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Examining the Effects of Drug-Related Killings on Philippine Conditional Cash Transfer Beneficiaries in Metro Manila, 2016–2017

• Maria Carmen Fernandez
• Nastassja Quijano
• Wilfredo Dizon, Jr.
• Maria Carmen Fernandez , Young Public Servants, Philippines ORCID
• Nastassja Quijano , Young Public Servants, Philippines ORCID
• Wilfredo Dizon, Jr. , Young Public Servants, Philippines

Is the Philippine War on Drugs a ‘War on the Poor’? Focusing on beneficiaries of the Philippine Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) or Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program as the most legible cohort of poor, we examine the effects of the anti-narcotics campaign on impoverished families in Metro Manila from April 2016 to December 2017.

From field validation and interviews with families affected by drug-related killings (DRKs), we find that at least 333 victims out of 1,827 identifiable DRK cases in Metro Manila during the study period were CCT beneficiaries. These are extremely conservative figures since field validation did not saturate all cities in Metro Manila and does not include deaths after December 2017 or poor families who are not CCT beneficiaries.

The findings illustrate that DRKs negatively affect CCT beneficiaries and their families. Most victims were breadwinners, leading to a decrease in household income. The reduced available income and the social stigma of having a drug-related death in the family often cause children beneficiaries of the CCT program to drop out of school. Widowed parents often find new partners, leaving the children with paternal grandmothers. DRKs are often bookended by other hazards such as flooding, fires, and home demolitions. The direct effects of these DRKs, compounded with disasters and other socio-economic shocks, traumatizes CCT families, erodes social cohesion, and pushes them further into poverty. We conclude with recommendations for the design of support packages to mitigate untoward effects on families, particularly single parent households.

• Page/Article: 110–126
• DOI: 10.31389/jied.50
• Accepted on 20 Jul 2020
• Published on 23 Feb 2021
• Peer Reviewed

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• v.2(1); 2015

Beyond America's War on Drugs: Developing Public Policy to Navigate the Prevailing Pharmacological Revolution

This paper places America's “war on drugs” in perspective in order to develop a new metaphor for control of drug misuse. A brief and focused history of America's experience with substance use and substance use policy over the past several hundred years provides background and a framework to compare the current Pharmacological Revolution with America's Nineteenth Century Industrial Revolution. The paper concludes with cautions about growing challenges and provides suggestions for navigating this revolution and reducing its negative impact on individuals and society.

1. Introduction

The “War on Drugs” is not an actual war. It is a metaphor. Metaphors can greatly help in understanding the nature of a problem and its likely resolution. Metaphors allow one to understand a complex problem in terms of a simpler one. The drugs-war metaphor says that the complex drug problem facing the nation can be understood as similar to an invasion by a foreign army like the British in 1812, the Japanese in 1941, and the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Once we accept the metaphor as valid, then we continue the metaphor by saying that the solution for the analogy is also the solution for our target problem. Thus, fighting the invader—drugs, drug dealers and drug users—provides a way to resolve the drug problem.

However, metaphors can be a dual-edged sword. Slavish obedience to a metaphor risks accepting an oversimplification of the problem which can place undue hope on a naive solution. We contend the drugs-war metaphor fails on many levels. On one level, we have trouble identifying the enemy. The drugs we worry about today, such as cocaine and heroin, were once accepted by medical practitioners as miracle drugs. Some of the drugs that are popular today, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, are providing great medical benefit to many but also leading to abuse for others. Will these be tomorrow's demon drugs? This paper examines America's extended War on Drugs as well as the larger challenge of drugs and their associated problems. We first trace the history of America's relationship to psychoactive drugs before offering a theory of subcultural evolution and drug use. We conclude by suggesting that America is undergoing a Pharmacological Revolution that in many respects is similar to the Industrial Revolution. This new metaphor allows us to illustrate a potentially more effective approach to developing US drug policy based on a socio-cultural perspective. This paper limits its focus to the US and does not address the varied and inter-connected aspects of a global war on drugs.

2. A brief history of America's drug policy and the war on drugs

America's complex history of drugs and drug policy has been heavily affected by technological advances, population movements, urbanization, and the restructuring of social and economic life. A central issue has been a massive decline in informal social control and an attendant rise in the role of the State with its formal mechanisms of socio-economic regulation. This paper starts with a description of the massive cultural changes during the Industrial Revolution. This serves multiple purposes: first, it lays out the historical context of our ongoing development of drug use and drug policy; second, it presents examples revealing how substance use is intimately tied to a social context that can undergo change when the context changes; and third, it provides insight into the massive cultural changes that took place during the Industrial Revolution which illustrates the magnitude of changes that could result from the current Pharmacological Revolution. We then describe other cultural and substance use changes occurring in the Progressive Era, around the time of World War II, around the Vietnam War and as part of the current Pharmacological Revolution in the Twenty-First Century. Table 1 summarizes the various historical periods and the drugs involved. After the historical review, the paper provides our recommendations for drug policy development based on viewing all of the current drug problems and possibilities. (not just use of those that are illegal) as based in a Pharmacological Revolution rather than a War on Drugs.

3. A Drug Eras Perspective

We organize our historical review as a series of drug eras. This framework provides a basis for studying drug use and drug policy within context and helps illustrate how the interplay between drug use and policy are heavily context dependant. Much research has documented that the popularity of different illegal drugs rose rapidly and then fell in the late Twentieth Century, constituting what appear to be distinct eras [1] – [6] . The lead author has examined various drug eras including the Heroin Injection Era of the 1960s and early 1970s [7] , the Crack Cocaine Era of the mid-1980s to early 1990s [8] and the Marijuana/Blunts Era starting in the 1990s [9] .

Drug eras in the late Twentieth Century tended to include four distinct phases: incubation, expansion, plateau, and decline [10] , [11] . A drug era typically starts among a highly limited subpopulation participating in a specific social context constituting an incubation phase. For instance, the Heroin Injection Era grew out of the jazz music scene [12] , [13] . The Crack Era started with inner-city drug dealers at after hours clubs [5] . The Marijuana/Blunts Era was based in the hip-hop movement [14] .

During the expansion phase, the pioneering drug users or medical advocates successfully introduce the practice to the broader population. In a very broad review of the literature, Everett Rogers [15] identified that when ideas spread they tend to spread with increasing rapidity, whether it involves a new consumer product, fashion, teaching method, or agricultural technique. Mathematically, many aspects of these “diffusion of innovation” processes are analogous to disease epidemics. The primary difference between social diffusions and disease epidemics is what is being spread—an idea or behavior as opposed to a bacteria or virus. People have agency regarding whether they adopt a behavior, such as use of a new drug, and many people choose not to. Regarding drugs, individual susceptibility to use varies greatly according to social networks, social and economic status, societal and structural constraints, and personal identity. It is the rapid growth in popularity during the expansion phase that shocks law enforcement, the media and other social institutions leading them to use and abuse the term “drug epidemic” to arouse concern and serve political agendas [16] – [18] . In this paper, we use the less emotionally charged phrase “drug era” to emphasize the cultural aspects of the phenomenon.

Drug eras eventually reach a plateau phase when everyone most at risk of the new drug practice either has initiated use or at least had the opportunity to do so. For a time, widespread use prevails. Eventually, the use of a drug may go out of favor. This leads to a gradual decline phase of a drug era. This shift can be precipitated by emergence of drug-related problems, the availability of a more desirable or fashionable drug, a policy intervention aimed to curtail use, a general cultural shift or a combination of these factors. During this phase, new conduct norms emerge that hold that use of a drug is bad or old-fashioned. The subsequent new norms and policies then compete with the prevailing pro-use norms. During the decline phase, a decreasing proportion of youths coming of age become users. However, the overall use of the drug generally endures for many years as some users continue their habits. We now use this framework to examine earlier drug eras. What differentiates many of these earlier eras from those of the late 20 th century is that usage of the drugs of concern involved medical and social reasons as opposed to counter-cultural activity.

4. Early Industrial Revolution––alcohol and coffee––a focus on productivity

America's war against the consumption of mind-altering substances. (including alcohol) can be traced to Seventeenth Century England and its experience with early industrialization [19] , [20] . During the Industrial Revolution, cities grew in both size and importance. Concomitantly, there was a decline in the importance of the extended family as a social and an economic unit. As a result, there was a decline in the informal social controls grounded in family, community, and church [21] , [22] . Urban life was increasingly being viewed as disorderly. Government increasingly stepped in to fill the void with laws and mechanisms of enforcement.

During this period, major changes in social and economic structure required changes in substance use norms and practices. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the British consumed alcohol widely and throughout the day. During Britain's Industrial Revolution, alcohol use came to be replaced by coffee which was more consistent with social expectations for being alert, punctual, rational and productive. An anonymous observer in 1674 clearly noted this shift as it occurred [19] :

Coffee-drinking hath caused a greater sobriety among the nations; for whereas formerly apprentices and clerks with others, used to take their mornings' drought in ale, beer or wine, which by the dizziness they cause in the brain, make many unfit for business, they use now to play the good-fellows in this wakeful and civil drink.

Industrialization and the growth of cities brought about significant changes in the organization of social and economic life. Family-based economies and communities that had been self-sufficient eroded as the young experienced a push away from an agrarian lifestyle and toward factory work. Unlike the rural family-based farm economy, at least in the eyes of supervisors, factory work required head work, discipline, and punctuality––all of which could be best achieved through sobriety. Caffeine as delivered in coffee was considered the antithesis of alcohol and beer; its stimulant effects produced good workers, the fuel of industrial capitalism. In this regard, coffee promoted hard work while beer was thought to produce lazy workers and slow the pace of economic growth. Coffee went hand in hand with the new rhythms of industrial work. Indeed, Brian Cowen [23] contended, “Coffee was the Protestant ethic in liquid form.”

New industry-driven labor requirements and expectations of acceptable behavior soon transferred over to the British colonies. As early as 1633, Massachusetts Bay Company Governor John Winthrop discontinued the practice of “drinking healths”. (a toast to one's health) in the colony and stipulated that a Governor's permit was necessary to sell liquor [24] . A century later, Benjamin Rush, who penned his name to the Declaration of Independence, published his now famous An Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits upon the Human Body and Mind . This work heralded the emergence of the early temperance movement conceptualizing chronic drunkenness as an “odious disease” and condemning the practice from both a medical and moral perspective [24] , [25] . This shift between an early Alcohol Era into a Coffee Era was quite profound because both substances were extremely popular. Their use was widespread across subpopulations differing by class, race, ethnicity, and gender. Consumption of both substances persists today and for many is integrated into a contemporary lifestyle. Later drug eras tended to affect a more limited segment of the population.

5. Industrial Revolution––morphine, cocaine and heroin––the use of miracle drugs

The Industrial Revolution was also characterized by an increasing pace of technological innovation in all areas, including medicine. The history of those substances most often constructed as drugs of abuse date to the identification and synthesis of a series of miracle drugs that revolutionized medicine in the 1800s—morphine, cocaine and heroin [2] , [26] – [29] .

