DDB concedes Duterte drug war just slightly cut number of ‘users’

CONFESSED drug users take oaths in Mandaue City to signify their readiness to kick their addiction and return to productive lives. TONEE DESPOJO/CEBU DAILY NEWS FILE PHOTO

The Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB), whose work was used to justify former President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs, on Wednesday conceded that the campaign had not been effective in addressing the root problems of drug use in the country.

During the House quad committee hearing on Wednesday, officials from the DDB’s research and statistics division presented data from their national surveys showing that the number of drug dependents in the country was already declining before Duterte became President in 2016.

Michael Miatari, DDB board secretary, said the number fell from an estimated 6.8 million in 2004 to 1.7 million in 2008.

READ: Duterte takes ‘full legal, moral responsibility’ for drug war

The figure did go up to 1.8 million by 2015, a year before Duterte assumed the presidency, but Miatari said it could be attributed to the rise in the number of admissions in treatment centers and rehabilitation centers, “showing that our countrymen are getting better access to these services.”

“It may also be explained by increased (drug) trafficking both globally and locally,” Miatari added.

The next DDB survey in 2019, or three years into Duterte’s term, showed that there were 1.7 million users, or a decline of just 4.59 percent.

By 2023, the board was looking at only 1.5 million drug dependents nationwide.

The numbers came from the DDB’s national household survey, which Miatari said had a “95-percent confidence rate.”

Defending drug war

Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante asked the DDB if they believed the drug war was ineffective considering that thousands of Filipinos died and yet user rates only dipped slightly during Duterte’s six-year term.

“As reflected, Mr. Chair, yes,” Miatari said.

“That is just what I would like to tell the Filipino people, that despite the fact that you killed 30,000, there was only a slight downtrend in the data you made,” Abante said.

In 2019, Duterte claimed that there were “seven to eight million Filipinos reduced to being slaves to a drug called ‘shabu’ (crystal meth).”

But the DDB data showed that there were only 1.7 million drug users in the country that year.

Throughout Duterte’s term, the DDB was constantly forced to defend the former President’s statement that there were “four million” drug users in the country, a figure he repeatedly used to defend his brutal crackdown.

The government’s official tally put the death toll at around 7,000, but rights groups and the International Criminal Court investigating alleged crimes against humanity committed in the drug war placed it between 12,000 and 30,000.

On Wednesday, Rebecca Arambulo, officer in charge of the DDB’s policy studies, stressed that Duterte’s “four million” figure “did not come from the DDB national survey.”

She also answered yes when asked by Abante whether former DDB Chair Benjamin Reyes was removed because he had refused to stand by the number given by the ex-President.