Daily Archives: June 24, 2022

The US war on drugs that started with the historic address to the nation by then President Richard Nixon on June 17,1971, continues unabated.

.there was a steep decline in illicit drug usage in the earlier years, but it has started picking up again and this time at an accelerated rate. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the number of illicit drug users rose to 13% among 12 years or older Americans in 2019, nearly reaching its peak from 40 years ago.

When a leader or a political party says that they will wipe out the drug menace from their territory in six weeks or three months, it sounds like a joke. Before their loaded utterances, they probably failed to look at the United States, one of the most powerful nations, that continues to fight the drug menace even after 51 years of its avowed crusade. The US war on drugs that started with the historic address to the nation by then President Richard Nixon on June 17,1971, continues unabated.

Even after 51 years, the challenge to eradicate various social, economic and health ills directly related to drugs and their abuse continue to haunt American society. All efforts, including promulgation of legislations from time to time, and huge spendings over the years, estimated to be over a trillion dollars, have failed to yield the desired results.

Recent studies show that use of drugs has been on the rise again. Though making comparisons are futile as various factors, including socio-economic issues, terrains and people at helm of affairs differ from place to place, yet the fight against drugs has remained on the forefront of various nations. The war on drugs has universal appeal.

Till date no one has succeeded in its war against drugs.

In the United States, the war on drugs was started from the White House, when Richard Nixon declared that the federal government would treat drug addiction as public enemy No. 1. His declaration was to vanquish substance use once and for all. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, Nixon had said, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive, he had announced.

Where does the US stand in its war against drugs?

Those who have been religiously following the war on drugs say that it has not paid off. Researchers, irrespective of their backgrounds or ideologies, at least agree to disagree that the war has failed to deliver.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has been vested with sweeping powers and even after working under multiple administrations, it still finds itself fighting a non-conclusive battle.

The Enforcement Administration has been enjoying an unprecedented level of authority that vests in it powers like mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. If Kassandra Frederique, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a non-profit organization that is mandated to end the war on drugs, is to be believed, the drug war is a failed policy. Kassandra Frederique says, the things that they said would happen people would stop using drugs, communities would get back together, wed be safe, theyd get drugs off the street those things didnt happen. Agreed, there was a steep decline in illicit drug usage in the earlier years, but it has started picking up again and this time at an accelerated rate. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the number of illicit drug users rose to 13% among 12 years or older Americans in 2019, nearly reaching its peak from 40 years ago. Vanda Felbab-Brown, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security, Strategy and Technology at Brookings Institution, says We are still in the midst of the most devastating drug epidemic in U.S. history. There were more than 90,000 deaths in the United State due to overdose of drugs that was far more than 70.630 drug overdose deaths in 2019, a report by Commonwealth Fund said.

Ten years after the war on drugs was initiated, the budget was a billion. It touched $ 34.6 billion in 2020. The increase in budgetary allocation comes to more than 1000% in less than 40 years, say social scientists and researchers questioning the wisdom of increased funding without palpable results.

According to the White House, the national drug control budget has already hit a new level of $ 41 billion with its major chunk going for drug treatment and drug prevention

The Administration has been trying different initiatives. Take mass incarceration for example which has been leaving a heavy burden on both the federal and state governments budgets. The Prison Policy Initiative, a think tank and criminal justice advocacy group, found that 1 in 5 currently incarcerated people in the U.S. are locked up for a drug offense. The same research estimates that it costs an average of about $ 37,500 per annum to house an inmate in federal correctional facilities and that mass incarceration costs the U.S. at least $ 182 billion annually

States found their budgets enormously strapped by having to put funds toward correctional facilities that grew into enormous complexes, explained Felbab-Brown. One unfortunate way that states dealt with it was privatizing correction, something thats a specific feature to the United States. That has been a very problematic and fraught policy, partially driven by the tendency to arrest nonviolent drug offenders.

There is a racial angle to the issue also as there is a massive racial disparity that comes with drug incarcerations.

The Drug Policy Alliance says that nearly 80% of those detained in federal prisons and almost 60 % in state prisons for drug related offences are Black or Latino. Three years ago, when the Black or Latino population was 13.4 % of the countrys total population, the FBI reported that one in four of the drug-related arrests were of Black American adults. Needless to reiterate that Americans attitude toward drugs is changing. New York has become the 15th State to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Oregon, in February, became the first state to decriminalize the possession of any small amounts of drugs.

Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy think tank, sounds cautious in saying Just as we dont abandon our efforts to prevent violent crime because murders, rapes, and robberies are still committed, we should not abandon our efforts to protect our neighbors and their children from the harms illicit drug use causes. We should pursue our goal with every tool we have, such as education, interdiction, law enforcement and treatment.

The United States may have in its 51-year-long war reversed some of the harshest impacts of the drugs, yet its fight against forbidden substances continues unabated.

(Prabhjot Singh is a veteran journalist with over three decades of experience covering a wide spectrum of subjects and stories. He has covered Punjab and Sikh affairs for more than three decades besides covering seven Olympics and several major sporting events and hosting TV shows. For more in-depth analysis please visit probingeye.com or follow him on Twitter.com/probingeye. He can be reached at [emailprotected])

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Should the U.S. end the war on drugs? - The Indian Panorama

'What happened to the clamor against Sara Duterte and her fathers war on drugs that has claimed upwards of 30,000 lives a count that surpasses that of Ferdinand Marcos?'

Its been a month since the 2022 national elections, and at this point, the Philippines is set to have Bongbong Marcos sit as president come July 2022. Despite leading the pre-electoral surveys and subsequently winning the presidency by a landslide, many Filipino citizens clamored against Bongbongs presidency because of his unwillingness to acknowledge any wrongdoings of his family during the Martial Law era. In short, the fact that accountability remained elusive for the Marcoses and Bongbongs run for presidency shows that they would continue to be protected from any form of justice.

Leading up to elections and shortly after, we felt the protest of a Filipino collective against the Marcoses. We saw it all over social media and the news; we heard it in interpersonal conversations and possibly even engaged in such talk:

We cannot allow Bongbong Marcos to sit as president after his fathers regime killed, tortured, and imprisoned tens of thousands of students, activists, civil leaders, and oppositional politicians.

Corruption aside, which is another major issue with the Marcoses, the talk surrounding the Martial Law victims was the major counter-discourse against legitimizing Bongbong as our highest-elected government official.

Personally, I agree with all of these sentiments. I do believe that given the Marcos family history of corruption and human rights violations, having Bongbong sit as president is frightening. In a way, his winning implies a legitimization of historical revisionism and an absolving of their past crimes. In fact, he even stated that one of his major goals as president would be to clear his familys name, which in turn would create an alternative and falsified history of our country. Due to this, continuing to engage in this type of counter-discourse is important so that the atrocities done in Marcos name are not forgotten.

However, a majority of those that oppose the Marcoses seem to have hyper-focused on Bongbongs presidential run and let Sarah Dutertes run for vice president slide. The pair of candidates have an eerie similarity between them they are both children of strongmen presidents with a record of tens of thousands of human rights violations. The collective protest against Bongbongs presidency was strong and anchored on the familys history of corruption and human rights violations, but what happened to the clamor against Sara Duterte and her fathers war on drugs that has claimed upwards of 30,000 lives a count that surpasses that of Ferdinand Marcos?

Prior to the spread of fake news about Martial Law, those victimized by Ferdinand Marcos regime had been positioned as upstanding members of society by the Filipino public. As much as Marcos had used red-tagging as a way of labeling these people as threats to public safety, the Filipino collective was aware that these people were not what these labels were saying. In fact, many of these victims included political opponents, student activists, journalists, religious workers, farmers, and civil leaders. The demographics of these victims made it clear to the Filipino public (and subsequent generations) that Marcos was targeting those who spoke out against him. According to Amnesty International, historians believe that Marcos regime was marked by 3,000+ extrajudicial killings, 35,000+ tortures, 70+ disappearances, and 70,000+ imprisonments. Because majority of the victims of Martial Law were ordinary members of society, it appears that the people remembered, for a time, the bloody regime of Ferdinand Marcos.

As for Rodrigo Dutertes war on drugs, from the very beginning, he was clear about his directives: Shoot to kill. During his campaign, Duterte publicly stated that he would go on a killing spree against those involved in the business of drugs. By doing this from the start, he was able to garner the consent of the public to carry out the war against drug users and drug lords, a population of Filipino citizens that was already positioned as a menace to society. He didnt need to hide his intent to go to war against these people; he did so loudly and proudly because his public statements legitimized his extrajudicial killings given that his wars victims were those involved in drugs people that society had already turned its back against.