Morphine was first isolated, developed, and distributed in the early Nineteenth Century. By the mid-1800s, the use of morphine had become commonplace for the medical treatment of pain. The development of the hypodermic syringe in 1853 allowed more effective delivery and, as a side effect, provided users with an intense morphine high. Morphine as delivered via the hypodermic syringe was used widely during the Civil War to treat wounded soldiers [30] . Dessa Bergen-Cico [27] in her book War and Drugs noted how America's wars have often been associated with the spread of drug use practices. The medical needs of Civil War soldiers fostered the spread and rapid expansion of the use of morphine. Use continued after the War reaching a peak by 1880. At mid-century, the use of opium was also spreading in various tinctures provided by doctors and patent medicine purveyors primarily to a largely female and middle-class clientele for a wide range of ailments such as headaches or menstrual cramps [30] . By the 1880s there was a wave of addiction among Civil War veterans, middle class housewives, and doctors [30] . This Morphine Era took place over the course of more than an entire century and finally went into decline during the progressive era as these miracle drug came to be thought of as a public menace [31] , [32] . Morphine is still widely used in medicine today but is no longer a substance of widespread abuse. Like coffee, the positive use of this substance appears to be well integrated into our contemporary lives.

Two other new miracle drugs followed morphine's trajectory leading to a Heroin Era and a Cocaine Era at the end of the Nineteenth Century [30] , [33] . Cocaine enjoyed a variety of miracle medicine and patent medicine uses. It was also used for performance enhancement and outright recreational use. Its use as a stimulant in such drinks as Coca Cola which at the time combined cocaine, caffeine and sugar was widely popular too as a boost to help workers perform the routinized tasks associated with industrial labor or as an effective tonic. Cocaine was removed from Coca Cola in 1903. Heroin was first marketed by Bayer as a powerful cough suppressant and pain reliever in the 1890s. A cough suppressant was a highly desirable and perhaps “heroic” drug at a time when many people were dying of tuberculosis and the cause of this coughing-related disease was still unknown.

6. Progressive Era––a decline phase––institutionalizing formal social control

America's War on Drugs and emphasis on supply reduction took shape during America's Progressive Period at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Around this time, people were developing problematic habits involving morphine, opium, cocaine, and heroin. Additionally, use of these drugs had expanded to new populations including members of the lower classes and ethnic/racial minorities, which contributed to the declining image of these drugs. Users became stigmatized as either hedonists or criminals and the drugs themselves became demonized [20] , [34] , [35] . These problems and perceptions led to the eventual end of the early Morphine, Cocaine and Heroin Eras through the formal social controls of regulation and enforcement.

Drug abuse control was one of many state-sponsored social engineering programs of the Progressive Period bringing economic and social regulation designed to provide urban infrastructure, social welfare institutions, education, and to enhance productivity. For many, life became more complex in urban environments as new needs arose. The unprecedented growth of many cities outpaced municipal governments' abilities to adequately meet the demand for services. In this pivotal period, city planners and residents increasingly associated urban problems with recent immigrants and migrants as populations of cities became more diverse and less white.

In Progressive America, newly minted experts and professionals engaged the myriad problems thought to be associated with drugs and their use. Medical experts vied with law enforcement to control drug users. In the 1880s, for example, when morphine, cocaine and heroin were considered medicines, users were considered patients. By the early 1900s, doctors were less inclined to prescribe opiates to patients due to the growing acceptance of the “germ theory” of disease and the increased use of non-addicting analgesics such as aspirin for pain [36] . The use of the opiate-based semi-synthetic heroin as well as cocaine for recreation, however, remained widespread and use became largely concentrated in stigmatized populations, especially poorer, urban males [30] , [36] . Newspapers began drawing the public's attention to the drug problem with a barrage of drug-war language, such as a 1900 New York Times story which declared a “War on Opium” [37] .

Federal drug regulation started with the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act requiring that products containing drugs be labeled with content and dosage. This reduced the widespread promotion of medicines containing strong substances and their inadvertent use. In 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Act effectively criminalized non-medical use of cocaine and opiates. Subsequently, domestic drug convictions and international drug control efforts intensified. During this period the fight against drugs was waged by both the new law enforcement and medical experts both seeking to establish their ownership of the drug problem. A split trajectory emerged by 1930 whereby better-to-do medically prescribed users were treated as patients, in hospitals. Poorer, recreational street users were treated in the criminal justice system [31] , [35] , [38] , [39] .

Moving into the Twentieth Century, the law enforcement model with its stigmatized user population became the focus of the War on Drugs. By 1930 the iconic image of the drug user was no longer a Civil War veteran or a housewife but a lower income, minority laborer. Moreover, drug use for non-medical purposes became firmly associated with self-indulgent behavior, which many contemporaries viewed to be characteristic of a larger decline in traditional morality [30] , [35] . These shifts illustrate how expanded migration, racism, and class issues colored the escalating War on Drugs.

7. World War II––amphetamine––enhancing productivity again

World War II was instrumental in shaping drug use patterns over the next decades. By the 1930s, a new class of long-acting compounds, amphetamines, increasingly made inroads into American society. Amphetamines were often prescribed by doctors to counter depression and blunt the sense of fatigue. Pep pills containing amphetamines were also widely distributed to soldiers during World War II and the Korean War [27] . Many soldiers became dependant and continued use after the war. Though prescription drug classes existed as early as 1936 and stricter regulation accompanied the Durham-Humphrey Amendments of 1951, many of these prescription drugs were not strictly regulated until the 1965 Drug Abuse Control Amendments. Thus, many veterans continued using the drugs after the wars easily obtaining their supplies. Amphetamines were sold illegally at truck stops primarily to help truck drivers stay alert but also facilitating the expansion of use across the country, flooding cities from coast to coast [40] , [41] . An article in the New York Times [42] described how a federal crackdown under way was now targeting the stigmatized pep pills as follows, “Amphetamines, potent stimulants sold commercially as Benzedrine and Dexedrine, have emerged in recent years as a major cause of delinquency…. Excessive use of the drugs causes a breakdown of social and moral barriers.”

Undeniably, the 1950s marked a period of intense effort by state and Federal government forces to eliminate the foreign enemy and the enemy within [2] , [38] . New efforts to control American borders and limit the illegal importation of drugs were initiated alongside a series of escalating penalties for drug use, possession, and sales. The 1951 Boggs Act and 1956 Narcotics Control Act carried newly created mandatory minimum penalties for narcotics violations. The fervor for the War on Drugs was advanced as this effort was conflated with America's Cold War against communist expansion. The drug using enemies within were considered especially susceptible to communist propaganda and therefore at risk of becoming spies [32] , [43] . Accordingly, advocating for anything other than a full blown War on Drugs called in question a politician's patriotism. In 1954, California Governor Goodwin J. Knight's told the Conference on Youth and Narcotics that, “Dope peddlers…deserve no mercy whatsoever. Remember that they represent a greater and more deadly evil than a man with a loaded gun pointed right at your heart.” [38] .

8. Vietnam War––heroin––drug, set and setting

The 1960s and early 1970s were a period of substantial domestic turmoil. Social movements focused on ending racism, concentrated poverty, and the war in Vietnam. American cities were under siege from protests that turned violent. Youths and young adults heralded a period of widespread experimentation with a broad variety of drugs. (many of which were relatively new) including LSD, PCP, barbiturates, amphetamines, heroin and marijuana. In 1971, President Richard Nixon officially responded by declaring a “War on Drugs.” [2] , [44] , [45] . Nixon's War on Drugs was not a unique new approach nor was he addressing a new problem. Rather, Nixon's War on Drugs represented a simplistic continuation of law enforcement policies toward an ongoing problem. However, the problem was getting more complex, the number of drugs available was increasing, and our understanding of the drug use experience was being challenged by new theoretical insights.

These insights grew out of studies of drug use by soldiers during the Vietnam War [27] . There was widespread concern that the return of soldiers addicted to heroin from Vietnam would continue their use [11] , [27] , [30] . Systematic research at this time however strongly suggested otherwise. In 1971, Lee Robins conducted a survey of service members in Vietnam and veterans who had returned to civilian life [46] , [47] . She found that close to half. (45%) of veterans had used opium or heroin while in Vietnam and 20% said they had been addicted and reported typical withdrawal symptoms. Remarkably, only 5% of the men who became addicted in Vietnam relapsed within 10 months after return home to civilian life, and only 12% relapsed even briefly within three years. Her findings highlighted the importance of context as a formidable factor shaping drug-using experiences. Robins concluded that despite popular rhetoric,

Soldiers in Vietnam had no special vulnerability to narcotics. They used heroin because it was inexpensive, unadulterated, and easily available, alternatives were few, disapproving friends and relatives were far away, and they felt that their war service was somehow not part of their real lives. When their situation changed, most of them had no difficulty giving up heroin, and that should not have been surprising.

Norman Zinberg [48] built upon Robins' insights into the importance of context for drug-using practices. He described how factors operating within three nested domains—drug, set, and setting—affected the substance use experiences. He explained that the action of a “drug” describes the properties that affect an individual's body. Today we understand that much of this effect is manifest across the dopamine pathway. “Set” is a user's psychological expectations or mindset surrounding the consumption of a drug that further influences the experience. A user's set is influenced by their personality and internal states of mind and brings into consideration such elements as depression, happiness, stress, and anxiety. “Setting” includes the environmental, social, and cultural context in which substance use takes place. The substances available and the significance society and the individual come to attach to the substances influence a person's experience or relationship with a substance. In this manner, drug experiences are context dependent. Zinberg suggested that the context or setting is much more than a collection of distal antecedents. It is an organic system with its own internal logic based in a worldview. In this manner, Zinberg challenged the War on Drugs' focus on drugs and drug users rather than contexts that might engender problematic usage patterns [44] , [48] . This framework consolidated important insight into drug use and still has a strong influence on research and policy [11] . The perspective stresses that moderate and controlled use of drugs is achievable, more common than previously thought or acknowledged, and most centrally context dependant. This directly challenges older stereotyped notions that any drug use would result in crippling addiction, espionage, crime, and the decline of America—oversimplifications that supported a War on Drugs.

9. The Twenty-First Century––a pharmacological revolution

Historically, we have seen a variety of reasons for taking drugs. Today there are many more drugs, more people using drugs, and numerous reasons to use them. We suggest that it is not the drugs themselves that we need to control, rather it is the misuse of these drugs that is problematic. We further suggest that social policy interventions would be more effective if they took this more expansive view. Reducing misuse involves understanding the reasons people use drugs, their mindset, and the context surrounding use. This provides insight into the underlying basis of our nation's drug problems. The following list catalogues a range of very different reasons for drug use varying from the most personally indulgent and individualistic to the most integrated into mainstream culture, although potentially misguided:

• Recreation/Enjoyment
• Making Meaning
• Medication/Self-Medication
• Cosmetic Pharmacology
• Performance Enhancement

Typically when we think about illegal drug use we think about people taking drugs to get high as a leisure activity for recreation or enjoyment. However, use of drugs can involve much more than seeking an altered state of conscience. There can be a major element of social identification involved. Drug use can represent a larger affiliation with a group or an idea. Social activities, use by friends, popular images, references in music, myths, availability, potential legal consequences, and youthful rebellion can impart a greater significance to the behavior. In this manner, drug use occurs within a cultural context and is part of the process by which people construct meaning in their lives on their postmodern journeys. Based on analysis of the succession of drug eras in the late 1900s, the lead author developed a theory of subcultural evolution and drug use as a partial explanation of the socio-cultural forces involved [10] .

