MANILA, Philippines — Half of adult Filipinos believe only the poor are killed in the administration’s anti-drug campaign, results of the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey revealed.
The Third Quarter Social Weather Survey, conducted from Sept. 23-27, showed 54 percent of Filipinos aged 18 years and above who agreed with the statement, “Hindi pinapatay ang mga mayayaman na drug pusher; ang mga pinapatay ay ang mahihirap lamang (Rich drug pushers are not killed; only the poor ones are killed).”
The other 25 percent disagreed while 21 percent were undecided.
This resulted in a net agreement score of “moderately strong” +29, eight points below and and one grade down from the “very strong” +37 in June.
Net agreement that only poor drug pushers are killed was highest in Metro Manila at very strong +49 (70 percent agree, 21 percent disagree).
This was 12 points lower and one grade down from the extremely strong +61 (75 percent agree, 14 percent disagree) in June.
It stayed very strong in balance Luzon at +37 (58 percent agree, 21 percent disagree), up by three points from +34 (58 percent agree, 24 percent disagree).
It rose by one grade from moderately strong to very strong in the Visayas at +31 (56 percent disagree, 26 percent disagree), up by 10 points from +21 (53 percent agree, 32 percent disagree).
Net agreement that only the poor drug pushers are killed was lowest in Mindanao at a neutral -1 (34 percent agree, 35 percent disagree).
This was down by 41 points and two grades lower from the very strong +40 (59 percent agree, 18 percent disagree) in June.
SWS classifies net agreement of +50 and above as “extremely strong”; +30 to +49, “very strong”; +10 to +29, “moderately strong”; +9 to –9, “neutral”; –10 to –29, “moderately weak”; –30 to –49, “very weak”; –50 and below, “extremely weak.”
The survey used face-to-face interviews of 1,500 adults nationwide – 600 in balance Luzon and 300 each in Metro Manila, the Visayas and Mindanao.
It has sampling error margins of plus or minus three percentage points for national percentages.