Ex-New Zealand PM: Philippines needs to rethink drug policy

MANILA, Philippines — Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark said the Philippine government should take a fresh look at its anti-drug policy by considering a human rights-based campaign against illegal narcotics. 

In an interview with ABS-CBN News on the sidelines of Asian Development Bank's 52nd annual meeting in Fiji, Clark stressed that criminalizing a human behavior can “drive that behavior underground and that can have very serious health consequences.”

Clark is a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy and former administrator of the United Nations Development Programme from 2009 to 2017.

“The way the Philippines has addressed these issues under the current administration has raised many human rights concerns. There has been serious increase in the number of extrajudicial killings, people who have been suspected of being minor dealers or users for example. That worries me very much,” Clark said.

She added: “I hope that the Philippines at some point will be reconsidering that approach and looking for an approach to drugs in the society which is firmly based on human rights principles and the right to lie, being the most fundamental, and also the right to health.”

‘Multiply’ the problem

Malacañang on Thursday said the campaign that has left thousands of alleged drug personalities dead is “anchored on national security and on public health.”

“We live in a country where the illegal drug industry is a billion-peso industry, where 97% of barangays, or small villages, have or had already been infiltrated. Take out the criminal liability of those involved and you induce and encourage others to be part of the dreaded evil,” presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said.

The president’s mouthpiece added that drug treatment and rehabilitation form part of the second phase of the campaign, noting the establishment of the 10,000-bed drug rehabilitation center in Nueva Ecija and 27 reformation centers.

Palace: Understand anti-drug strategy instead

Panelo also said that foreign observers should understand the Philippine government’s strategy in dealing with illegal drugs “before being persuaded by one-sided information and crafting unwise if not cerebrally-challenged commentaries based thereon.”

“The other countries’ experiences in addressing illegal substance while education relative to their method of solving their own drug menace, decriminalizing the use of drugs in the Philippines will not only aggravate but multiply the problem,” he said.

In March 2017, President Rodrigo Duterte slammed the European Union for urging him to focus his campaign on drug rehabilitation approach.

The Philippine government acknowledges 5,375 deaths of "drug personalities" in police operations since July 2016. But human rights groups claim the figures are higher, citing unresolved killings under the administration of Duterte.