A theory of subcultural evolution and drug use : Drug use emerges from a dialectic of the prevailing culture. (and especially drug subcultures) with individual identity development. Use of a drug is clearly an individual's decision but it is the prevailing drug subcultures and each person's place relative to them that impart a greater significance to the activity. Conversely, individual decisions to adopt, adapt or reject aspects of the prevailing drug subcultures cause the subcultures to evolve as well as lead to the emergence of new ones.

Defining culture and subculture is complex and sometimes controversial [49] . However, understanding the relationship between culture and drugs is essential to the cultural approach to drug abuse control that we seek to promote in this paper. Culture has taken on different meanings for different groups over time. In 1871, Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, a leading anthropologist, provided a concise statement of the monumental and comprehensive nature to culture that now represents a classical formulation [50] :

Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

The classical perspective identifies a larger gestalt to social context that compels individuals to engage in various behaviors and attach significance to them. On the negative side, this older viewpoint clearly downplays diversity within a society and the potential of personal autonomy. A postmodern sensibility emphasizes the multiplicity of prevailing cultural frameworks, the interacting of themes, and the centrality of individual agency [51] , [52] . Ulrich Beck [53] described a “reflexive cosmopolitization” whereby individuals build their identities based on multiple affiliations leading to a broad intermingling of ideas and behaviors without reference to national borders. Ann Swidler [54] provided a pragmatic view of culture as a toolkit of habits, skills and styles from which actors construct their strategy of actions and create meaning in their lives. Dick Hebdige [55] noted that subcultural identity manifests in decisions about self-presentation such as clothing, style, language, and use of public space.

There is substantial evidence that for many who become heavily involved with a drug era that their drug use is very much about identity and less about dropping out of society to pursue a leisure activity. Not every user becomes heavily involved with a drug era or the primary drug that comes to define that era. However, focusing on heavy users within an era provides insights into the context in which use becomes problematic and ultimately a window into prevailing culture. Ed Preble documented how many users during the Heroin Injection Era came to organize their daily lives around their habit: performing various hustles, nondrug crimes, a variety of drug sales/distribution roles, chasing the best bag of heroin, locating a safe place to inject, persuading others to share drugs or needles, avoiding police, and finding free food, shelter, and clothing. Drug users often described their heroin habit and associated activities as “Taking care of business,” an activity that provided them with a sense of purpose that for many born into poverty could not have been achieved in conventional society [56] . Similarly, during the Crack Era users attached symbolic importance to their extended efforts to obtain money and drugs during binges of use lasting for hours and even days. They referred to their efforts as missions adopting jargon from Star Trek [57] . Our larger point is that dealing with problems of drug abuse involves more than presenting users and potential users with a cost-benefit calculation of whether they should enjoy the benefits of a leisure activity or not. It is necessary to consider the complex and personal process by which individuals find meaning in life and how.

These first two reasons for drug use—enjoyment and making meaning—represent reactions contrary to prescribed mainstream norms for drug use and are mostly associated with illegal drugs. Other uses for drugs represent efforts to cope with contemporary life, not necessarily escape, and mostly involve drugs that are currently legal with a prescription. Self-medication can be understood as an effort to keep problems in check in order to otherwise participate in mainstream society. Individuals may also self medicate to deal with disorders or pain when they lack the resources to obtain mainstream services. In a sense, this represents a neutral use of drugs—to be normal or be able to operate in light of basic mainstream expectations. However, the use of drugs has raised the question, “What is normal?” Given that improved functioning can be achieved with drugs, it has raised the additional question, “Why settle for normal, when one can do better?”

Indeed, medical and pharmacological practice has clearly been at the forefront of this change. Joe Dumit [58] argued that there has been a fundamental philosophical shift over the past several decades. In the Nineteenth Century, medicine was understood as a cure, often a one-time administration, that returned the body to its normal, otherwise healthy status. Dumit noted a new pharmaceutical worldview that has accelerated since the 1990s that presumes that the body is “inherently ill” requiring maintenance medications. We now have various drugs for treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. (ADHD) such as Ritalin and Adderall [59] . We also have a variety of drugs for controlling depression and anxiety such as Valium, Prozac, and Xanax [60] . And a proliferation of drugs to improve sexual performance impeded by erectile dysfunction such as Viagra [61] . Treatments have been discovered for conditions and concerns with which people had to learn to cope. This potential has also raised concern that there may be over diagnosis of problems by care providers and drug manufacturers in a cynical pursuit of profits. Direct-to-consumer marketing by pharmaceutical companies adjures viewers to check with their doctor or pharmacist as to whether a new drug may relieve their condition or improve their performance [62] , [63] . The implication is that problems or concerns that one may face are treatable through drugs leading to what Peter Conrad referred to as the “medicalization of society.” Overall, there has been a massive increase in substance use, much of which may be unnecessary. There has been an increase in the number and quantity of drugs that can be potentially diverted. There has also been a growing concern with the misuse of drugs by the person for whom they were prescribed including such aberrant behaviors as complaining about the need for more drugs, unsanctioned dose escalation, concurrent use of alcohol, or alternative route of administration such as sniffing or injecting drugs originally intended for oral use [64] . In this way, doctors are losing control over the use of those drugs that are under the prescription system.

For some, preference is starting to replace need as a basis for drug use. Peter Kramer's [60] influential book, Listening to Prozac , raised serious questions about how we decide what are normal feelings for people to experience, what personality characteristics should be considered problematic, and who decides. Kramer reported a variety of curious responses to Prozac by patients such as: “I felt more like myself when I was on the drug than when I was not,” “It was a mood brightener,” and, “My friends liked me better when I was on drugs.” These observations illustrate “cosmetic pharmacology,” the use of drugs to enhance your appearance just as one might have cosmetic surgery to remove fat, reduce frown lines or enhance one's breasts.

For others, drugs have become a way to enhance their performance in order to keep up with the demands of contemporary life. This is especially the case with amphetamines. The question arises as to the extent that Adderall and other stimulants are being used for performance enhancement either with medical supervision, as an aberrant behavior outside of prescribed use, or through diverted supplies [59] . In their book Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports , Mark Fainaru-Wadu and Lance Williams [65] discussed this larger problem with regard to baseball, running and other professional and Olympic sports but especially with regard to Barry Bonds' stellar career and the network developed to help him reach his maximum potential by using steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. This raises the concern that once a few athletes take performance enhancing drugs, others can choose not to, but only at the risk of forsaking their career goals [66] . This represents a form of social coercion urging individuals to use drugs to enhance their performance.

Performance enhancing substance use has been common in the military, especially during conflicts, and not just for recreational purposes [27] , [67] . In the Twenty-First Century, the U.S. Military has been engaged in two extended conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, referred to as Operation Enduring Freedom. (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom. (OIF). Soldiers routinely take substances such as Dexedrine, NoDoz and Red Bull commonly called “go pills.” As a come down to obtain needed sleep and to suppress anxiety, soldiers routinely take other substances including Ambien and Restoril, commonly called “no-go” pills. To deal with pain while deployed and after returning, many soldiers are taking powerful new opioids including OxyContin and Vicodin. Because of the widespread use of drugs by military personnel and veterans, a New York Magazine article dubbed this, “The Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Celexa, Effexor, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan, Restoril, Xanax, Adderall, Ritalin, Haldol, Resperdal, Seroquel, Ambien, Lunesta, Elavil, Trazodone War” [68] . Eventually, OEF/OIF veterans need to integrate into the rhythms of civilian life which are generally less intense than combat experiences. This involves possibly reducing the use of go and no-go pills. Many OEF/OIF veterans are also dealing with ongoing use and dependence on opioids.

10. Toward a cultural perspective on drug policy

The Federal administration signaled its interest in moving past the drugs-war metaphor. Gil Kerlikowske, former Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy or Drug Czar, commented that “Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them. We're not at war with people in this country.” [69] . Consistent with this promise, the 2011 National Drug Control Strategy contains no mention of a War on Drugs and instead focuses upon drug abuse as a public health concern [70] . This goes back a hundred years returning to the competition between law enforcement and medicine for ownership of the drug problem. However, this viewpoint still misses the larger context in which drug-related problems are generally based. From Zinberg's perspective this is still a focus on the drug and the set. We contend that the greatest advances in resolving our drug-related problems can be obtained by focusing on setting and in particular on how setting is transforming over time.

Our approach to alleviating drug misuse and its associated problems starts with recognizing drugs for what they are. They are technologies! In this regard, our drug problems are similar to problems we face with other new technologies such as cell phones, the internet, microwave ovens, plastic, cars, refrigeration, and nuclear energy. These technologies bring advantages. However, in the process they have changed our world forever, just as the growth of factories reorganized our lives during the Industrial Revolution. We cannot go backwards! Traditional societies like the Amish avoid the problems of new technologies by completely shunning their use. However, in the larger competitive society this is not practical. We cannot declare war on cell phones and eliminate their use. Similarly, a war on the internet appears undesirable and likely futile.

Continuing our analogy, we formally distinguish our current postmodern period as a Pharmacological Revolution. We contend this provides us with a more accurate metaphor for policy development than sustaining a War on Drugs. Based on our analogy, we make three major predictions:

• The world will be qualitatively different at the end of the revolution in ways that we could not understand and would not have accepted before the start of the transformation.

This is a very humbling thought. Moreover, there is no simple and obvious path for all to navigate this revolution leading to the next predictions:

• There will be pain and hardship during the transition as early adopters struggle with the collateral consequences of using new technologies.
• There will be pain and hardship suffered by late adopters and non-adopters as the world around them changes and leaves them behind.

Accordingly, we contend that there needs to be a fundamental shift in how drug policy is developed, a change in metaphor. This new perspective would seek to help individuals find their way through the prevailing Pharmacological Revolution. Towards this end, we make several explicit recommendations:

• Study how drug use technologies affect society. Not just from a pathological perspective, but also consider the potential of controlled use, the impact of one's use on others around that person, and the larger impact on society. This would involve increasing research by social scientists into controlled substance use that solves problems and enhances individual lives. Current research funded through the National Institute on Drug Abuse tends to examine pathological concerns and emphasizes biological concerns over cultural and social developments.
• View regulations as provisional as drug use and associated consequences play out differently and can vary over time and across locations. Hard and fast regulation and enforcement without an understanding of context impedes orderly change to society. As in the past, our base of knowledge and experience at this time limits our ability to make the best permanent decisions. Accordingly, we need a range of regulatory instruments and monitoring procedures. As we move through this Pharmacological Revolution, policies can be tightened, loosened or otherwise revised with increasing information and experience.
• Focus on education that will help individuals make good decisions that lead to healthy, productive, and fulfilling lifestyles. This stands in strong contrast to current drug education programs, public service announcements, and treatment programs that emphasize abstinence only. The next section discusses possible prevention programs further.
• Provide culturally sensitive outreach programs tailored to those in need. We need to engage drug-users and the communities they are a part of to understand the nature of the problems they face. This will allow us to best inform and craft interventions that meet the often wide ranging drug-user and community needs, including the provision of treatment, risk reduction measures, and where appropriate, forms of punishment.

