Category Archives: War On Drugs

The chief enforcer of Philippine President Rodrigo Dutertes war on drugs acknowledged the difficulty in halting a surge in methamphetamine imports from China despite a campaign that has claimed thousands of lives.

We do not guarantee that we will win this war, Philippine National Police chiefRonald dela Rosa said in an interview in his Manila office Thursday. Win or lose, at least we have done something to address the problem.

Photographer: Veejay Villafranca/Bloomberg

Duterte has faced strident criticism from the U.S., the United Nations and the European Union since being sworn in last June over his efforts to tackle drug addiction -- a policy that has proved popular at home. The Philippine police say about 2,600 people have been killed in police operations against drug traffickers, while human-rights groups label some 4,700 other murders as extra-judicial killings.

In a speech Thursday, Duterte again rejected international criticism of the drug war, demanding the EU not impose your, whatever it is, your values and everything because we hate you for being a hypocrite.

Despite being a key source of drugs, China has used the issue to draw closer to Duterte and improve ties with the Philippines. Policy makers in Beijing have supported the drugs war and offered to help, with anti-narcotic cooperation among agreements reached during Dutertes trip to China last year.

Dela Rosa said on Thursday that police in the Philippines are coordinating with counterparts in China. Most of the five clandestine laboratories dismantled in Dutertes first six months in office involved Chinese citizens, he added.

For a QuickTake Q&A on the countrys drug war, click here.

Recent data provided by the Philippines Drug Enforcement Agency showed that the largest quantities of methamphetamine seized had been trafficked directly from China, according to Jeremy Douglas, regional representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Methamphetamine imports into the Philippines rose to 2,495 kilograms in 2016, more than four times the amount in 2015, he said.

While better law enforcement had contributed to the rise seen in the data, other factors like treatment admissions, price, and purity trends related to methamphetamine indicated a growing demand for the drug in the Philippines, Douglas said.

As long as market demand is not addressed, increases in law enforcement activities at a street level alone wont be able to improve the situation, he said. We recommend addressing the market through treatment and prevention, and addressing organized crime targeting those that run the business.

Dela Rosa, 55, rose from the police ranks in Davao City, where Duterte served as mayor for more than two decades. He said the campaign targeted both street-level pushing as well as high-value targets like drug lords, drug traffickers, financers and protectors.

He rated the drug war a success on the basis that police so far had accounted for 1.3 million people involved in the drug trade across the country, around 70 percent of 1.8 million target set by the Dangerous Drugs Board.

On the demand side, we can say we have a passing grade of 70 percent, Dela Rosa said. Another measure of success, he added, was that methamphetamine prices had almost quadrupled to as much as 4,000 pesos ($80) a gram.

Dela Rosa rejected claims by international groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty international that the drug war had resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killings.

Photographer: Veejay Villafranca/Bloomberg

I just want to set the record straight," Dela Rosa said. The 7,000 extrajudicial killings being reported by some sectors is wrong. We dont want to propagandize, we dont want to deodorize ourselves, we just want to set the record straight so that the public will not be mislead by this false reporting.

Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phelim Kine said in an email that thousands of victims never saw a lawyer or had a proper trial.

This is an evisceration of constitutional guarantees of due legal process that has inflicted profound harm on the judicial and social fabric of the Philippines," Kine said.

Excerpt from:

Duterte's Drug War Chief Can't Stop Meth Flowing in From China - Bloomberg

PortCityDaily.com is your source for free news and information in the Wilmington area.

Authors note:This series has explored questions about the opioid epidemic. It has focused on the basics: what are opioids, who are the people using them? Some questions remain: what is at the root of epidemic? Why is this epidemic hitting our area so hard harder than nearly anywhere else in the nation? What can we do?

Those questions wont have easy answers. But the picture will be clearer for those who understand the current efforts to address the epidemic. Again, a complicated picture emerges. Every group involved agrees our area is facing a crisis without parallel. Not everyone agrees on what to do about it.

