Could Duterte take a leaf out of Thailand's drugs playbook?

http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/asia/2016/09/duterte-leaf-thailand-drugs-playbook-160918092613446.html
Robert Tomaszewski

Thailand's Justice Minister General Paiboon Koomchaya is vocalizing his view that the drug policy should be focusing on drug abuse as a health issue rather than as a crime. In the Phillipines vigilantes and Police combined are estimated to have killed over 3,000 people, in its war on drugs. Thailand has been through a similar drug purge with a body count of 2800 people and 321,347 prisoners. In an investigation it was questioned whether as many as half of those killed in Thailand even had connections to drugs. In Thailand the public is still in favor of the war on drugs, which means that a proposal such as treating drug abuse as a health issue might be too progressive for the population. With vigilantes in the Phillipines participating in the killings, this could  be the case there too.