11. A cultural view on alcohol abuse prevention

Some of the most suggestive information about the cultural element to our substance abuse problems comes from cross-cultural studies of alcohol. There has been extensive research on the interrelationship between alcohol use, alcohol policy, and cultural norms. This work may provide potential insights for developing responses to the use of other substances bearing in mind their broader impact on society. Alcohol has been widely used over time and across societies. Moreover, there has been substantial variation in cultural relationships to alcohol. David Hanson's texts have explored alcohol history, literature and policy [71] , [72] : Preventing Alcohol Abuse: Alcohol, Culture and Control and Alcohol Education: What We Must Do . Hanson pointed out that beverage alcohol has been used for enjoyment as well as medicinal, nutritional, antiseptic, analgesic and religious/spiritual purposes for millennia. But its misuse can be problematic. This has been long understood. Biblical writings point to both the value and danger of alcohol use [73] . St. Paul considered wine to be a creation of God and therefore inherently good. (1 Timothy 4:4), but condemned drunkenness. (1 Corinthians 3:16–17) and recommended abstinence for those who could not control their drinking. The puritan minister Increase Mather stated, “Drink is in itself a good creature of God and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan; the wine is from God, but the Drunkard is from the Devil.” [quoted in 71].

This line of research holds that the challenge since early times has been to enjoy the benefits of alcohol while controlling the potential problems. This more nuanced concern differs dramatically from the drugs-war metaphor and further suggests that the efforts to prevent substance abuse should focus on cultural issues. Mandelbaum [74] , a cultural anthropologist, argued that culture profoundly affects the interpretation of altered states brought as well as the actual physical response itself:

…The behavioral consequences of drinking alcohol depends as much on a people's ideas of what alcohol does to a person as they do on the physiological processes that take place. When a man lifts a cup, it is not only the kind of drink that is in it, the amount he is likely to take, and the circumstances under which he will do the drinking that are specified in advance for him, but also whether the contents of the cup will cheer or stupefy, whether they will induce affection or aggression, guilt or unalloyed pleasure. These and many other cultural definitions attach to the drink even before it touches the lips.

This idea, is consistent with Zinberg's focus on setting. Hanson offered several national case studies that ground experiences of alcohol use and abuse in distinct cultural contexts [71] . He noted that the Irish have high rates of alcohol abuse whereas Italians do not. He attributed Irish alcohol abuse to the traditional separation of males and females and that Irish males are encouraged to sublimate their sexuality and any emotional problems by “drinking it off with the boys.” In contrast, Italian alcohol use is traditionally integrated into family life where men and women and children drink moderately together, especially at meals. A recent World Health Organization report indicated that cross-cultural differences in alcohol use and abuse patterns persist to this day [75] . In Ireland as of 2005, 26% of the population had abstained from use of alcohol in the past 12 months. Among males, 43% had engaged in heavy episodic drinking in the past 7 days. Beer was the most common alcoholic drink consumed. (53%). In Italy, wine. (73%) was the alcoholic drink of choice. There were fewer abstainers. (18%) than in Ireland, yet a much lower rate of heavy episodic use among males. (11%). In both countries females were much less likely to engage in heavy episodic use; even still, the rate in Ireland. (14%) was higher than the rate in Italy. (8%). These findings are consistent with the possibility that the cultural differences in drinking between the Irish and Italians that Hanson spoke of may have persisted into the 21 st Century.

Regardless of the localized historical trends in substance abuse he reviewed, Hanson's research continues to have broader implications for the control of substance abuse today. It holds out the possibility that changing the context or influencing individuals' expectations and conceptualizations of use can control the emergence of heavy use and associated problems. Based on his cross-cultural and historical synthesis, Hanson [71] concluded that the following cultural factors are associated with lower rates of drinking problems:

• Drinking is prescribed by social norms, not prohibited
• Drinking is incorporated within social customs or religious observance
• “Proper” drinking behavior is learned at an early age and within the home
• Drinking accompanies meals
• Drinking behavior is regulated by social norms for controlled use

Accordingly, Hanson [72] argued for alcohol policy and education that follow a sociocultural approach to foster controlled and responsible alcohol use and the avoidance of abuse.

12. Cultural approaches to reducing substance abuse

There is clear evidence of the advantage of taking a cultural perspective with regard to alcohol. We contend that drug abuse control programs incorporating a cultural perspective are also needed during this Pharmacological Revolution to identify and address the evolving contexts of legal and illegal drug use, misuse, and dependence. A key insight is that drug-related problems are not limited to illegal drugs. Use of drugs that are currently legal can result in problems, even when used with a prescription. Misuse of heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana, steroids, opioids and other drugs for recreation, self-medication, and performance enhancement represent topics of social concern worthy of further analysis. Unfortunately, our drugs-war metaphor has limited our analysis primarily to pathological use and toxicity of illegal drugs. An understanding that our nation is undergoing a Pharmacological Revolution suggests major changes in which drugs should be studied and how. In particular, it should be recognized that the use of any new drug, like a new technology, has the potential for broad changes on our society. Accordingly, we offer the following recommendation regarding ongoing research:

• Research should analyze the ongoing social and cultural impact of new drugs. Currently, drug testing is mostly limited to the analysis of the efficacy and toxicity of drugs that are to become legal that are reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration before a drug is introduced into the nation's pharmacopoeia. Additional funding should be available to social and cultural researchers. (such as anthropologists, sociologists, and historians) for studies into the cultural impact of new drugs. This research should seek to establish how a person's use of a drug changes their life, the lives of others around them, and the impact for society as more people become users.
• Research should analyze controlled use. The focus of most drug abuse research has been on various drugs' toxicity and ways to prevent access and use. However, toxic events can be avoided through controlled behavior. Research funding should be available to study the controlled use of drugs over time and in context. This research should involve drugs that are both currently legal and illegal bearing in mind that these distinctions can change over time. This research should also consider interactions with other common substances such as alcohol. For many people, it is unrealistic to presume that if they are taking a drug long-term such as opioids that they will abstain from any alcohol use. This research will provide essential health information regarding which drugs that are currently illegal or limited to prescription use might be made more broadly available and those that are currently legal that might be subjected to further restriction.

As a society we need to come to terms with our chemical and human potential to help individuals' construct healthy, productive and meaningful lives during this Pharmacological Revolution.

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. (NIAAA, R01 AA020178), National Institute on Drug Abuse. (NIDA, R01 DA036754) and the Peter F. McManus Charitable Trust. The points of view expressed do not represent the official position of the U.S. Government, NIAAA, NIDA, Peter F. McManus Charitable Trust, or National Development and Research Institutes Inc.

Conflict of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest.

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Article Contents

Introduction, theorizing peace discourses: illegal drugs, human rights, and democracy, duterte's war on drugs in the philippines, uribe's war on drugs: plan colombia, conclusions, acknowledgments.

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Visions of Peace Amidst a Human Rights Crisis: War on Drugs in Colombia and the Philippines

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Salvador Santino F Regilme, Visions of Peace Amidst a Human Rights Crisis: War on Drugs in Colombia and the Philippines, Journal of Global Security Studies , Volume 6, Issue 2, June 2021, ogaa022, https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogaa022

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Peace is one of most widely used yet highly contested concepts in contemporary politics. What constitutes peace? That broad analytic inquiry motivates this article, which focuses on the contentious discourses of peace within a society besieged by widespread trafficking and use of illegal drugs. Focusing on the illegal drug problem in Colombia and the Philippines, the central puzzle of this paper constitutes two fundamental questions: How do state leaders justify their respective “war on drugs”? How do they construct and discursively articulate ideals of peace in the context of the illegal drug problem? This paper compares the post-9/11 Colombian war on drugs (2002–2010) vis-à-vis the Philippine war on drugs under the Duterte administration (2016–2019), particularly in terms of how their presidential administrations articulate “peace” in the context of resolving the drug problem. The paper examines the varying discourses of peace, investigates how those local discourses relate to global discourses on peace and illegal drugs, and underscores how and under which conditions those peace discourses portray the material distributive conflicts in those societies. The core argument states that the Uribe and Duterte administrations primarily deployed the notion of peace as a justificatory discourse for increased state repression, intensified criminalization of the drug problem, and the reluctance of the state in embracing a public health approach to the proliferation of illegal drugs.

Peace is one of the most widely used yet highly contested concepts in contemporary politics. Some politicians invoke peace as a goal that could be achieved through the intensification of state violence. Leaders of powerful countries invoke peace—together with other supposedly noble objectives such as democracy, stability, security—as a justification for militaristic foreign intervention in a weak country often situated in the global South. In his widely cited work on peace, Johan Galtung (1969 , 167) argues that one of the principal ways of defining peace is to characterize it as the absence of violence. Yet, this method of defining a concept through negation is problematic, particularly because it does not fully substantiate the core empirical features of the concept and the situation whereby peace supposedly exists. Later on, Galtung (1996) introduces the notion of positive peace, which highlights positive societal features such as the existence of social justice and equity. In both definitions, Galtung conceptualizes peace as a structural condition that constitutes several empirical features. Notably, contemporary scholarship on security studies 1 has yet to consider peace as a discursive tool (rather than as a macro-material condition) that political actors use in advancing concrete policy aims. Hence, what constitutes peace? In a society beset by the proliferation of civilian deaths, crimes, and state violence, how is peace best reimagined and actualized? How does the state leadership frame and discursively advocate their visions of peace amid a society besieged by violence?

That broad analytic inquiry animates this article, whereby I focus on the discourse of peace within a society besieged by widespread trafficking and use of illegal drugs. In recent years, states have primarily relied on violence, coercion, and public shaming of illegal drug users, and in many cases, have facilitated the systematic killings of civilians ( Björnhead 2004 ; Mercille 2011 ; Morton 2012 ; Paley 2015 ). This strategy of relying on state violence also motivated non-state criminal organizations to bolster their firepower, in a bid to maintain their control and profits from the global drug trade. Based on the International Drug Policy Consortium (2018 , 7), the illicit demand for narcotic drugs at the global level is astounding. Around 275 million people aged 15–64 have used illegal drugs at least once in 2016, a statistic that marks a 31 percent increase since 2009 ( International Drug Policy Consortium 2018 ). Globally, the majority of these people preferred cannabis as top choice, followed by opioids and amphetamines. Accordingly, the use of methamphetamines has increased in the global South, especially in North and West Africa and East Asia. The global drug market, particularly between 2009 and 2017, has witnessed the introduction of around 800 new psychoactive substances, while the illegal usage of medically prescribed drugs has skyrocketed in the global North, particularly in North America. While national drug policies vary, several states have framed illegal drug use as a criminal problem rather than as a public health issue. In the last decade, nearly half a million civilians die each year as a result of illegal drugs ( International Drug Policy Consortium 2018 , 8).

In my experience as head of my country's government and previously a health minister, as a former senior official at the United Nations, and more recently as a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, I've found debates on drug policy tend to be divisive and passionately ideological. On one point, however, there is a clear and growing consensus: Around the world, the so-called “war on drugs” is failing.

This sense of failure begs the question as to which ideal do current global and national drug policies deviate from. If the societal battle against illegal drugs is construed as a war, how is victory in such a war defined and constructed? If the oppositional concept of violence is peace, then how is peace attained in a society besieged by the use of illegal drugs? In the attempt to curb the drug problem, state leaders and elites invoke politically appealing concepts to mobilize support and resources for intensified state violence against drug syndicates. Perhaps the most widely invoked linguistic tool in the discursive battle against illegal drugs refers to the notion of peace. Rather than focusing solely on the material features of the drug wars, I also focus on the discursive and ideational articulations of the government's visions of peace.