This part of our series will show you the crisis through the eyes of the people fighting it. These are the manyfront lines against the opioid epidemic. By knowing where these groups stand now, we hope to provide a better sense of where the fightcan go next.

The opioid crisis, despite its complexity, is often painted with a broad brush on the national stage.

Congressman David Rouzer told Port City Daily last month he was in favor of a war on drugs again in American just like Nancy Reagan did in the 1980s with the Say No to Drugs campaign.

Rouzers drug-abstinence policy was echoed by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions this month. As part of his prepared remarks for a March 15 speech, Sessions called for criminal enforcement, treatment and prevention. But these issues werent treated equally: Sessions glossed over the issue of treatment and instead called for a return to Reagan-era abstinence, saying [i]n the 80s and 90s, we saw how campaigns stressing prevention brought down drug use and addiction.

As the nations top law-enforcement agent, Sessions sets the tone for the national conversation on drugs. He rejected outright ideas like decriminalization and legalization.

I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another thats only slightly less awful. Our nation needs to say clearly once again that using drugs will destroy your life, Sessions remarks read.

At the local level, however, a different conversation is going on. Education and prevention is still key, but leading law enforcement agents are quick to say that the scare tactics of the D.A.R.E. programs of 1980s are badly outdated. Another difference is the focus on mental health over criminal enforcement.

To be clear, there is a war on drugs going on. In Brunswick County, the Sheriffs Office fights a trafficking war on two fronts, according to Sheriff John W. Ingram V.

On our northern border with New Hanover County, were seeing heroin and other drugs shipped down from Newark and New York. And on our southern border, with Mrytle Beach and South Carolina, thats a very different and unique situation were dealing with state jurisdictional boundaries. Theres heroin coming up from Atlanta, and quite often we see dealers camped out just miles past the North Carolina border, Ingram said.

Early in the heroin epidemic, Ingram along with New Hanover County Sheriff Ed McMahon formed a task force with the State Bureau of Investigation.

The goal was to knock down some of those jurisdictional boundaries. As things progressed we had the FBI come to us and ask if wed be interested in turning our task force into a federal task force. We agreed that was the way to go, it could extend our reach, Ingram said.

But while Ingram said Brunswick Countys resources are stretched thin fighting drug dealers and traffickers, its not the fight he thinks will win the war on opioids.

We could arrest every single drug dealer in New Hanover County and Brunswick County today, and there would be replacements for each one of them tomorrow, Ingram said.

Its a common refrain, but an important one. Local law enforcement agencies know, as Wilmingtons Deputy Police Chief Mitch Cunningham put it, we all say this, because it is verifiably true, we cant arrest our ways out of this. It goes way beyond a law enforcement issue.

Whats beyond law enforcement? The need for mental health and substance abuse treatment. From Ingrams sprawling county to the tiny beach town of Carolina Beach, law enforcement officials point to mental health as the root of the opioid crisis.

The defunding of mental health in the 1990s and early 2000s just simply dumped people suffering with mental health issues into our local confinement facilities into our jails. Thats the real issue were dealing with, Ingram said.

Cunningham, Ingram and Carolina Beach Police Chief Chris Spivey all highlighted the need for more beds in treatment centers for people struggling with addiction. This is especially true in Brunswick County, where transportation is a real issue.

Ingram sees both a lack of facilities and a lack of access, but he made it clear that a deeper issue was the type of treatment offered.

We need to be providing these people with real treatment, Ingram said. Yes, we need funding for detox, but detox on its own does absolutely nothing. Short-term treatment does next to nothing. Those 30-day [programs] arent worth the time you spend in them. We need to provide, serious, long-term treatment.

I think if we educate the public about what were really facing, the support will come. Sheriff John Ingram V.

Despite the collapse of efforts of Republicans in Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act, state and federal funding for mental health and substance abuse as well as Medicaid funding that covers detox and treatment services is still at risk. Treatment, especially long-term treatment for substance abuse, is expensive. As Ingram said, a lot of people, and lets be honest about this, just dont have the money for that kind of treatment.

