EDITORIAL - War on drugs slipping away

Since the Duterte government launched its aggressive war against illegal drugs, more than 6,000 people have already been killed. Thousands more have surrendered and are in the process of being rehabilitated. Others have gone back to their old ways, only to join the ranks of those killed, or spend the rest of their lives on the run.

And yet the trade in illegal drugs continues, so briskly in fact that it is as if no crackdown has ever been launched against it. In Cebu alone over the weekend, more than P120 million worth of shabu got confiscated in raids in Cebu City and Lapu-Lapu City. There are 145 cities in the Philippines. Just considering the amount from two cities, it is pretty scary to consider what amounts must be out there that have successfully eluded the arms of the law.

And this brings us to the question why, given the aggressiveness of the government in cracking down on the illegal drug trade, the illegal drug trade continues as if there is no crackdown at all. In fact, it may even be flourishing, given its continued strength despite the inroads government must have made by way of seizures of shabu and the neutra-lization of so many people.

A partial answer may be that the loss of people, despite numbering in the thousands, is easy to replace. The overwhelming majority of the people killed were either very low level drug runners or pushers. Some were just plain users. In other words, and with all due respect to the dead, they were the expendable types, easy to replace.

The more significant and weighty answer might be that the real manipulators of the illegal drugs game, the so-called drug lords of the trade, have all yet to be captured or arrested. To be sure, no less than President Duterte has made a big show, at every opportunity he gets, to name several personalities he describes as being drug lords. He even carries around a thick sheaf of papers containing the names of his supposed real targets.

But the more he talks about them, complete with curses and obscenities, the more the Filipino people begin to suspect that this is all just for show. He has not arrested even one of those he has named. His war seems to consist merely of running after the small fry. And that is not going to win him his war. On the other hand, the police that he uses in his war are increasingly getting distracted by criminal opportunities that arise from his being too trusting with them.