Empirically, I focus on the illegal drug problem in contemporary Colombia and the Philippines, where governments have historically and primarily deployed a militaristic approach. Particularly, the central puzzle of this paper constitutes two fundamental questions concerning the two aforementioned country cases: How do the political elites and state leaders therein justify their respective “war on drugs”? How do they construct and discursively articulate ideals of peace in the context of the illegal drug problem? This paper compares the post-9/11 Colombian war on drugs (2002–2010) vis-à-vis the Philippine war on drugs under the Duterte administration (2016–2019), particularly in terms of how their presidential administrations articulate “peace” in the context of resolving the drug problem.

I maintain that the Uribe and Duterte administrations deployed the notion of peace 2 as a justificatory discourse for increased state repression, intensified criminalization of the drug problem, and the reluctance of the state in considering a public health approach towards the proliferation of narcotics. The Duterte administration conceptualizes peace as a condition where law and order are achieved, or more tangibly, when state power could overcome contestations from many, if not all, forms of political dissent. The Uribe administration, on the other hand, upholds that promoting democracy and human rights is necessary to secure peace, and it maintains that increased state repression effectively thwarts threats to peace. In both cases, peace and other discursive ideals such as the rule of law, order, and security were strategically deployed in a bid to consolidate the authority of the Duterte and Uribe administrations amid highly contentious political resistance from civil society organizations and human rights activists.

In building those key points, this paper is organized as follows. First, the next section reviews the theoretical literature on peace, revisits the current literature on war on drugs in the Philippines and Colombia, and substantiates the arguments that directly link the relationship between “peace” discourses in the context of the drug wars. The next part presents the case study analysis of the Philippine war on drugs under the Duterte administration, which will be followed by the section that analyzes the Colombia's war on drugs under the Uribe administration. This paper concludes by discussing the comparative findings of the two case studies, by drawing some broad lessons for addressing the illegal drug problem, and by highlighting the implications of the criminalization of the war on drugs on states’ human rights commitments to its citizens.

How should we reconsider peace in an empirical analysis of the drug war discourses? In this study, I consider peace as a desirable, overtly abstract, and morally appealing “meta-discourse” that refers to a broad set of socio-political conditions upon which particular forms of violence are perceived to have been repressed or undermined, if not totally eliminated. My notion of peace does not have a comprehensively defined set of empirical indicators decided a priori as supposedly indicative of a condition of peace in a given society. Rather, following Clifford Bob's (2019) conceptualization of rights, I argue that peace is a flexible discursive tool that political actors use to rally and to mobilize support for a particular policy strategy, and in some cases, perhaps a broader revolutionary movement. Similar to loosely defined concepts such as rights, justice, equality, peace refers to the aspirational political condition that pertains to the relative absence of violence, in its many forms of manifestation—ranging from those at the level of the individual (physical and psychological) and collective (repression of group-rights). It is likely that no political community persistently desires to endure systemic and pervasive violence. That premise reinforces the idea as to why peace enjoys profound moral resonance as well as perhaps quite universal acceptance across societies and across historical time. While policies and political actions may have varying intended and unintended effects upon a given political community, politicians and other societal actors strategically deploy and invoke peace as a rallying cry to justify a wide panoply of policy actions that they themselves may know as inherently violent or anti-peace by nature. As Rainer Forst (2017 , 12) rightly contends, the “question of justification” is a “political and practical question, and thereby lends the aforementioned concepts dialectical resonance: and on the other hand, it starts from the analysis of the real relations of subjugation.” Simply put, justification is crucial in discourse particularly in political communities, whereby power is unevenly distributed, and in such cases, justifications form the non-material basis for varying forms of subjugation and control over particular groups of individuals.

What are political discourses? Discourses refer to a set of propositions, utterances, assertions, and beliefs uttered in the public sphere for the particular purpose of advancing a policy action or a broad belief-system ( Regilme 2018b , c ). The public sphere refers to the societal space that represents the meeting point of discursive battles between civil society, state, and the market ( Habermas 1991 ; Regilme 2018a ). Politicians deploy discourses with the aim of providing rebuttals and counter-responses to opposing arguments raised by their opponents. In the context of a constitutionally guaranteed liberal democracy, discursive justifications aim to provide reasons and legitimating ideas in support of a particular policy action. Yet, those discursive justifications do not exist independent of the material circumstances that underpin a given political community. Rather, those material circumstances, while they do exist independently despite the absence of a conscious human observer, shape how and under which conditions discursive justifications are formed and by whom. This issue of whose interpretations matter in the public sphere requires an analysis of how material power is distributed amongst various groups of actors who participate in the formation of the public sphere.

Methodologically, I highlight the key substantive discourses that dominated in the political speeches and texts of the officials of the Philippine government (2016–2019) and the Colombian government (2001–2010), with the focus on President Rodrigo Duterte of the former and President Alvaro Uribe 3 of the latter. Both countries 4 are fairly similar in a number of relevant and comparable aspects. As middle-income countries located in the Global South, Colombia and the Philippines have nominally electoral democratic systems with constitutionally guaranteed human rights for its citizens, a relatively liberal democratic political culture, considerable levels of material inequalities, and a long-standing problem on widespread use and trafficking of illegal narcotics. Because of those notable similarities, the comparative analysis effectively highlights how and under which conditions two democratically elected executive governments have weaponized peace discourses in order to make increased state repression and militarization of a public health problem more appealing to their domestic constituencies.

The empirical analysis herein constitutes a “plausibility probe” ( Levy 2008 , 8), whereby the two cases of the drug wars illustrate my theoretical propositions on the role of discourse as justificatory tools for increased state repression, using the notion of peace as the core concept. The discursive dynamics and the material circumstances of the state-initiated drug wars in Colombia and the Philippines are well-documented in a wide range of scholarly literature in the social sciences, especially in political science, international relations, and area studies. Because of this wide swath of vetted scholarly literature on the drug wars, I analyze and theorize the dominant discourse patterns as well as various news articles and other open-source speeches and government documents in order to illustrate my broad theoretical arguments. For that reason, the case studies probe the plausibility of such theoretical arguments and contribute to a better understanding of the government's political logic and discursive justifications for the extremely violent state-led drug wars, which led to the human rights disasters in Colombia and the Philippines. While the case studies do not make an exhaustive discourse analysis of the presidential administrations in those two countries, the comparative study relies on a wide range of empirical sources from Colombia, the Philippines, as well as international sources: primary documents of speeches from official government websites; reports from various national and international news media outlets; and, secondary literature and empirical accounts from local journalists and scholars. Employing data triangulation, I cross-verify particular pieces of empirical information across various sources with nominally different interests (e.g., local versus international; public versus private media agencies) in order to ensure reliability of the comparative analysis.

This article contributes to the relevant literatures on security studies, human rights scholarship, and international relations (IR) in several ways. Notably, it redresses some of the analytic limitations of securitization theory, which has been dominant in the study of domestic state repression and international politics. First, whereas securitization theory usually focuses on the ideational aspects by underscoring the notion of security as a speech-act ( Waever 1995 ), this study highlights how ideational-legitimization narratives (such as peace discourses vis-à-vis threat construction) and material actions (state and non-state violence) fundamentally constitute security as a sociological condition that is distinctively formed during a given temporal period, geographic space, and actor positionality. While securitization theorists insist that “the way to study securitization is to study discourse” ( Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde 1998 , 25), I show that the construction of security emanates from competition amongst social actors that generate actions both in the ideational and materialist realms of public contestation. Second, as the Colombian and Philippine cases show, the legitimization and eventual policy implementation of the war on drugs depended both on the public demonization of anyone involved in illegal narcotics and the insistence of a “peace” utopia that the governments seek to achieve through militarization. Although “securitization process is inherently negative” as it “bypasses normal democratic procedures and fast-tracks issues into the secretive and undoubtedly hostile realm of security” ( Sjöstedt 2017 , 14; see also Aradau 2004 ), the analysis herein shows how legitimization narratives through peace discourses—framed as positive , emancipatory utopias by state actors advocating for militarization—often occur in openly contested public spheres and could facilitate the loss of human lives. Third, this paper engages with the emerging literature on the “varieties of peace” program by demonstrating that peace represents a multifaceted and politically contentious process of “becoming rather than an end state” ( Jarstad et al. 2019 , 2). In other words, peace should be conceived not only as a mere sociological condition but as a process of contestation of discursive justifications, legitimation narratives, and mobilization of resources in support of distinctive political utopias.

Besides, the article illustrates how supposedly neutral and universally appealing meta-discourses such as peace could be used as weapons for regime consolidation and could engender tangible and material consequences such as severe human rights crisis. Regime consolidation requires legitimation narratives, and in the case of Uribe and Duterte, legitimacy was sought through the strategic invocation of state security-oriented notion of peace. By showing how peace is a highly contested rallying discourse, I contribute to the nascent theoretical developments in peace studies ( Klem 2018 ) and human rights scholarship ( Bob 2019 ; Regilme 2019 , 2020 ) that highlight the inherently politicized nature of moral concepts and their concrete distributive consequences to the society that impact the existential survival of its more vulnerable members. In addition, this article is arguably the first in security studies, political science, and human rights literature that investigates the contemporary war on drugs using theoretically oriented systematic comparisons between Colombia and the Philippines. 5

Hence, my comparative analysis of the drugs wars in the Philippines and Colombia includes the focus on the structural-material circumstances of the drug wars as well as its ideational features. As shown in Figure 1 , the comparative summary of the two countries’ drug wars is presented based on several key benchmarks. In terms of the material factors, I analytically describe the broad socio-political context and the purported material basis of the drug war in each country, with a focus on the features of the primary actors deploying state violence, their primary targets, the key features of the human rights crisis that emerged from state violence, and the political logics of the incumbent government. In regard to ideational features, I provide some preliminary insights concerning the Colombian and Philippine governments’ dominant perspectives on peace, human rights, and their over-all stance on unarmed political dissent amidst a perceived crisis of illegal drug use and trafficking. Thus, understanding how and why transformative policy strategies emerge require the intertwining and mutually reinforcing interactions of material and ideational factors, as those processes will be demonstrated by the case studies of the drug wars in Colombia and the Philippines. The overarching argument maintains that the discursive justifications and resource mobilization in support of the drug wars were systematic attempts to consolidate the authority of Duterte and Uribe within and beyond their state's coercive apparatus, particularly by legitimizing increased state violence through discourses of state security-oriented notion of peace. Following Galtung's (1969 , 1996) emphasis on peace as a set of material conditions and recent scholarly studies of how morally appealing concepts are used as ideational tools in political contestations ( Bob 2019 ; Klem 2018 ), I illustrate how government officials deploy peace as a justificatory instrument in order to facilitate the broad acceptance and implementation of particular security policies that have concrete material consequences to human lives. The table above presents the organizing principles upon which the comparative analysis of the drug wars will be conducted. The next section begins with the case study of the Philippine war on drugs under the government of President Rodrigo Duterte (2016-ongoing).

Comparing the material and ideational logics of the war on drugs in the Philippines and Colombia.

