By MARIO CASAYURAN
THE government is winning in it’s war against illegal drugs and the fight will die down in 2022, the end of the six-term of President Duterte.
This despite a reassessment of the number of drug users from 1.8 million in 2016 to a conservative figure of four million to five million drug users at present.
“That is our vision, commitment that by 2022, we shall have cleared (the remaining)15,000 affected barangays (as 8,000 barangay plus have already been cleared),’’ Aaron N. Aquino, Director-General of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) said after attending a public hearing by the Senate sub-finance committee “E’’ chaired by Sen. Panfilo M. Lacson.
Aquino and Catalino S. Cuy, Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) secretary, defended before the Lacson sub-committee their proposed 2019 budgets of R1,979,400,000 and R2158.3 million, respectively.
Aquino said the conservative figure of four million drug users was arrived at by law enforcement agencies in their re-assessment of the drug problem in the country.
From a figure of 1.8 million drug users in 2015, there were 1.3 million drug surrenderers when President took office at Malacanang in July, 2016 “and we did not know that the number of those who surrendered was that big ,’’ he said.
Asked whether the government is winning the war against illegal drugs despite the big revised number of drug users, Aquino replied: ‘’definitely, yes.’’