The result? 30,000+ deaths of fellow Filipino citizens, many of whom were poor and small fries in the drug industry, or wrongfully accused for the sake of bolstering drug operations numbers no major dent in the actual system of drugs in the country.

I am in no way blaming the Filipino people for forgetting what had happened in the past six years, but am instead trying to show how the way that collectives and leaders talk about phenomena and the people within them, such as Martial Law, the war on drugs, and their victims, can change the way that things are remembered in history.

As Bongbongs presidency comes closer, human rights groups have urged Bongbong to stop the war on drugs, but Rodrigo Duterte himself requested Bongbong to continue the fight against drugs in his own way. Given the history of Bongbongs and Saras fathers with human rights violations, it is important that we continue to clamor against the possibility of continuing these anti-drug operations set forth by Rodrigo Duterte. As much as the talk about the victims of Martial Law is imperative to fight against the trend of alternative history and fake news, it is just as important that we, as a people, also never forget the blood spilled by Dutertes regime by continuing to engage in talk and protest against the killing of fellow Filipinos. Rappler.com

JR Ilagan is a licensed psychologist that does both psychotherapy and psychological assessment in GrayMatters Psychological & Consultancy, Inc.At the moment, he is finishing up his dissertation for his PhD in Ateneo de Manila, which focuses on disrupting the narrative consent of Dutertes war on drugs through art. He is currently a part-time faculty in the same institution, as well. Most of his recent research focuses on the public discourse of government, citizens, and collectives in line with societal, cultural, and mental health issues.

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[OPINION] What happened to the discourse on the drug war during the elections? - Rappler

The last known experiment at a Department of Veterans Affairs clinic with psychedelic-assisted therapy started in 1963. That was the year President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Surfin U.S.A. topped the music charts, and American troops had not yet deployed to Vietnam.

At the time, the federal government was a hotbed of psychedelics research. The C.I.A. explored using LSD as a mind-control tool against adversaries. The U.S. Army tested the drugs potential to incapacitate enemies on the battlefield. And the V.A. used it in an experimental study to treat alcoholism.

But booming recreational use of drugs, including hallucinogens, sparked a fierce political backlash and helped set in motion the war on drugs, which, among other things, ended an era of research into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics.

Nearly six decades later, a handful of clinicians have brought back psychedelic therapy within the Veterans Affairs health care system. If their studies show promising results, they could mark a major step in the quest to both legalize and legitimize psychedelics and make them broadly available for clinical use.

I spoke to four of the government researchers leading studies into the use of MDMA, often called Ecstasy, and psilocybin, to treat mental illnesses that have been resistant to current therapies for many veterans. The researchers addressed their motivations, misgivings and hope for the future of medicinal psychedelics.

Dr. Shannon Remick, 34, has the military in her blood having been raised by an Army mother, a Marine father and a Navy stepfather. That familiarity with the armed forces is part of what drove her to become a psychiatrist at the V.A., where she found that a significant number of combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder were not responding to conventional treatments.

Last October she likely became the first clinician since the 1960s to administer psychedelics as medicine to a patient at a V.A. clinic. The 10 patients in her study at the Veterans Affairs clinic in Loma Linda, Calif., are combat veterans with PTSD who volunteered to undergo three sessions with MDMA in hopes of exploring the underlying roots of their distress.

Dr. Remick said its crucial to build rapport and trust with patients during conventional therapy sessions ahead of the MDMA trips. Before a patient takes the pill, she sets a calming mood by doing a breathing exercise, reading a poem or having a veteran hold a personally meaningful object. The MDMA sessions themselves, she said, are often self-directed, with the therapist doing more listening than talking.

The goal is to put patients in a state where they can examine and reflect on traumatic memories with less fear and aversion than they normally experience. She compared the process of making sense of painful moments of the past to sorting through an archaeological dig, a delicate process of discovery and understanding.

We are alongside and with the patient as they are exploring a kind of excavation site, she said. Ultimately, its not for us to point and say, Hey, look at that, because what Im seeing may not be the same from their angle.

Approaching 60 a couple of years ago, Dr. Rachel Yehuda began contemplating retirement. She had been a prolific researcher and clinician for more than three decades studying, among other things, how intergenerational trauma affects the children of Holocaust survivors.

I was proud of our work, but it wasnt leading to practical solutions for treating trauma survivors, said Dr. Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the director of mental health at the V.A. clinic in the Bronx.

