PBBM: Drug problem ‘continues to exist’

NEW YORK CITY — President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. wants bigger fish caught in the enforcement of the campaign against illegal drugs, not the "kid who makes 100 pesos a week selling weed."

"To put it very bluntly, I simply told them, 'Look, I'm not interested in the kid who makes 100 pesos a week selling weed.' That's not the person that I want you to go after," Marcos Jr. said during a forum organized by the Asia Society on Friday afternoon here.

"I want you to go after people who – if we get them, if we neutralize them, or put them in jail, we put them away, whatever it is – will make an actual difference so that the supply of drugs, the system of distribution, the system of importation of drugs — because much of it really does come from abroad — that will actually make a difference, it will put a stop to it. And that's what we are working on right now," he explained.

Marcos Jr. admitted that despite the aggressive war on drugs of his predecessor, former President Rodrigo Duterte, the drug problem in the Philippines "continues to exist."

"My approach is slightly different. We look at the drug problem in the Philippines and it is a significant one. There are approximate, I suppose according to official statistics, close to four and a half million actual addicts in the Philippines," said Marcos Jr.

"And the corrosive effect of that on society, on criminality, on the drug syndicates, et cetera, even the politicization of the whole drug syndicates and their networks, is something that we still have to deal with," he added.