PDEA eyes drug-resistant, self-policing communities by 2030

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) is targeting to have drug-resistant and self-policing communities by 2030 with its new long-term plan in the anti-drug campaign.

“By 2030, we will have drug-resistant and self-policing communities,” PDEA Director General Wilkins Villanueva said in a statement on Tuesday.

“The organizational outcome of PDEA is to reduce drug-affectation in the country, seeing to it that no illegal drugs can thrive in the barangays through vigilance and commitment in fighting the drug menace,” he added.

To achieve this, PDEA will reduce the influence of drugs through the implementation of the Barangay Drug Clearing Program (BDCP) that includes strategies to reduce the supply, demand, and harm of drugs.

This program will be the main framework of PDEA’s anti-drug strategy, according to Villanueva.

BDCP will have a holistic and whole-of-nation approach in addressing the drug problem with the participation of local governments, agencies, and different stakeholders of the national anti-drug campaign, he added.

Recently, rights group Rise Up for Life and for Rights presented more evidence against President Rodrigo Duterte in their International Criminal Court (ICC) case against the government's war on drugs.

In a third pleading with the ICC's Prosecutor's Office dated January 21, 2021, the group submitted the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' June 4, 2020 report on the situation in the Philippines.

The report found that, officially, 8,663 people had been killed in the country's war on drugs, though some estimates put the real toll at almost 30,000.

It was also found that of the 25 operations in which 45 people were killed, post-operational police reports contained similar language and the “police repeatedly recovered guns bearing the same serial numbers from different victims in different locations.”

This suggested that the guns were planted and recycled as evidence, the group said. — Joviland Rita/RSJ, GMA News