But in the past few years, Dr. Yehuda, now 62, became fascinated by the renaissance of psychedelic-assisted therapy and put off retirement. In early 2020 she began seeking permission to treat veterans suffering from PTSD with MDMA.

Her study, which began in January and will include about 60 participants, will look at whether three sessions of MDMA are more effective than two at reducing PTSD symptoms.

Dr. Yehuda said MDMA trips can be powerful catalysts for healing. She underwent one in 2019 as part of a training for therapists an experience she called revelatory.

It made me really understand what it is youre supposed to be doing in psychotherapy, she said. Ive never quite understood what it means to have a breakthrough.

But she cautioned that researchers still have a lot to learn about the types of patients who will benefit from this treatment, the role therapists ought to play and the potential perils.

The process of opening up has to be done with the right therapists, she said.

Over her 23 years treating veterans and studying the strengths and shortcomings of conventional PTSD therapy, Dr. Leslie Morland recognized that standard treatments often failed to address the challenges veterans face at work and at home.

Her pursuit to find more holistic interventions led her to develop a study examining whether MDMA can make couples therapy more effective.

A lot of our military learn to emotionally disconnect in order to be effective in combat, Dr. Morland, 52, said. And then were bringing them back and saying: Now we need you to open up with our talk therapy.

People with PTSD often struggle to connect with intimate partners. Veterans who see improvements in symptoms often experience setbacks when they return to dysfunctional home environments, Dr. Morland, said. According to the V.A., veterans with PTSD have historically struggled with intimacy and have more marital and parenting problems than veterans without the disorder.

While no one has formally studied the use of MDMA with veterans and their partners, clinical studies with civilians have shown that the drug can alter the dynamics of a relationship, Dr. Morland said.

It allows for increased bonding and increased empathy, she said.

In a clinical study she expects to launch toward the end of the year, Dr. Morland intends to recruit eight veterans in San Diego who have strained marriages and guide them through two sessions with MDMA that will be bracketed by talk therapy. The goal is to give couples the tools they need to understand and meaningfully address the causes of discord.

How do they work together to really sustain the improvements that have been achieved in therapy? she said.

Between 2010 and 2019, drug overdose mortality rates among veterans rose by 53 percent, killing more than 42,000. Deaths from psychostimulants, including methamphetamine, were particularly high, rising by 669 percent.

Reliable treatment options are scarce, which has kept the rate of relapse high.

These high mortality and relapse numbers motivated Dr. Christopher Stauffer, 41, to treat veterans addicted to methamphetamine with psilocybin at a V.A. residential program in Portland, Ore. The study will start recruiting participants in the near future.

Psilocybin the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms has shown significant promise as an experimental treatment for substance abuse.

Dr. Stauffer said his research and clinical practice with civilians has shown him that patients often gain a new understanding of the impulses that are driving their addiction during a psilocybin session. One patient from a previous study compared addiction to feeling trapped in a dense jungle.

The psilocybin was like a machete, Dr. Stauffer said. They were able to kind of carve a path to connecting with the people around them who were important relationships.

Dr. Stauffers upcoming psilocybin study will compare the outcomes of 30 veterans addicted to methamphetamine who have been admitted to a residential rehab program. Half will receive a combination of conventional therapy and two psilocybin sessions while the other half will just have conventional therapy.

In a second study, Dr. Stauffer will test whether MDMA can enhance group therapy for veterans with PTSD by making participants more emotionally open and supportive of each other.

Group dynamics can be potentially really healing in a way that one-on-one therapy cant, he said.

Dr. Stauffer said this new era of psychedelic research feels at once retro and cutting edge.

Its brand-new to a lot of people and yet its been around longer than most of our psychiatric medications have been around, he said. But it feels like were approaching it this time with a lot more knowledge and a lot of more rigorous research practices that didnt really exist back in the 50s and 60s.

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The Researchers Who Are Resurrecting Psychedelic Therapy for Veterans - The New York Times

MANILA, Philippines There is no denying that the rhetoric of President Rodrigo Duterte is one that promoted violence.

Over the past six years, kill and other related words were a staple in his public speeches. And, more often than not, these violent rhetoric did not just stay as words but had become policies that targeted many sectors in society, most especially the most vulnerable.

Its not that Duterte himself did the killings, but his policies made a culture of impunity the norm in the Philippines.

Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights) executive director Nymia Pimentel-Simbulan said that Dutertes legacy would be the institutionalization of state violence in the country, adding that he has done this not just in his war on drugs but also in other aspects of governance.

As Duterte steps down from office, Rappler takes a look at the number of lives lost in different sectors during his administration.

Duterte waged a war against illegal drugs in the Philippines. But at the end of his six-year term, there is still no strong indication that he really ended or even just dented this problem. He succeeded, however, at smudging roads and alleys across the country red with blood. His drug war campaign targeted the poorest communities, killing alleged drug personalities without them seeing a day in court.

Government data shows that at least 6,252 people were killed in police anti-drug operations from July 1, 2016, to May 31, 2022. This number does not include those killed by unidentified perpetrators also called victims of vigilante-style killings whom human rights groups estimate to be between 27,000 and 30,000.

Rappler, in September 2020, obtained government data showing that at least 7,884 drug suspects had been killed by the police since Duterte assumed office in 2016 until August 31, 2020.

Justice remains elusive for thousands of families left behind by victims, as only one case has led to a conviction so far the killing of17-year-old Kian delos Santosin 2017. Their families continue to face challenges in terms of getting the right documents from police to help their cases. Many also choose not to pursue legal actions, fearing for their safety under a climate of impunity.

Even the Commission of Human Rights, mandated by the 1987 Philippine Constitution to investigate state abuses, was consistently hindered by the Duterte government from doing its job. In a report released in May, the commission said its probes were hampered by the predilection and uncooperativeness of government agencies involved in the war on drugs.

Because of the dire situation regarding domestic mechanisms, families and human rights groups are banking on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to help provide justice for the victims. The ICCs Office of the Prosecutor began itsformal investigationinto drug war killings in September 2021, but has sincetemporarily paused the probeas a matter of procedure. It has, however, asked the Duterte government to prove that it wasgenuinely investigatingthe killings.

Read Rapplers coverage of the war on drugs:

The concept of human rights was heavily demonized under the Duterte administration. Dissent seemed to not have space anymore as those who dared oppose or even just call out problematic policies faced the wrath of the President himself, his allies, and the massive online propaganda network aligned with the state.

The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and its supporters, enjoying massive state resources, consistently red-tagged individuals and groups as it continued to blur the lines between activists and actual communist rebels.

Activists and human rights defenders were attacked both online and on the ground. Tarpaulins bearing their photos and accusing them of recruiting the youth to join the communist insurgency became a common sight across the Philippines. On social media, Facebook pages linked to police and other state agents published disinformation targeting those who dissented.

The threats and harassment hardly stay as words. As of December 2021, rights group Karapatan had documented 427 incidents of killings since July 2016. There were also least 537 recorded cases of frustrated killings.

Meanwhile, at least 1,161 activists have been arrested and detained over the past six years.

Activists, human rights defenders, and grassroot organizers definitely bore the brunt of the Duterte administrations war on dissent. And with the anti-terror law in effect, they now continue to face a dangerous future.

Read Rapplers coverage of the fight of activists and human rights defenders under Duterte:

The Philippines is one of the most mega-biodiverse countries in the world, but it has its share of challenges.

Not much has changed six years after President Duterte came into power, despite him initially promising to protect the environment. In fact, it has become more dangerous for environmental defenders as they continue to fight development projects that threaten the countrys rich biodiversity.

In 2021, for the eighth straight year, environmental monitor Global Witness named the Philippines as the deadliest country for land and environmental defenders in Asia. The country ranked third globally, just below Colombia and Mexico.

At least 166 killings of land and environmental defenders were recorded in the Philippines from 2016 to 2020, according to Global Witness. This sector is vulnerable to attacks because of lack of resources, powers, and support.

Read Rapplers coverage of the environment and the challenges faced by defenders:

Duterte did little to nothing to show he valued press freedom.

The Philippines ranked 138th out of 180 nations in the World Press Freedom Index for 2021, citing the Duterte governments continued attacks against the media. The President himself was named by the Reporters Without Borders as one of the worlds press freedom predators.

Journalists and media outlets were also red-tagged by the NTF-ELCAC, while also on the receiving end of threats and harassment online.

But, in many cases, these online attacks did not stay as empty threats.

At least 23 journalists and media workers were killed under Duterte, based on a tally by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines. There were also at least 32 recorded incidents of media workers red-tagged or accused of having communist links.

