said.
READ: 7M-8M drug users? PNP doesn’t know
Banac also said that the PNP would take Duterte’s statement as a “challenge” to bring the administration’s war against illegal drugs to a higher level.
“We take it as a decision-making tool for us to assess our performance and take it as a challenge for us to do more and conduct more operations against illegal drugs,’ he said. /cbb