Duterte can’t solve crime, drug woes despite 6 months extension

President Rodrigo Duterte

Despite an extension of another six months after his self-imposed deadline, President Rodrigo Duterte has said he cannot solve crime and drug problems in the Philippines.

In an interview with CNN Philippines on Thursday, Duterte said he did not know the extent of the drug problem in the country until he became President.

“I said I’ll finish it in six months,” he said. “I was looking at the Philippines, ang akala ko ganon lang (I thought it was that simple).”

The President said by the end of the year, he would have hit a million illegal drug users. “So you add another to General Santiago’s original number, you add mine which is about one million, so there are four million addicts.”

He was referring to former Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Director General Dionisio Santiago, who had pegged the number of drug addicts in the Philippines at three million.

Duterte said he had started to put pressure on the public when he became President so everyone could see how massive the drug problem was, because four million drug addicts were “no joke.”

“It is no joke. It is not just a problem that you can ignore or give just about 5, 10 minutes attention every day. You have to worry about the repercussions,” he said.

The President also said things had become complex, as terrorism was being fed with drugs.

“We are facing a terrorism threat. It will be a compounded issue. The Maute (group) that’s rampaging now in Lanao … it is being driven by drugs,” Duterte said.

“We have terrorism which is being fed with drugs in Mindanao and Visayas. Here in Luzon too, so we are trying to figure it out.”