How Long Has The War On Drugs Been Going On – How many people have been killed in Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs? Thousands of people have died in drug raids in the Philippines
RODRIGO DUTERTE ran for the presidency in 2016 as an outspoken defender of the common man. He promised increased government spending and a proud new foreign policy. But above all, he declared war on drugs and those who traffic in them. “If you destroy my country, I will kill you. If you destroy our children, I will kill you,” he warned on his second day in office. His campaign has since left thousands dead. How much is subject to increased scrutiny.
How Long Has The War On Drugs Been Going On
In an effort to rid every barangay or neighborhood of drugs, police in the Philippines hunt down suspects and demand their extradition. According to the official version of events, armed traders opened fire, provoking the police to retaliate. If the suspects were shot, authorities say it was legal because police were acting in self-defense. An alternative version suggests that police shoot drug addicts or small-time dealers in cold blood, then plant guns and drugs on the victims. On other occasions, alert citizens shoot and some are said to be connected to the police. (As of 2016, drug suspects who have been killed by other citizens are often listed under the much broader category of “death under investigation,” or DUI.)
Reagan Declares ‘war On Drugs,’ October 14, 1982
Since the early days of the war on drugs, the number of killings has dropped dramatically. However, estimates of the actual number of victims vary. According to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, police arrested 311,686 people and killed 6,201 during 216,138 anti-illegal drug operations conducted between July 2016 and September 2021. (This number does not include those classified as drug-related DUIs.) A report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that, even at a conservative count, at least 8,663 people were killed. Documents submitted as part of an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into whether the killings and Mr. Duterte’s encouragement of them amounted to crimes against humanity put the civilian death toll much higher, at between 12,000 and 30,000. Lenny Robredo, a critic of Mr. Duterte who is the Vice President and head of the drug task force also called on police to be more transparent about the death toll.
This month, the Armed Events and Location Data Project (ACLED), an NGO that collects information on political violence, released an updated version of its comprehensive database in the Philippines. Based on data from nearly 40 sources, including local and international newspapers in English and Filipino, ACLED concluded that at least 7,742 civilians have been killed in anti-drug operations since 2016 – 25% more than the police report. (ACLED includes deaths caused by police and vigilantes, but its methodology excludes self-armed victims. For this reason, ACLED also considers this figure conservative.)
ACLED data also shows that at the beginning of the campaign, vigilantes were responsible for about half of the deaths, with the rest attributed to the police. But by 2021, the rate attributed to the police had risen to around 80%, perhaps due to an increasing police response. Their data also shows that violence emanates from the capital. In 2016, Manila accounted for 45% of the total number of homicides in the country, in the second half of 2021 only 8% of deaths occurred there.
On November 20, the ICC suspended its investigation at the request of the Philippines, which had launched an investigation into police involvement in dozens of killings with the promise of investigating thousands more. Mr. Duterte’s term in office is coming to an end, but the ICC case against him may be reopened. ■
Weed In South Africa: Apartheid Waged A War On Drugs That Still Has Unequal Effects Today
For a behind-the-scenes look at our data journalism, subscribe to our weekly Off the Charts newsletter. The Early Stages of Drug Prohibition Many of today’s illegal drugs, such as marijuana, opium, coca, and psychedelics, have been used for thousands of years for both medicinal and spiritual purposes. So why are some drugs legal and others illegal today? This is not based on any scientific assessment of the relative risks of these drugs – but it is relevant to anyone involved with these drugs. The first anti-opium laws of the 1870s targeted Chinese immigrants. The first anti-cocaine laws of the early 20th century targeted blacks in the South. The first anti-marijuana laws in the Midwest and Southwest in the 1910s and 1920s targeted Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans. Today, Latino and especially black communities are still subject to disproportionate drug enforcement and sentencing practices. Nixon and the Generation Gap In the 1960s, when drugs became symbols of youth rebellion, social upheaval, and political dissent, the government halted scientific research to assess their safety and medical efficacy. In June 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug enforcement agencies and pushed for measures such as mandatory sentencing and prohibition. Senior Nixon adviser John Ehrlichman later admitted: “You want to know what it was really about. The Nixon campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after it had two enemies: the anti-war left and black people. You knew we couldn’t ban being anti-war or black, but by getting the public to associate hippies with marijuana and black people with heroin, and then heavily criminalizing both, we can disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news . Did we know we were lying about drugs? Of course we did.” Nixon temporarily placed marijuana on Schedule I, the most restrictive category of drugs, pending a review by a commission he appointed, headed by Republican Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Schaefer. In 1972, the commission unanimously recommended decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana for personal use. Nixon ignored the report and rejected its recommendations. In However, between 1973 and 1977, eleven states decriminalized strong marijuana. In January 1977, President Jimmy Carter was inaugurated on a campaign platform that included the decriminalization of marijuana. In October 1977, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for personal use. However, within a few years, the tables have turned. Proposals to decriminalize marijuana were withdrawn as parents became increasingly concerned about the high rate of juvenile marijuana use. Marijuana eventually caught up with a broader cultural backlash against the perceived permissiveness of the 1970s. This video by hip-hop legend Jay-Z and acclaimed artist Molly Crabbell depicts the devastating impact of the drug war on the black community from decades of biased law enforcement. The video traces the drug war from President Nixon to Rockefeller’s draconian drug laws to the growing underground marijuana market that can make legal millions for wealthy investors doing the same thing that has gotten generations of people of color arrested and imprisoned. After watching the video, read on to learn more about the discriminatory history of the war on drugs. 1980s and 1990s: Drug hysteria and soaring incarceration The presidency of Ronald Reagan marked the beginning of a long period of soaring incarceration, largely due to his unprecedented expansion of the drug war. The number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug violations rose from 50,000 in 1980 to more than 400,000 by 1997. Public concern about illicit drug use arose in the 1980s, largely due to media portrayals of people addicted to a smokeable form of cocaine called ” to burst.” “. Shortly after Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, his wife, Nancy Reagan, launched a high-profile anti-drug campaign that coined the slogan “Just Say No.” This paved the way for the zero-tolerance policy that was implemented in the mid-1980s until the end of the last century. Believing that “occasional drug users should be taken out and shot,” Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates founded the DARE drug education program, which was quickly adopted nationally despite a lack of evidence of its effectiveness. Increasingly strict drug policies have also blocked the expansion of syringe access programs and other harm reduction policies to reduce the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS. In the late 1980s, political hysteria over drugs led to draconian sentences in Congress and state legislatures that rapidly increased the prison population. In 1985, the proportion of Americans polled who considered drug use their “number one problem” was only 2-6 percent. This number increased throughout the rest of the 1980s until it reached a remarkable 64 percent in September 1989—one of the most intense fixations of the American public on any question in the history of polling. But in less than a year, that number dropped to less than 10 percent as the media lost interest. Draconian policy