So where would the money for treating mental health and substance abuse come from?

I want to believe in our fellow man, I want to believe that there is good in the world, even though we face evil every day. I think if we educate the public about what were really facing, the support will come, Ingram said.

Spivey had a similar optimism, citing recent bipartisan efforts to address the crisis.

Seeing legislators and law enforcement and city officials come together on this, it does give me hope. Which maybe people arent used to hearing when this issues comes up. But weve got a unified science, were on the same page, Spivey said. I think things like funding for mental health in the STOP Act and harm reduction bills, I think were moving in the right direction.

All of the law enforcement leaders we spoke with the local level agreed with the need to continue the conversation between communities, law enforcement and lawmakers. They also agreed on the need to educate the next generation but, emphatically,not in the this is your brain on drugs style of the 1990s. Ingram was the most direct on this point.

D.A.R.E. programs have changed a lot since the late 80s. Were not using scare tactics, because, for one that just puts people off, he said. Our children are intelligent, were raising them and teaching them to think intelligently, so they know when someones trying to ram an agenda down their throats. Our goal is just to give them as much information as possible, we cant just give them outdated or one-sided material.

Next week: As we conclude our series, a look at the cost of the epidemic.

Part IV Mental health and opioid abuse

Part V The power and potential risk of harm reduction

Part VI Opioid demand, the fear of detox and the path to treatment

Part VII-Killing with kindness where are prescription opioids coming from?

Part VIII Taking babies from mommies Opioids impact on families

Part IX Do the right thing, local and state government response

Opioids: An appendix for readers

Just Say No, This is your brain on drugs, Brunswick County Sheriff John Ingram, Carolina Beach Police Chief Chris Spivey, drugs, heroin, Nancy Reagan, opiates, opioids

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Beyond a 'war on drugs' law enforcement's modern options in the ... - Port City Daily

Not long ago, one of Richard Nixons advisors spilled the beans on the presidents actual agenda with the war on drugs. Nixons former advisor, John Ehrlichman, said that the war on drugs was a means of criminalizing the activities of two groups: the antiwar left and black people. Nixon was smart enough to know that you couldnt make protesting or being black a crime, so he criminalized drugs instead. He was able to get the public to associate hippies with weed and blacks with heroin. He made those drugs illegal and he disrupted their communities. As Ehrlichman put it, Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

The ACLU called the war on drugs the new Jim Crow. This was sixteen years ago. Time has only lent evidence to this claim. Since the 1980s, the rate of incarceration has over quadrupled from roughly a half million to 2.3 million people, according to the NAACP. Of these 2.3 million, nearly one million are African American. Although rates of drug crimes among caucasian populations are ten times higher than African American populations, African Americans are incarcerated at a rate ten times that of whites for drug crimes, and six times that of whites for all crimes. African Americans are not the only race facing the burden of incarceration. Hispanics in combination with African Americans fill 58 percent of prisons, although they only make up about a quarter of the population. One in six black men and 1 in 100 black women have spent or are currently spending time in prison. If trends continue, one in every three black children born today will spend time incarcerated.

Crack cocaine is often used as an example to show that laws are a contributing factor in unbalanced rates of incarceration. In 2002, 80 percent of those sentenced for possession of crack were African American, despite the fact that over two thirds of crack users were white or Hispanic, according to the NAACP. In comparison to regular cocaine, the penalty for crack is 18 times higher. This means for every gram of crack that you possess, you will receive the equivalent sentencing guidelines of someone with 18 grams of coke. This is a drastic improvement when compared to the previous gulf of 100-to-1, which occurred prior to the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010.

Another issue, which can help explain unbalanced rates of incarceration, is selective policing. Research suggests that, even at a subliminal level, law enforcement tends to target minority populations much higher than caucasian ones. The percentage of traffic stops compared to the percentage of the total population for minorities is much higher than for whites. Something must change.

It is obvious that the war on drugs was not waged for the benefit of citizens. Maybe we should stop fighting such a war.