On the 30th June 2016, Rodrigo Duterte was sworn into office as the 16th President of the Republic of the Philippines. Duterte defeated four other key contenders in the 2016 presidential elections, with 40 percent of the total number of votes with the second (Manuel Roxas) and third placer (Grace Poe) garnering 23 percent and 21 percent, respectively. Those other presidential contenders upheld policies that speak of relative continuity to the strategies of the administration of the President Benigno Aquino (2010–2016), while the Duterte campaign sought to depart from Aquino's liberal democratic-oriented policy agenda.

Duterte's core agenda focused on three key policy priorities. First, he vowed to push for the shift from the current, centralized system of governance to fully federalized system. In this way, provincial governments acquire more power in managing their own affairs in ways that are not possible in the current system ( Casiple 2019 , 180). While this agenda is unsurprising considering that Duterte was the first provincial politician to be elected directly to the highest elected office in the country, the proposal in support of federalism also marks the weaknesses of the post-1986 electoral democracy system. Specifically, Duterte and his allies criticized how previous electoral administrations since the fall of the Macros dictatorship failed to deliver the socio-economic benefits of liberalization across the society, thereby characterizing such a democratic system as elitist ( Thompson 2016 ). Second, Duterte's policy agenda constituted the shift from reliance upon the United States as a security guarantor toward a much closer bilateral relationship with China. Third, Duterte's centerpiece agenda includes his “war on drugs” that generated the worst state-initiated human rights crisis in the country's modern political history ( Simangan 2017 ).

My empirical analysis of Duterte's war on drugs consists of two key components. The first part constitutes the material features of intensified state repression, while the second part focuses on the ideational justifications for the approach in solving the proliferation of the use of illegal drugs.

Two years ago, PDEA [Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency] came out with a statement that there are 3 million drug addicts in this country. That was two or three years ago. How do you think – would the number incrementally [sic, grow] if we count now? Give it a liberal addition. Maybe, gawin mo na [make it] [700,000]. So three million seven hundred thousand [3.7 million]. The number is quite staggering and scary.

Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now there is three million, there's three million drug addicts. There are. I'd be happy to slaughter them. At least if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have you know, my victims, I would like to be all criminals to finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition.

Are you telling me that these criminals have human rights to kill and human rights to continue their criminal activities? What about the human rights of the innocent victims and their orphans? A leader must be a terror to the few who are evil in order to protect the lives and well-being of the many who are good," We're the ninth safest city… How do you think I did it? How did I reach that title among the world's safest cities? Kill them all [criminals].

By framing users of illegal drugs as the most dangerous existential threat to the Philippine political order, Duterte underscored the Philippine state's failures in solving socio-economic problems including material inequality and political corruption. This simplistic framing of the country's entrenched problems as all linked to illegal drugs gained some traction amongst Duterte's support base, while Duterte continued to demonize his predecessor, former President Benigno Aquino (2010–2016) of the Liberal Party, whose presidency facilitated increased economic growth amidst increasing crime rates, and other opposition politicians and critics, 6 who advocate for a non-violent approach to criminality and illegal drugs.

Duterte and his allies contend that Davao City emerged as one of the “safest” cities in the country because of the effectiveness of extrajudicial killings, and that claim “was the bedrock of his presidential campaign. . .that emphasizes order above law which is particularly attractive to voters who are tired of the ineffectiveness of legal institutions in addressing crime and disorder” ( Simangan 2017 , 5). Indeed, the Duterte administration employed state agents in implementing state violence in order to eliminate violently all suspected drug addicts, users, and traffickers in ways that were not formally sanctioned by law.

Those who are rich are jailed and turned into witnesses. How come the poor are being killed? In our neighborhood…they usually kill those of us who have families – people who sell to have a little money. If people had other opportunities, they wouldn't [sell drugs].

Yet, Duterte's claim about the purported improvement in public security came at the cost of thousands of civilians killed by state-sponsored agents during the war on drugs. As shown in figure  2 , the number of civilian deaths resulting from state violence dramatically increased in 2017, a year after the Duterte administration launched its increased state repression against suspected drug addicts and traffickers. Before Duterte's war on drugs, the administration of President Benigno Aquino III focused on good governance, human rights, and economic reforms, which likely contributed to the decrease in the number of victims from state-based violence ( Aquino III and Bradley 2010 ; Regilme 2015 : 155–193; Regilme and Untalan 2016 ).

State-based violence in the Philippines (2008–2018). Pettersson et al. (2019) .

The Duterte administration's drug war constitutes various discursive mechanisms of justification ( Johnson and Fernquest 2018 , 363). First, the rhetoric and policy discourses of Duterte and his administration officials encourage the killings of all those involved in narcotic drugs. Duterte devalued the life of alleged criminals by arguing that “there's a whale of a difference between killing an innocent person and killing a criminal. . .they ought not to be mixed up” ( Ranada 2017 , 20–21) and justified that the casualties of the drug wars were criminals who ought to die. Second, police officers implement fictional buy-bust operations, whereby the target suspects would be accused of violent resistance and are eventually killed. Third, police agents and suspected state-sponsored assassins systematically yet covertly look for all targets and kill them in ways that demonstrate acts of governmental terrorism. In fact, the distinction between a buy-bust killing and a regular extra-judicial killing is unclear, considering that “if the victim did not have a gun, one can be given to him after he is killed—and it frequently is” ( Johnson and Fernquest 2018 , 363).

The war on drugs deliberately targeted any suspected drug users and traffickers, without any proper court-sanctioned vetting and arrest warrants ( Reyes 2019 , 111–112). In Duterte's war on drugs, state agents employ two key tactics. First, they systematically identify suspected drug dealers, users, and alleged criminals and disclosing their names in the media. Second, state agents passionately justify the killing of those suspects as inevitable, while publicly embarrassing the suspects’ families and friends through the placement of placards on the dead targets that indicate that they deserve death for their involvement in drugs. Such tactics depend also on showcasing the purported effectiveness of state violence in fostering order and peace in the society, where, as Duterte maintains, human rights and democratic governance allegedly failed ( Reyes 2019 , 111).

Who were the victims of the drug wars in the Philippines? The large majority of the victims were financially impoverished individuals living in slums. In a study conducted by two Philippine universities and the Stabile Center at Columbia University, 40 percent of the killings were conducted in the slums of Metro Manila (between May 2016 and September 2017), and the dead civilians were “typically tricycle drivers, construction workers, vendors, farmers, jeepney barkers, garbage collectors, or were unemployed” ( Coronel, Kalaw-Tirol, and Pimentel 2019 , 3). The official statistics from the Philippine National Police confirm that around 5,000 individuals were killed nationwide by state agents between 2016 until 2018 ( Ball et al. 2019 , 3). On June 2019, the Philippine police contradicted its own earlier pronouncements and asserted that 6,600 individual lives were killed by state agents in their anti-drug operations ( Maitem 2019 , 2). In addition, approximately 30,000 victims were killed using the “riding-in-tandem” tactic, which involves purportedly state-sanctioned two masked or hooded assassins riding in a motorcycle and widely suspected as state-sponsored agents ( Maitem 2019 , 3).

What was the political logic that underpinned the state violence-oriented approach to addressing illegal drugs? The most likely general explanation for the emergence of a state-initiated human rights crisis in the context of the war on drugs pertains to Rodrigo Duterte's attempt to bolster his political authority in two ways ( ABS-CBN News 2015 ; Coronel 2019 ). First, Duterte relies on the political support from those who believe that the problem of law and order in the country could only be fully resolved through the full reliance on state violence and disregard for democratic procedures and human rights commitments. Second, by reinforcing the coercive capacities of the military and the policy through the war on drugs, Duterte undermines the likelihood of a potential coup. Notably, forty-six retired high-ranking military and police officers were given ministerial posts (positions as Cabinet Secretaries) and other influential positions in various government agencies and government-owned corporations ( Gita 2019 ), thereby suggesting the administration's attempt to quell the potential of coup against Duterte's leadership. Duterte even vowed to hire more retired military officials into his administration for the remaining three years of his presidential term. Notably, the majority of these retired military and police officials came from Duterte's political bailiwick in southern Philippines. Moreover, the support of the upper- and middle-classes is crucial to the survival of the Duterte regime, particularly when such influential class groups could potentially consolidate their resources and influence in toppling an incumbent presidential administration. As the majority of the war on drugs’ victims came from extremely poor background, the Duterte regime wins the support of the elite and middle class by providing them a (albeit false) sense of security and safety ( David et al. 2018 ; Go and De Ungria 2019 ). Dismissive of the legitimacy of non-violent approaches, the war on drugs also aims to address poverty by killing poor people in a way that bolsters wealthy elites’ support for Duterte. Specifically, the police and state agents primarily implemented their killing operations in the financially poor slums of Metro Manila and other underdeveloped rural areas in the provinces, thereby targeting poor Filipinos ( Barrera 2017 ; Coronel, Kalaw-Tirol, and Pimentel 2019 ).

While the war on drugs constitutes Duterte's strategy for regime consolidation, what exactly were the political discourses and justifications that sought to justify such a violent strategy? In justifying the war on drugs, how did the Duterte administration and its allies construct notions of peace and human rights? The Duterte administration's discourses instrumentally claims that peace depends on the rule of law and the effective provision of basic security. Duterte claims that the war on drugs could generate peace, which is crucial for sustainable socio-economic development. In his 2017 State of the Nation Address (SONA), Duterte (2017 , 11) claimed that the “economy surges only when there is peace and order prevailing in places where investors can pour [in] their capital and expertise” and referred to his successes in the localized war on drugs in Davao City during his time as its City Mayor. In the same speech, he also maintained that the “fight against illegal drugs will continue because that is the root cause of so much evil and so much suffering [applause] that weakens the social fabric and deters foreign investments from pouring in. . .the fight will be unremitting as it will be unrelenting” ( Duterte 2017 , 12). In his 2019 SONA speech, Duterte (2019 , 47) maintains that: “developmental gains will not be felt by our people in the countryside if we cannot maintain law and order. . . “Yang peace and security, wala “yan. [peace and security are nothing]. . .we need to enforce the law.” (Duterte 2019). Yet, the inconsistency and ambivalence of Duterte's policy views are well-known. In the same SONA speech, Duterte (2019 , 65) claimed that he “will do [address the dispute] in the peaceful way, mindful of the fact that it is our national pride and territorial integrity that are at stake.” The remarkable difference between Duterte's policy approach on illegal drugs problem and the South China Sea dispute suggests inconsistency on the use of state violence. Walden Bello (2017 , 83) argues that the core objective was “not to win the war on drugs,” but “to promote a broader authoritarian agenda by establishing a climate of intimidation and fear that will make the destruction of democratic political institutions. . .and their remaking in an authoritarian direction a ‘walk in the park’”. Thus, the logic of the war on drugs also rests on Duterte's need for regime consolidation and his broader coalition of allies.

