Duterte: I’m destroying drug trade infra

President Rodrigo Roa Duterte. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/JOAN BONDOC

MANILA — As more prominent names were roped into the anti-drug war, President Duterte continued to justify his intensified focus on the issue.

Speaking at the Malacañang palace, Mr. Duterte said that aside from the Chinese drug traffickers, the notorious Mexican Sinaloa cartel has infiltrated the illegal drug business in the Philippines.

“We are the transshipment point,” Mr. Duterte said before a crowd of volunteers from the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, who paid him a courtesy call.

He said the cartel has turned to the Philippines because the United States has gone tough on drug smuggling.

He said the government must deny the drug operators the market to stop the traffic of drugs.

To do this, he has to exterminate the apparatus on the ground.

“If nobody would buy from them and nobody would receive [the drugs], if I kill the lieutenants, the business of shabu would no longer be viable,” he said.

The President also stressed he has been focusing intently on the illegal drugs because he has seen what it had done to users and to the people they had victimized, and he was really angry at them, he said.

Mr. Duterte, in his remarks, also went soft on his critic, Sen. Leila de Lima, who has vowed to investigate the rising body count in the war against drive illegal drugs through a Senate inquiry on the summary executions and other abuses committed in its name.

“I do not blame De Lima. That’s her job,” he said.

Also on Wednesday, the President’s spokesperson Ernesto Abella said Malacañang would not block the Senate probe on the issue.

“They are welcome to make the necessary investigation as they see fit,” Abella said in a press briefing. SFM