THERE IS A stubborn myth that refuses to die, even as its chief architect now sits in a courtroom in The Hague. It is the myth that drugs create monsters. That methamphetamine automatically turns men into rabid beasts. That heroin produces natural predators. That addiction is a chemical alchemy that strips away humanity and replaces it with violence.
It is a powerful story. It is also largely untrue.
In the catechism of the drug war, the logic is simple: addicts kill, rape, rob. Therefore, killing them is self-defense. Eliminate the source before the harm occurs. It is better, the argument goes, to shoot first than to mourn later. It is an argument that hits the gut before it reaches the head. And because it hits the gut, it wins applause.
But science, inconvenient as it is, refuses to cooperate with this narrative.
Take amphetamines. Methamphetamine or known commonly as shabu is the favorite villain in our moral theater. It is the drug most often invoked when someone says, “Adik ’yan, delikado ’yan.” Amphetamines are stimulants. They increase dopamine and norepinephrine. They heighten alertness, reduce appetite, and in high doses—especially with prolonged sleep deprivation—can produce paranoia or psychosis. Tamang praning.
Yes, in certain extreme conditions, stimulant intoxication can increase agitation. But to leap from that to “all shabu users are violent” is like saying all caffeine drinkers are berserk because coffee stimulates the brain. The pharmacology shows increased arousal, not a guaranteed descent into murder. Violence, when it occurs, is usually entangled with other factors: prior trauma, gang involvement, access to weapons, a history of aggression, a social environment soaked in conflict.
The drug does not create a killer out of thin air. It may amplify what is already there.
SEDATION, NOT AGGRESSION
Now consider opioids—heroin, morphine, fentanyl. These are depressants. They slow breathing, reduce physical energy, induce drowsiness. The stereotypical opioid user is not sprinting through the streets in a homicidal frenzy. He is often barely able to keep his eyes open. The pharmacological profile is sedation, not aggression.
Violence associated with opioids tends to fall into two categories: theft to finance addiction, or disputes within the illegal market. That is economic and systemic violence, not chemical transformation into a predator. The substance itself does not biologically prime the user to attack strangers. If anything, it suppresses arousal.
And yet, in the public imagination during the height of the drug war, the “adik” was a ticking bomb. A subhuman entity waiting to explode into violence. The narrative flattened pharmacology into caricature. It erased nuance. It erased context. It erased humanity.
CLEARER FRAMEWORK
Criminology has long offered a clearer framework. Paul Goldstein identified three types of drug-related violence: psychopharmacological, economic-compulsive, and systemic. The first refers to violence directly caused by the drug’s effects. The second refers to crimes committed to finance addiction. The third refers to violence inherent in illegal drug markets.
Drug war rhetoric fixated almost exclusively on the first. It treated psychopharmacological violence as universal and inevitable. But research consistently shows that much drug-related violence—particularly in prohibitionist regimes—comes from systemic factors: militarized enforcement. In other words, violence emerges not only from drugs but from the war against them.
Which leads to an uncomfortable question.
How much of the blood spilled in the Philippines from 2016 to 2022 was the result of pharmacology—and how much was the result of policy?
PREEMTIVE SALVATION
Now that the trial of former President Rodrigo Duterte has begun at the International Criminal Court, the old arguments are being polished and paraded again. Supporters insist the killings were necessary. They claim the addicts were bound to kill anyway. They speak as if elimination was preemptive salvation.
But if the pharmacology does not support the inevitability of violence, then what remains of the justification?
We must be honest about risk. Some substances can increase impulsivity under certain conditions. Some individuals with severe stimulant-induced psychosis may become dangerous. But risk is conditional. It is probabilistic, not deterministic. It does not license execution.
Public safety policy is supposed to be built on evidence, not fear. On patterns, not anecdotes. On data, not demonology.
A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE
When addiction is treated as a public health issue—through treatment, harm reduction, rehabilitation—overdoses decline, incarceration declines, and communities stabilize. When addiction is treated as a war, violence mutates. Markets go underground. Police powers expand. Accountability shrinks. The line between law enforcement and lawlessness blurs.
And then something insidious happens. The violence of the state becomes invisible, while the imagined violence of the addict becomes exaggerated.
It is easier to fear the man nodding off in an alley than to scrutinize the machinery of impunity. It is easier to shout “vermin” than to ask for peer-reviewed evidence. It is easier to cheer a strongman than to build institutions.
The myth that drugs automatically create monsters is comforting. It simplifies a complex social problem into a villain you can shoot. It converts structural failure into individual evil. It transforms policy debate into moral crusade.
But pharmacology refuses to cooperate. Amphetamines stimulate. Opioids depress. None of them biologically predetermine murder.
What transforms citizens into executioners is not chemistry. It is ideology.