The foregoing analysis shows two strands of ideas concerning the Duterte administration's views on peace. On substantive content, peace refers to the scenario where the Philippine state exercises full control of marginalized groups, particularly the materially poor citizens, in a way that protects the interest of capital and wealth of the elites. In this way, peace refers to state security, which includes the consolidation of power of the ruling presidential administration and wealthy elite allies. Peace, in this view, does not include the freedom of the poor people from state violence, as they remain key targets of the war on drugs without any recourse to procedural justice and rehabilitative facilities, particularly for those suffering from narcotic drug addiction. In advancing such an elitist view of peace, the Duterte administration employs several tactics. First, it reorients the state apparatus as an instrument of violence not in the service of the state's human rights commitments to its citizens; rather, state violence exclusively reinforces the interest of incumbent presidential regime's consolidation of authority, while bolstering the interests of its ruling wealthy elites. Second, the state's discourses aim to dehumanize poor people, who were characterized as worthy of being killed in the interest of state security.

Located in the Andean region in South America, Colombia is one of the continent's enduring electoral democracies. Its population includes approximately 49 million people, as of the year 2018, and almost four times larger than the Philippines in terms of land area. While the Philippines is classified as a lower middle-income country, Colombia is much wealthier with a GDP per capita twice as large as the Philippines. For several decades, Colombian people have suffered amidst the enduring asymmetric war between the state, crime syndicates, and communist guerillas in a bid to consolidate their control over various parts of the Colombian territory. In deploying state violence against the armed communist rebels (FARC), the Colombian government employs state agents of the Colombian Armed Forces in order to kill and to eliminate non-state terror groups, including the armed communist rebels.

During the tenure of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe (2002 –2010), around 8,185 civilians and armed rebels were killed due to state-based violence ( Pettersson et al. 2019 ; Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2019 ). Considering the wide magnitude of state violence employed in Uribe's war on drugs, Colombia received immense foreign military aid and strong political support from the US government. That foreign support and the Uribe-led government's violence-focused policy strategy were crucial in the implementation of Colombia's war on drugs.

Historically, Colombians have been suffering from “high levels of organized violence,” but it was in the 1990s that a low-intensity conflict became more serious to the extent that scholars and policy analysts characterized the period as illustrative of a civil war ( Gray 2008 , 63). In 2002, Alvaro Uribe started his presidency and faced three key threats: “an 18,000-strong drug-financed insurgent group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known by its Spanish acronym, FARC); a 12,000-body paramilitary umbrella group, the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (AUC), also financed by drug money; and a dwindling leftist insurgency, the National Liberation Army (ELN)” ( Sweig 2002 , 2). Hence, the Uribe administration “inherited an appalling security situation: an intractable internal conflict, a civilian population threatened by illegal armed groups, and the continued collaboration of the military and police with paramilitaries who commit human rights abuses” ( Mason 2003 , 392). Whereas Duterte's drug war targeted drug users as they were the purported cause of the country's political and economic problems, the Uribe government intensified counterinsurgency operations against armed rebel groups for their alleged involvement in illegal drugs and for challenging the Colombian state's territorial sovereignty. Consequently, such state actions “significantly reduced the number of FARC combatants, and guerrillas were forced to retreat toward the border of the country” ( Civico 2016 , 11). Faced by the overall popularity of mano dura or tough-on-crime stance in Latin American politics ( Pereira and Ungar 2004 ; Wolf 2017 ), Alvaro Uribe generally maintained very high favorability ratings during his 8-year term (around 60–70 percent on average) ( Viera 2010 ). That high favorability rating dramatically dropped, as one national survey conducted in 2019 revealed that 69 percent of the total number of respondents expressed an unfavorable image of Uribe ( Redaccion W Radio 2019 ). Although he was “elected in a landslide by an electorate frustrated with the failures of peace talks” ( Civico 2016 , 11), Uribe's fall from grace emerged after his administration's human rights abuses and coercive methods to bring down political opponents gained traction in the public sphere ( Orozco 2019 ).

What were the material aspects of Colombia's war on drugs? With the support from the US government, the Uribe administration launched the local “war on drugs,” which refers to increased state repression of all forms of non-state violence, such as crime syndicates and armed communist rebels. This US-funded war on drugs is widely known as Plan Colombia. 7 From the Uribe administration's perspective, such non-state armed rebel groups and illegal drug syndicates have been involved in the use and proliferation of illegal narcotics as a way to finance their repressive activities so as to consolidate their control over Colombian territories.

Figure  3 illustrates the estimated number of civilian deaths resulting from the following types of armed encounters: (1) state-based violence, where state actors killed civilians; (2) non-state violence, where none of the parties is a state actor; (3) one-sided violence, where the attacks on civilians emerged amidst violence involving state and non-state actors. Despite the methodological limitations of data on state violence, the graph below suggests a pattern of increase in civilian deaths during the peak of the war on drugs, starting in 2002 until 2006. That pattern of violence demonstrates that the militaristic approach to the proliferation of illegal drugs exacerbated the severity of political conflict between the state and armed rebels, while also pervasively killing civilians in the process. As such, the revamped Plan Patriota (widely known as the second phase of Plan Colombia) facilitated the increase to 415,000 armed forces members in 2007 from mere 279,000 in 2000 ( Rosen 2014 , 56).

State-based violence in Colombia (1989–2017). Pettersson et al. (2019) .

Uribe's war on drugs received almost 8 billion USD worth of military and counterterror assistance from the US government over the course of a decade ( Bagley 2013 , 103). Around 80 percent of the US funds allocated for Plan Colombia were allocated for counternarcotics and counterterrorism, while a mere 20 percent was allocated for institutional development and non-militaristic policy areas such as judicial reforms, refugee assistance, human rights, and democracy promotion ( Frechette 2007 , 23). That budget strategy demonstrates “the greatest level of counterdrug cooperation ever achieved between the United States and Colombia” ( Frechette 2007 , 16), and in exchange, the Uribe administration made his country as the only South American ally in the Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq. For the Bush administration, the core objective was to curb the flow of illegal drugs into the United States and to stimulate peace, economic development, as well as Andean regional security ( Veillette 2005 , 1).

The Colombian Armed Forces was one of the largest institutional beneficiaries of the US-funded war on drugs, which aimed to bolster state capacities in repressing criminal drug syndicates to eliminate their supposedly illegal control of some territories. In addition, Uribe's war on drugs constituted the “the creation of a network of a million informants throughout the country, as well as part-time ‘peasant soldiers’”, who supported the Colombian military in its counterterror operations against armed rebel groups including drug syndicates ( Aviles 2006 , 405). Indeed, Uribe's US-funded war on drugs aimed for the “consolidation into power of a neoliberal state within Colombia, the role of transnational lobbying by US and Colombian policy-makers, as well as the influence of transnational corporations,” while also generating pervasive killings of civilians ( Aviles 2008 , 410). Thus, the role of the United States in Colombia's human rights crisis is undeniable, and as Tom Long (2015 , 213) notes, “later investigations have unearthed links between Uribe's administration and allies in Congress with paramilitary groups.” Consequently, a lot of financially impoverished Colombians died because of abusive state actions through the drug war. For instance, the “false positives” scandal in 2008 revealed that the Colombian army systematically recruited poor people from the slums and rural areas, promised them some payment or job, then murdered them, and presented their bodies in rebel uniforms. The Colombian armed forces, thereafter, presented those killed as evidence of the state's victory in the war on drugs, as they expected financial incentives for every dead rebel ( Eskauriatza 2017 ; Fellowship of Reconciliation and Colombia-Europe-U.S. Human Rights Observatory 2014 ).

With the subsequent shift of US foreign and domestic policies towards an overarching counterterror strategy, the Colombian government's fight against illegal drugs transformed from a narrow counternarcotics strategy to a full-blown militaristic approach in counterterrorism ( Regilme 2018c ; Rosen 2014 ). For Uribe, Plan Colombia aimed to bolster the state's repressive capabilities in ways that could severely debilitate, if not totally eradicate, drug traffickers and armed rebels. By launching a revamped military campaign against drug syndicates and armed rebel groups, the Colombian government aimed to eliminate “the war-making capacity of narco-traffickers, criminals, and terrorist groups and thereby reduces the level of violence, which enhances the prospects for peace” ( Hindustan Times 2005 , 33). Hence, the Uribe administration employed a militaristic approach to the problem of illegal drug proliferation, whereby the government argues that “strengthening its coercive powers is an essential step toward recuperating central government control and the rule of law” ( Mason 2003 , 401–402). This militaristic approach to illegal drugs constituted the dramatic increase in the manpower of the armed forces, the creation of mobile brigades, extension of the years of obligatory military service, acquisition of new military equipment, capacity-building in counterterrorism, and substantial reforms in the intelligence services ( Mason 2003 , 397).

Considering the severity of the illegal drug problem in Colombia amidst the global terror crisis due to the 9/11 attacks in the United States, “by 2002 many Colombians considered insecurity the country's greatest problem,” which motivated the Uribe government to make “insecurity as its principal project” and to legitimize its highly violent war on drugs through the discursive banner of “democratic security” ( Denissen 2010 , 331–332). Especially during its early years, Uribe's war on drugs had overwhelming support due to its perceived security gains in cities such as Medellin, which is known for its security problems generated by illegal drugs ( Arsenault 2014 ). As the war on drugs generated some sense of public security due to reduced drug production, Uribe in 2011 maintained that “Colombia is winning,” because cocaine production has been reduced from the usual average of 1000 tons per year to only 180 in 2010—a trend that suggests that “Colombia is in a very good part of decline” ( Wilkinson 2011 , 4).

In Colombia, we recognize the link between terrorist and extremist groups that challenge the security of the state and drug trafficking activities that help finance the operations of such groups. We are working to help Colombia defend its democratic institutions and defeat illegal armed groups of both the left and right by extending effective sovereignty over the entire national territory and provide basic security to the Colombian people.

The antithesis of democratic politics is terrorism. The terrorist uses violence to impose his will on others, at the expense of the lives of thousands of civilians. There can only be one response to terrorism: its defeat. Those who continue to engage in such criminal conduct will feel all the weight of the law. We Colombians will not give in to this threat. We will defeat it with the support of all citizens. The key concept here is solidarity. Solidarity between citizens and solidarity with the security forces. This principle, a pillar of our constitution, is essential for peaceful coexistence, for the successful integration of Colombian society. The massive show of support of the population in cooperating with the authorities has made clear the determination of Colombians to put an end to terrorism.

Uribe's war on drugs espouses a notion of peace that can only be achieved through state violence in order to protect the state from any terrorist attacks. During the presidential electoral campaigns in 2002, Uribe was the lone candidate who advocated for a militaristic approach to the drug problem, while his rivals such as Ingrid Betancourt ( Verde Oxigeno ), Noemi Sanin ( Si Colombia ), Luis Garzon ( Polo Democratico ), Horacio Serpa ( Partido Liberal ) supported political negotiations as the primary tool for achieving peace ( Echavarria 2010 , 103). In 2005, when asked about a non-militaristic approach that focuses on reconciliation with armed rebels, Uribe maintained that he “understand[s] the concern raised by offering alternative sentences for grave crimes, but in a context of 30,000 terrorists, it must be understood that a definitive peace is the best justice for a nation in which several generations have never lived a single day without the occurrence of a terrorist act” ( Posnanski 2005 , 719). For Uribe, peace would only emerge if the armed non-state rebels will be fully disarmed and surrendered to the Colombian state, and that objective could only be achieved through the effective deployment of violence. This strong commitment to state violence demonstrates the Uribe administration's refusal “to build a political and social agenda that would allow the structural problems that constitute the root causes of conflict to be dealt with in depth ” ( Llorente 2009 , 10).

