Approaches Towards Drugs: An Evidence-Based Synthesis of Strategies and Their Promises for Addressing the Philippines’ Drug Problems

• In Event: Governing through Crime: Challenges and Implications of the Philippine Drug War

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of practices and policies of several countries and explores the applicability of these practices to the Philippines in its efforts towards addressing its problems with drugs. Using the structural analysis approach, the paper examines strategies that other countries implemented to address their drug problems. It explores the whole spectrum of approaches to drug problems that include legalization, decriminalization, medicalization, and criminalization. The paper presents the successes as well as the challenges for the strategies that the countries have implemented. Later, using the diffusion-of-innovation approach, the paper explores the viabilities of these different strategies in the Philippines. The paper hopes to unravel the structural and/or other conditions that would enable the Philippines to implement these strategies based on the desired outcomes. Policy recommendations will be proposed.

Author

• Melchor De Guzman, Georgia Gwinnett College