Rodrigo Duterte won the 2016 Philippine presidential election on 9 May 2016 promising to kill tens of thousands of criminals and urging people to kill drug addicts. As Mayor of Davao City, he was criticised by groups like Human Rights Watch for the extrajudicial killings of hundreds of street children, petty criminals and drug users carried out by the Davao Death Squad, a vigilante group with which he was allegedly involved. Duterte has alternately confirmed and denied his involvement in the alleged Davao Death Squad killings.
Philippine anti-narcotic officials have admitted that Duterte used flawed and exaggerated data to support his claim that the Philippines is becoming a "narco-state". The Philippines has a low prevalence rate of drug users compared to the global average, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Duterte claims that data from the Philippines Drug Enforcement Agency shows that there were 3 million drug addicts 2-3 years ago, which he said may have increased to 3.7 million. However, according to the Philippines Dangerous Drugs Board, the government drug policy-making body, 1.8 million Filipinos used illegal drugs (mostly marijuana) in 2015, the latest official survey published; a third of them had used illegal drugs only once in the past 13 months.
Police campaign components
According to official police documentation, Campaign Plan Project: "Double Barrel" that has two-pronged approach, Lower Barrel approach under Project Tokhang or the famously known Oplan Tokhang, and Upper Barrel approach under Project High Value Targets (HVT) that focuses on relatively more prominent drug personalities including politicians, police and military personnel and other government employees.