Internally, we have achieved that the whole country, each and every one of the Colombians, commits itself to peace. Before it was thought that this was a problem only of the Government with the guerrillas. Today we are aware that it is a war that has been declared violent to society and that we are all those who have to work to stop it. … we Colombians have to be united, today more than ever, and we have to be ready to collaborate with the authorities and to report any suspicious behavior.

Forget the internal divisions and small conflicts and close ranks against violence. We are not going to let terrorism divide us in any way. On the contrary: We will demonstrate civil courage, reject the violent and defend our country! So we are already doing all Colombians, as it happened tonight when we all demonstrated, in a peaceful but forceful way, against the violence of the intolerant.

Every time a security policy to defeat terrorism appears in Colombia, when the terrorists begin to feel weak, they immediately send their spokespeople to talk about human rights…These human-rights traffickers must take off their masks, appear with their political ideas and drop this cowardice of hiding them behind human rights.

In the Colombia case, the Uribe administration instrumentalized the notion of peace as the supposed end goal of intensified state violence and the resulting human rights crisis. The Colombian government also used politically resonant concepts such as “democratic security” in selling a militaristic war on drugs as a panacea for the illegal drug problem.

The foregoing analysis provides a critical and comparative assessment of the political logics and discursive justifications of the war on drugs in the Philippines and Colombia. Both case studies demonstrate that peace was constructed from the perspective of state security, whereby state violence is deployed to eliminate all forms of non-state armed rebellion, and in some cases, peaceful political dissent, including human rights activists and government critics.

Accordingly, peace requires the state's monopoly of violence over all of its claimed territories, and the unwanted presence of armed non-state rebels, drug syndicates, and illegal drug users undermines the legitimacy of the state. Achieving peace, as the Philippine and Colombian discourses on wars on drugs indicate, needs the reinforcement of the state's coercive capacities in eliminating all forms of non-state armed rebellion and dissidence. With its full reliance on increased state coercion to combat illegal drug use and trafficking, the Colombian and Philippine governments publicly aspired for “negative peace,” which underscores the relative absence of non-state violence. That strategy, however, did not seriously address the structural socio-economic conditions that facilitated illegal drug trafficking and use, thereby discarding the importance of achieving “positive peace.” Rather than addressing the state's systemic failures to rectify material injustices and to uphold the dignity of individuals from marginalized groups, the Duterte and Uribe presidencies resorted to a violent and simplistic policy strategy of absolutizing their war on drugs as the only pathway to peace. Indeed, people from economically impoverished background constitute a substantial, if not the majority, of all the civilian deaths recorded in the Philippines and Colombia ( Wood 2009 ; BBC 2015 ; Eskauriatza 2017 ; David et al. 2018 ; Coronel, Kalaw-Tirol, and Pimentel 2019 ).

Indeed, the Colombian and Philippine case studies demonstrate the importance of two out of the four key strands of liberal peace, as described by Richmond (2006) : (1) victor's peace, which underscores military victory and the supposed stability of peace through domination of the winning party in a war, and (2) constitutional peace, which highlights the stability of the political order through the rule of law. Thus, both the Uribe and Duterte administrations relied on military victory through widespread extrajudicial killings of civilians purportedly linked to illegal drugs as the supposed effective way of reinforcing state security, at the expense of human security. By publicly castigating and dehumanizing civilians allegedly involved in illegal drugs, both administrations rendered those civilians as state enemies, who pose existential threat to the political order and rule of law. In the Colombian and Philippine drug wars, the governments offered a grim diagnosis of the problem of illegal drugs, asserted the exceptional nature of the threat, upheld that intensified state violence was the only effective policy solution, and quelled human rights activists and critics.

Notwithstanding the notable similarities in the Philippine and Colombian discourses on peace, the two case studies differ on several notable areas. Uribe justified that peace, human rights, and democracy were the end goals of state violence, whereas Duterte demonstrated a more ambivalent attitude towards human rights and instrumentalized the discourse of the “rule of law” and peace as justificatory objectives for the widespread state killings of civilians. In the Philippine case, the Duterte administration instrumentalized the illegal drugs problem as a diversionary cover for the highly entrenched socio-economic causes of crime, illegal drug use, and other forms of social deviance. In doing so, Duterte ordered the intensification of state violence as prelude for the consolidation of his power, destruction of democratic checks and balances, and personal enrichment of personal friends and allies. In the Colombian case, however, the Uribe administration signaled a much stronger discursive commitment to the promotion of liberal democracy in ways that were remarkably different from Duterte's revulsion at peaceful political dissent. In addition, the role of great powers in domestic violence in the Global South should not be underestimated. In Colombia, the Bush-led US government provided political and financial support in ways that expanded the coercive operations of the military and police. In the Philippines, the Chinese government vowed to defend Duterte's war on drugs in the United Nations, while the Duterte administration has undermined decades-old strong bilateral ties of Manila with Washington. 8

The analysis herein has several scholarly and policy implications and contributions. In terms of theory, I show that political actors use the term of peace as a discursive tool that seeks to legitimize their policy actions. For further research, a more systematic investigation of how state leaders and non-state actors construct peace in the public sphere, particularly in terms of their substantive similarities and differences. In policy terms, the comparative study of Colombia and the Philippines suggests that militaristic approaches to the proliferation of illegal drugs facilitates several unwanted consequences, such as engendering a human rights crisis, curtailment of institutional checks against potential abuses of the chief government executive, and the unnecessary empowerment of the state's coercive apparatus without morally conscientious and democratic civilian control. As shown by the case of Portugal, state investments on public health infrastructures, education, and other instruments that improve socio-economic mobility amongst the poor people are likely to undermine use of addictive narcotics without sacrificing human rights ( Domoslawski 2011 ). For that reason, former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria (1990–1994), in an opinion piece in The New York Times , warned Duterte about the failures of the war: “but extrajudicial killings and vigilantism are the wrong ways to go. . .the fight against drugs has to be balanced so that it does not infringe on the rights and well-being of citizens” ( Gaviria 2017 , 9). Indeed, peace represents the society's existential search for utopia—a condition where its institutions consistently respect the dignity and inherent value of every natural human person within its territory. Notwithstanding its variations across the globe, the war on drugs has shown that its supporters failed to realize that the state's quintessential responsibility constitutes, at the very least, respect for the physical integrity of natural persons rather than the self-serving quests of its leaders for consolidating their authority for power's sake.

The research for this article benefitted from the 2019 sabbatical leave grant provided by the Institute for History at Leiden University. An earlier version of this article was presented in the Varieties of Peace Asia Conference in Jakarta, Indonesia. I thank the organisers and participants of that conference, especially Elisabeth Olivius and Malin Akebo for their thoughtful written feedback. I am grateful to the journal editors and the peer reviewers for their time as well as insightful and constructive suggestions.

For a comprehensive analytic review on various notions of peace, refer to Richmond (2006) : victor's peace, institutional peace, constitutional peace, and civil peace. To a substantial extent those four peace concepts underscore the material–structural conditions of peace, but they do not highlight the dynamics of peace as a discursive tool of justification and political mobilization.

It is analytically difficult to ascertain whether Uribe and Duterte only pay lip service to peace. The empirical evidence, however, shows that peace became a principal theme in their public speeches. Before their presidential tenure, both politicians depended upon violence in order to promote stability. As an ex-provincial governor, Uribe strongly supported a national scheme that commissioned civilians in gathering intelligence in support of security services. That program was known as CONVIVIR, which was strongly criticized for its human rights abuses ( Human Rights Watch 1998 ). Similarly, Duterte's long career as a city mayor witnessed his support for state-sanctioned “death squads” (known as Davao Death Squad) that are known for extrajudicial killings of civilians (mostly poor people and alleged criminals) in Davao City. Kusaka (2017a , 49) describes Duterte's politics as demonstrative of “the coexistence of compassion and violence under a patriarchal boss who maintains justice outside of the law.”

I have chosen the Uribe administration (rather than the current Duque presidency that only started in August 2018) because of its relatively longer duration of service, which provides large range of empirical information on the war on drugs and the human rights abuses during that time.

Although I compare two cases of “national” war on drugs, my analysis seeks to avoid a “methodological nationalist” bias that has dominated mainstream security studies in two ways: (1) by raising the possibility that a militaristic approach has increasingly became a more common practice, thereby demonstrating a sort of global diffusion of normative attitudes towards illegal drugs, and (2) by highlighting how war on drugs-oriented patterns of discourses, material resources, and concrete political actions can be observed in distinctive political spaces (e.g., Latin America and Southeast Asia). For further theoretical discussion on space and global security, refer to Adamson (2016) .

So much of the insightful and rich empirical literature on the contemporary Colombian and Philippine war on drugs employ a methodologically-nationalist approach and intra-regional comparative approach rather than a cross-regional comparative outlook. For the Colombian case, see Bagley (1991) , Thoumi (1995) , Tickner (2003) , Arnson and Tickner (2010) , Holmes et al. (2010) , Rosen (2014) , Tate (2015) and Regilme (2018c) . For the Philippine case, see Thompson (2016) , Simangan (2017) , and Gallagher et al. (2020) among many others. The Colombian war on drugs, however, has been analyzed using an intra-regional comparison, as shown by the study of Borda (2009) . Notably, Walch's study (2016) is perhaps the only piece that compares the two countries, particularly on the determinants of success of the peace negotiations therein.

For example, Duterte's allies alleged that Senator Leila de Lima, who remains to be the most prominent critic of Duterte's human rights abuses, as directly linked to illegal drug trafficking. Since 2017, De Lima remains in prison on the basis of drug trafficking charges amidst the very slow processing of court trials, while many local and international human rights organizations consider her as a “prisoner of conscience.” In January 2020, the US federal government, through the initiatives of the US Congress, has mandated the State Department to impose sanctions and travel bans to individuals and government officials who are directly involved in the political imprisonment of De Lima. This US initiative was part of the US Global Magnitsky Act ( Buan 2020 ).

For a comprehensive analysis of Plan Colombia, refer to Rosen (2014) . Plan Colombia consists of the Plan Patriota , which was the defense plan by the Uribe-led government that also enjoyed the support of the US government. The Plan Patriota consists of the Democratic Security and Defense Policy doctrines, which sought to gain control of the territories occupied by armed rebel groups such as the FARC and the ELN.

During his time as city mayor, Duterte closely cooperated with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (2001–2010) and her US-supported war on terror in the Philippines. Davao became a “laboratory for a counterinsurgency strategy involving arming civilians, many of them recruited from the city's criminal underworld, and setting them loose in poor communities where the insurgents still enjoyed strong support” ( Coronel 2016 , 13). See also Regilme (2015 , 135–139) for the links between Duterte, Arroyo, and the US counterterror operations in the Philippines.

ABS-CBN News . 2015 . “ Duterte: A Leader Must Be a Terror to Evil People .” ABS-CBN News . https://news.abs-cbn.com/nation/regions/05/20/15/duterte-leader-must-be-terror-evil-people .

Adamson Fiona B. 2016 . “ Spaces of Global Security: Beyond Methodological Nationalism .” Journal of Global Security Studies 1 ( 1 ): 19 – 35

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