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The infamous backstory of the war on drugs - The University News

From Encyclopedia Dramatica

Originally titled The shorthanded skirmish against certain substances which may or may not cause harm to their users, the War on Drugs is a US war waged by the man for lulz and big pharma. Initially focused on smelly pot-smoking hippies during the mid 70s in the hope of turning them from useless, protesting students into good Americans, the War on Drugs has ultimately grown into a systematic approach for keeping the Jew rich and the colored man down.

Bill Hicks

With the odd exception of hundreds of innocent people, the war on drugs has proved to be America's most light-hearted war to date.

Due to the war on drugs, the black market industry has soared in profit. Down south in Mexico, the nation has become a shithole, although Some argue that it was always shitty in the first place. The only jobs that pay anything nowadays consist of joining up with a Cartel, and if you piss them off or get caught by a rival gang, you'll have your dick and head chopped off.

Recently, their gang activity has been crawling into 'murka and has reached as far north as Canada. Good job, Nixon! PROTIP: Go to El Paso, buy some guns, and sell them across the border for 10x the profit!

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War on drugs - Encyclopedia Dramatica

Ricardo Nicol, San Clemente

The tangential problems of narcotics crime, killing in Mexico and drug addiction in the United States would be greatly reduced by changing the strategy of the failed war on drugs being waged in Mexico (with costly, U.S.-provided guns, planes and helicopters), which is trying to stop the inexhaustible supply of illicit drugs flowing into this country. Go, instead, to a winning hearts and minds strategy that targets the insatiable demand for drugs in the United States and would be far less costly in terms of lives and money. The model for such a strategy is that of the anti-tobacco smoking media campaigns, health information programs and dissuasive laws, which have convinced Americans to voluntarily reduce the consumption of a very addictive and harmful substance significantly in the last 50 years, and the downward trend still continues. A similar effort to reduce Americans demand for addictive drugs would bring enormous short- and long-term benefits to both the U.S. and Mexico. War is not the answer, and the proposed border wall wont help either because both address the supply side of the traffic. As it was for the smoking of tobacco, reducing the demand is the answer.

Excerpt from:

Letter: End the War on Drugs with A Thoughtful Approach - San Clemente Times

by Tommy Wayne Kramer, March 29, 2017

The generation that has been squatting atop American society for the past half-century will soon enough be gone, thank God. The Love Generation is dying off every day, but for the good of the world and especially America it cant happen fast enough.

The Baby Boomers think of themselves as creators of a wonderful world, a far better place than the one they inherited from their mean old uptight parents and all the rest of The Establishment they hated.

Baby Boomers (born between 1941 and 55 or so) believe their generation is the one that stopped the war in Vietnam, ended racism and sexism in America, and gave the world the best, grooviest, most amazing and thought-provoking music ever. None of this is even close to being true.

There are many reasons to despise the Love Generation. I loathe all those arrogant hippies for their towering greed and their willingness to bankrupt future generations so they are able to live in luxury via grand pensions and budget-busting Social Security payouts. Thats only the first on my list of grievances, and my list is a long one.

Boomers inherited a country with excellent public schools, fine public transportation, a healthy and robust middle class, rapidly improving racial relations, a healthy, poised military and, not least, a promising and optimistic outlook for the future.

All gone today. Behold a country plundered by a single generation of greedy, lazy, stupid citizens.

Lets focus on a cornerstone that has propped up shifting cultural attitudes and assumptions since about 1965. I was 17 years old in 65 and even then, and even in the midwest, the push was on to glorify and consume illicit drugs. The push succeeded.

Look anywhere, and I suppose Ukiah is as good a place to look as any, and see the devastation wrought by our greedy, lazy, stupid fellow citizens. Ask Ukiah old-timers about changes theyve noticed over the past half-century and often youll get trembling, stuttering semi-coherent responses that go something like this: It just wasnt like this! This was a safe town, a nice town, not much crime, people got along with each other. Those whove lived here the longest are the ones most disgusted and disappointed at what Ukiah has become.