Aside from the killings and red-tagging, journalists and media workers were at the risk of losing their livelihood in the face of continued threats and harassment under Duterte. Many lost their jobs as the Duterte administration rejected a new franchise for ABS-CBN, forcing the largest broadcasting network in the Philippines to shut down.

Read Rapplers coverage of pressing media issues in 2021:

Lawyers and other members of the judiciary were not spared from the culture of impunity and violence that permeated daily life in the Philippines under Duterte. The hostility they often faced as part of their work translated into physical threats that took so many lives in the past six years.

At least 66 lawyers, prosecutors, and judges were killed from July 2016 to June 21, 2022. At least 14 of the total killed were former or current prosecutors, while nine were retired or former judges or justices.

The total death toll is collated by Rappler based on monitoring by various sources, including the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice, the National Union of Peoples Lawyers, and the Free Legal Assistance Group. Their tally differ since there are victims excluded in the counting of some groups as preliminary investigation showed their deaths were allegedly not work-related.

Still, the total number of people who were part of the legal profession killed during the Duterte administration surpassed the numbers of victims under previous presidents. In fact, 49 lawyers killed from the administration of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos to Benigno Aquino III, spanning 44 years, compared to 66 during Dutertes six years.

The heightened violence has prompted urgent calls from legal groups including the Integrated Bar of the Philippines for a nationwide effort to protect our lawyers and judges. The Supreme Court in March 2021 released a statement, condemning the killings, and vowed to push for institutional changes.

Read Rapplers coverage of attacks against lawyers and members of the judiciary in 2021:

Violence consistently permeated the Philippines, as reflected also in the high number of local chief executives killed since Duterte took office in 2016.

Based on monitoring by Rappler, at least 18 mayors and 10 vice mayors have been slain since July 2016.

It can be remembered that local government officials were also targeted by Dutertes war on drugs. During the first few months of his administration, the President publicly accused several mayors of being involved in the illegal drug trade. In January 2017, he threatened them to either resign or face death.

Aside from vice mayors and mayors, several other local government officials were also slain in the past six years. In December 2018, families of slain politicians in Pangasinan published an open letter to Duterte, urging him to help bring justice to their loved ones.

Read Rapplers coverage of attacks against local officials:

with reports from Jairo Bolledo, Lian Buan, and Jee Geronimo / Rappler.com

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Six years of blood and violence: People we lost under Duterte - Rappler

FORMER Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) chairman Greco Antonious Belgica said he is ready to help President-elect Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. in his administration's fight against the illegal drugs and corruption in the country.

Belgica, who is pushing for the reimposition of the death penalty for heinous crimes, said he has already been in talks with the incoming administration.

Marcos, who is set to assume the presidency on June 30, earlier vowed to continue the drug war and sought to go after the big-time drug dealers.

The incoming president even offered a Cabinet post to President Rodrigo Duterte as a drug czar.

Marcos said he and Duterte have met more than once, with at least one of those meetings happening before the May 9 elections.

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"One thing that he was very assertive about was 'continue the anti-drug syndicate that I started. Do it your own way.' He (Duterte) really said that," Marcos said.

But Duterte, the father of Marcos' running mate Vice President-elect Sara Duterte-Carpio, has declined the offer.

Duterte won the 2016 presidential race due to his hardline stance against illegal drugs and criminality.

Meanwhile, Belgica reiterated his warning that there may be a resurgence in drugs in the country now that Duterte's term is ending.

He claimed that there are still government officials and law enforcers who are involved in the illegal drug trade.

"Drugs and crime are still proliferating on the streets. This is the biggest obstacle to our development. The fight started by PRRD (President Duterte) must be continued and strengthened, because if not, the people, our families, and the youth will suffer," Belgica said.

The former PACC official also cited the need to support the Philippine National Police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency to boost the government's fight against drugs and corruption.

"The Office of the President must be involved in this task and the full trust and confidence of the President is needed for it to succeed," Belgica added.

As PACC chairman, Belgica oversaw the dismissal of around 800 erring government workers and the imprisonment of 24 government officials.

Around 154 cases were filed against high-ranking corrupt government workers before the Office of the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice by the PACC.

The agency also acted upon around 13,000 cases and complaints regarding graft and corruption in the government.

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Belgica vows to help BBM in drug, corruption war - The Manila Times