By Noreen Jazul
The Philippine National Police (PNP) said Vice President Leni Robredo's assessment of the government's drug war as a “massive failure" was "unfair" citing that the campaign was, in fact, a "100% success."
Philippine National Police spokesperson PCol. Bernard Banac (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez / MANILA BULLETIN)
PNP spokesman Brig. Gen. Bernard Banac, in an interview with ANC on Wednesday, said the drug war's success rate is at 100% considering that there is no longer a "local production" of methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu in the country. He added that the remaining drugs in the country are "smuggled in from outside with involvement of international drug syndicates."
"When we say massive failure, it's really unfair. With 14 clandestine laboratories destroyed, with 419 drug dens dismantled, this could not be the 1% cited by the vice president, this may be, in fact, the 100% rate of success at this time," Banac said.
The PNP spokesman added that Robredo might have gotten "incomplete" data considering that she only acted as the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD) co-chair for 18 days.
"With her 18 or 19 days of stay as co-chair of the ICAD, it's not a complete picture of the situation," Banac said.
Banac also said that Robredo used unofficial, "theoretical, hypothetical" data of the drug consumption in the country to the actual amount of drugs confiscated.
"It was not an official data. It was just theoretical, hypothetical consumption of drug users...We estimated or postulated that there's about 0.15 grams of shabu being consumed by the users, granting there are three million users so that's about 4560 grams per day, that would equate to 3.15 tons of shabu per week," Banac explained.
"But we cannot use in comparing...because it was only a theoretical situation, an estimate, that what if there are about three million users and they are using 0.15 grams of shabu...We cannot use it to compare the amount of drugs confiscated in the actual operations," he underscored.
Banac said the estimate was only used "to project the drug problem."
"We made an estimate and the vice president used it to compare the number of or the amount of drugs confiscated during the actual operations," Banac reiterated.
Banac thanked Robredo for her assessment and vowed to use it as a challenge for them to do better.
"We thank her for all the comments and suggestions," Banac said.