And it all began with marijuana. The hippie argument, not unreasonable, was that pot was a mild intoxicant and no worse than a Martini; the ongoing debate comparing and contrasting weed-whacked loadies to gin-soaked cocktailers remains unsettled.

Acceptance of marijuana was the first domino to fall. The official slogan among hippies became Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll! and what seemed at the time like merely a defiant and rebellious t-shirt emblem in retrospect illuminated the shallow, short-sighted, self-absorbed core at the center of boomer values. Pot was the only thing my generation was willing to fight for. Who was supposed to fight back?

Cultural attitudes sagged and then collapsed under relentless pressure from the Love Generation, proving that from now on the nations children were in charge. The music, the movies, TV and all the media glommed onto a groovy new audience eager to tune in, turn on, and get incapacitated by drugs.

Cocaine became fashionable. Everyone from Jack Nicholson to Eric Clapton to McKenzie Phillips were open advocates of coke, and soon living rooms all across the country were infiltrated by mirrors, straws, coke spoons, deviated septums and ambulance crews. Heroin then made its appearance, and our social infrastructure began to wobble.

Crime got on a roll in big cities and small towns, even as legalization advocates continued to insist drug use was a victimless crime. Law enforcement cracked down, and the judicial system doubled down.

Now we stare out at the American landscape and watch an opioid wave roll across the land leaving nothing behind but casualties. The opioid crisis succeeded the heroin crisis, the crack cocaine crisis, the methamphetamine, ice, bath salts, fentanyl crisis and half a dozen other drug crises jumpstarted by the generation that launched the whole sorry mess 50 years ago.

How many homicides, suicides, robberies, overdoses, and destroyed lives can be fairly blamed on drugs? Thousands of men have spent vast portions of their lives in prison. Mothers have abandoned their children to foster care so they could do more meth, and now those kids are mucking up their own lives with our old friend marijuana.

How many of our inner cities and small towns have been destroyed? How many kids have dropped out of high school to join gangs? Those kids are fighting and killing each other in turf wars in order to sell drugs to your grandchildren so they can die too. Theres been no end to the criminality, the thieving, rehab, heartbreak, despair, depression, jail and broken dreams caused by drugs, and thats just the family next door.

But at least there havent been any victims.

(Tom Hine, a former hippie and an early whiner for drug legalization, acknowledges his enthusiasm may have been misplaced, as it was for other causes. TWK, his imaginary friend, believes we should take a more holistic view and appreciate the cool druggie stuff like Peter Max posters, love beads, ugly tattoos and the songs of Donovan.)

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Drugs Won The War On Drugs | Anderson Valley Advertiser - Anderson Valley

WILKES-BARRE, LUZERNE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) The search is on tonight for the person who fired several shots into a Wilkes-Barre home last night wounding two people, including an 8 year old girl. The I-Team's Andy Mehalshick is in the neighborhood with the latest on the investigation.

You can see the bullet holes in a house in the 200 block of West Division Street in South Wilkes-Barre. Just before midnight shots rang out. An 8 year old girl sitting in the living room was hit twice in the arm. Her 20 year old brother was hit once in the arm..

We tried talking to people coming and going from the house this afternoon .They had nothing to say..

Detectievs are not saying what they believe happened here but sources close to the investigation tell the I-Team it is connected to the drug world..

"We are seeing that more innocents ,innocent individuals are being affected hurt by it." noted Luzerne County District Attorney Stefanie Salavanits.

She is talking about the impact of the drug trade and drug addiction in our region. Drug overdose deaths are on the rise.

Last October, a man and woman were found unconscious inside a Hazleton home. The woman later died from a drug overdose, four young children were also in the home... Salavantis says society cannot simply jail their way out of this problem..

"We need to look at drug treatment court and look at programs that help the addict."

"There's a lot of collateral damage that we see with the drug game." said Jason Harlen.

Harlen is a drug counselor and says his agency Wyoming Valley Drug and Alcohol receives calls everyday from people who are concerned that a loved one is hooked on drugs.

