Many thousands of Filipinos have in recent months been ruthlessly shot dead in cold blood after the country's president Rodrigo Duterte decided to call open season on anyone suspected of pushing or using drugs.
If after witnessing the unfolding catastrophe unleashed by such drastic measures a person still requires further evidence that the time has long passed for a new approach, nothing will ever convince that individual.
Let's make no mistake as we condemn the president's actions. Formerly a mayor known as “The Punisher,” Duterte is simply taking “The War on Drugs” to disturbingly literal extremes.
He didn't start this war, but he sure seems determined to end the drug trade in the Philippines his way.
Perhaps we should be asking ourselves whether any responsibility falls on the shoulders of those who declared the war decades ago.
America and especially the Drug Enforcement Administration's prohibitionist, puritanical moral crusade known as the war on drugs, has done little more than to spread violence, death and corruption around the world. Many other countries — Columbia and Mexico come to mind — have for decades experienced drug-related violence that has resulted in tens of thousands of fatalities.
Rather disheartening to see after such phenomenally failed drug policy is that any regime would actually take it to such callous extremes. Reading accounts about Filipinos who initially turned themselves in to receive government “assisted” rehab only to later be tracked down and murdered — often in front of helpless witnesses — is rather hard to process. What more proof does one need that prohibition destroys far more lives than it purports to save.
Yet perhaps the most demoralizing part about prohibition is that aside from keeping it status quo, a widespread public call for reform largely remains after all this time a complete political non-starter just about all over the world, with few exceptions. Most politicians won't touch that issue with a 10-foot pole, unless it's to further peddle prohibitionist fear-mongering propaganda.
Even the voices of former law enforcement officers like Neill Franklin, a retired U.S. police major who experienced first-hand the devastation caused by the drug war, don't seem to get much traction with the public. To raise awareness, he co-founded a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), but after several years its social media site has less than 150,000 followers and LEAP barely ever makes a blip on the mainstream media radar. Considering the hundreds of millions of Americans, some 100,000-plus is barely a drop in the bucket.
Voters apparently think that despite the violence and overwhelming loss of life created directly by the drug war, the issue simply does not stack up against (in no particular order) education, the economy, health care, infrastructure, energy, the environment, immigration, security and on and on.
Ironically, ending the ridiculous war would save countless billions of dollars in police resources that could instead be focused more intently on issues that actually matter such as perhaps human trafficking and corruption. Not to mention the amount saved on health-care costs. Portugal decriminalized all drugs 15 years ago, and the spread of disease has dropped dramatically, along with overdose deaths, related violence and overall usage.
But with Trump taking the helm, such progressive policies are most likely at least another four years off in the U.S., which mostly sets the tone. Although since The Donald largely seems to go along with the most popular public opinion on a given day, there's a chance enough pressure from people could sway him. That's pretty unlikely though, especially after he turned around and made the swamp he promised to drain more toxic than ever before.
Regardless, as long as American voters — perhaps backed by the voices of others around the world — don't make ending the ruinous drug war a priority, the terrible stories coming from the Philippines and around the globe sadly are not about to stop repeating themselves any time soon.
"With Trump taking the helm, such progressive policies are most likely at least another four years off in the U.S."
