FACT CHECK: Marcos touts MISLEADING ‘bloodless’ drug war claim

In his third State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 22, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said that extermination “was never part” of his administration’s “bloodless” drug war. This is misleading.

STATEMENT

The president said:

“On the fight against dangerous drugs, our bloodless war on dangerous drugs adheres, and will continue to adhere, to the established ‘8 Es’ of an effective anti-illegal drugs strategy. Extermination was never one of them.”

Source: RTVMalacanang, State of the Nation Address (SONA) 2024, July 22, 2024, watch from 1:36:47 to 1:37:05

Marcos’ predecessor, former president Rodrigo Duterte, pursued a bloody war on drugs that resulted in the killing of at least 6,000 drug suspects, based on the Philippine National Police record. Human rights groups, however, estimate the casualties at 12,000 to 20,000.

FACT

While Marcos has never asked law enforcers to kill any drug suspect, drug-related killings continue to happen under his administration.

A recent report of the Dahas Project, an initiative of the University of the Philippines’ Third World Studies Center that keeps track of reported drug-related killings in the country, stated that the number of drug-related deaths in the second year of the Marcos administration has exceeded its first year.

From July 2023 to June 2024, the Dahas project recorded 359 reported drug-related killings while 342 were documented from the prior year.

According to its latest count as of July 15, some 727 individuals have been reported slain since July 2022.

VERA Files Fact Check has already debunked a similar claim last year.

(Read FACT CHECK: Surigao Del Norte lawmaker MISLEADS in claiming anti-drug campaign under Marcos is ‘bloodless’)