"The collateral damage is never ending it's a very violent games and it's something that will never go away."

Wilkes-Barre Police ask anyone with information to give them a call.

Continue reading here:

I-Team: Experts: Children- Collateral Damage in War on Drugs - PA home page

During the past several years, both the federal government and many states took important steps toward reducing some of the harms caused by the War on Drugs.

These policy changes were adopted with bipartisan support providing cause for optimism among reformers. Notable examples include, the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, the introduction of sentencing reform bills in both the House and Senate, dozens of state-level reforms to mandatory minimum laws, former Attorney General Eric Holders directive to U.S. Attorneys not to bring charges that require mandatory minimum sentences against low-level drug offenders, and the record breaking 1,715 commutations issued by President Obama.

There was a sense that the worst was over and draconian drug policies might be on their last legs. A strong consensus formed in agreement that drug prohibition is ineffective, not worth the human and monetary cost, and should be wound down if not completely dismantled. Maybe we could finally wake up from the long 45-year nightmare of the War on Drugs.

Enter the new attorney general, former Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions.

In a speech on Wednesday, Sessions said he doesnt care whether its unfashionablehes doubling down on the War on Drugs. Like much of the rhetoric about drugs in the 70s and 80s, Sessions comments last week sound like lines out of Reefer Madness. He calls marijuana a life-wrecking dependency that will destroy your life.

While its true criminal justice is primarily a function of state and local governments, the attorney general wields significant influence by prioritizing law enforcement objectives, directing the U.S. attorneys on how to charge defendants, issuing federal grants to state and local criminal justice efforts and police departments, using the DOJs Office of Legislative Affairs to influence measures in Congress, and voicing opinions on any criminal justice legislation from the bully pulpit of the top law-enforcement office.

Sessions will likely use his position to stifle criminal justice reform. He has been an outspoken critic of drug legalization, sentencing reform, and he tends to see any effort to rollback even the most egregious tough on crime policies as dangerous and a threat to public safety.

He denounced Obama's efforts as "weakening of some of our most important criminal sentencing policies. He also called the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act dangerous and a criminal leniency bill rather than a criminal justice reform bill.

Sessions strongly supports the practice of civil asset forfeiture. In an effort to make the practice sound benign, he says, taking and seizing and forfeiting, through a government judicial process, illegal gains from criminal enterprises is not wrong. This definition is misleading and obscures the main reason why it has been roundly criticized the government doesnt need to secure a conviction before taking your property. In fact, police dont even have to charge you with a crime. According to an in-depth report in the Washington Post, in 81 percent of forfeiture cases, no one was indicted.

Its unclear if Sessions will directly challenge states that diverge from the federal government on marijuana policy. He made this vague statement at a recent news conference, States ... can pass the laws they choose. I would just say it does remain a violation of federal law to distribute marijuana throughout any place in the United States, whether a state legalizes it or not." If the Justice Department decides to interfere with states on this issue it would be acting with little popular support. 71 percent agree the government should not enforce federal laws against marijuana in states that decide to legally regulate marijuana.

To his credit, Sessions co-sponsored the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 which reduced the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine from 100-1 to 18-1. It passed unanimously.

However, his record and statements taken as a whole paint a dismal picture and offer little to celebrate. Those concerned about excessively punitive sentences and destructive drug policies are bracing for an uphill battle with the nations top cop.

One of my goals in making the documentary film Incarcerating US was to show how the drug war and changes in sentencing policy have caused a drastic increase in both the prison population and the average length of sentences. In order to capture the frenzy surrounding crime and drugs in the 1980s, I included several hysterical statements by politicians positioning themselves as tough on crime. The new attorney generals speech, with its disregard of history, data, and compassion, fits squarely with the strong-arm bombast of that era, providing a clear reminder that the War on Drugs is far from over.

Regan Hines is a director and partner at Life Is My Movie Entertainment. His film Incarcerating US is now available.

Start your workday the right way with the news that matters most.

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The War on Drugs Has a New General - Huffington Post

MANILA - Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez on Tuesday said the New York Times' call for trade sanctions against the Philippines is "baseless and unfair."

In an editorial piece released last March 24 titled "Accountability for Duterte," the New York Times criticized President's bloody war on drugs and called on the Philippines' trading partners to rebuke Duterte by cancelling the Philippines' trading privileges.

Lopez, however, insisted that allegations of human rights abuses in the drug war are not true.

"We believe there are no extra-judicial killings and human rights are not being violated in the governments campaign to cleanse the country of drug elements. The government does not sanction the killings that are occurring, mainly due to actions by criminals and drug syndicates to purge their ranks," Lopez said in a statement.

He also claimed that the slain drug suspects are themselves to blame for their own deaths.

"While some drug elements have been killed during police operations, this is a result of the criminals fighting back with force and leaving our police force with no recourse but to protect themselves."

Lopez meanwhile acknowledged that there are unexplained killings, dubbed by the police as "deaths under investigation" but he maintained that the government does not condone the killings.

The trade secretary also trumpeted the "success" of Dutere's war on drugs and the public support behind it.

"The campaign has also resulted in an overall lower crime rate, which is noticed by citizens. This, the recent Pulse Asia survey last December 2016 noted that 82% of Filipinos feel much safer now, proving that the governments anti-drug campaign is providing to make streets safer," he said.

Lopez insisted that the New York Times editorial was based on "unverified media reports."

Last January, the European Union said it was studying if the Philippines can still qualify for trade incentives that are tied to international agreements, including those on human rights.

The Department of Interior and Local Government has warned that the Philippines risked losing a $434-million Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) grant from the United States over alleged human rights violations committed in the war on drugs.

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DTI chief blasts NY Times, defends Duterte's war on drugs - ABS-CBN News

CHANDIGARH: 485 drugs peddlers and traders have been arrested, 387 cases registered under the NDPS Act, 3.945 kg of heroin and 622.555 kg of poppy husk recovered in Punjab since March 16, when the Amarinder Singh led government assumed office.

Drug menace was a major issue in the Punjab elections and immediately after taking over, the Amarinder led Congress government has ordered a multi-agency crack-down.

SHO level teams, backed by Anti-Narcotics Cell units, have been formed in every district to wipe out drugs from the state in four weeks, a spokesperson of the Chief Minister's Office said here today.

"As many as 485 drugs traders and peddlers have been arrested and 387 cases registered under the NDPS Act..," he said.

State Special Operations (SSOP) cells have also joined the drive, which has led to major drugs seizures across the state, said the spokesperson adding that the civil administration was also extending its full support to the anti-drugs campaign.

The Chief Minister has directed the state agencies to coordinate with central agencies like the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and the Customs Department to check the supply and smuggling of drugs.

A Special Task Force (STF) has already been set up to steer the special and focused drive launched against drugs, especially 'chitta' (heroin, synthetic/ pharmaceutical drugs), the spokesperson said.

Giving more details, he said that in the period between March 16 and March 27, a total of 3.945 kgs of heroin was recovered during raids. This includes 1 kg of Heroin seized by the BSF, he said.

Other drugs seizures made during this period include poppy husk (622.555 kgs), smack (0.528 kgs), 'charas' (2.22 kgs), opium (24.39 kgs), 'bhang' (1.879 kgs) and 'ganja' (65.6 kgs).

The special teams have also recovered 133 bottles of syrup, 1075 injections and 90,993 capsules or pills packed with drugs, besides 11.224 kg of Intoxicant Powder during the period, he said.

"The maximum of 63 cases have been registered in Jalandhar Rural district, from where the maximum recovery of 7.25 kgs of opium, besides 1 kg recovery of heroin by BSF, has also been reported," he said.

The Congress had before the elections promised to wipe out the scourge within four weeks of forming the government.

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Amarinder's war on drugs in Punjab leads to 485 arrests, 387 cases - Economic Times