For our Theory of Knowledge presentation, we decided to choose the Philippine war on drugs

as our real-life situation. Despite having extreme policies where in some cases even killing of drug
abusers is either legal or overlooked, the majority of the population support this law. Another reason
why we decided to pick this, is because the problems that the Philippines are facing are to some extent
global. What makes this problem unique is their unique approach to the drug epidemic, thus we will
learn a lot about their ways of solving the problem, and how affective it is.

Our Knowledge question is “how can reason be used to justify lack of ethics in decision-
making”. By asking this question we will explore if the ends justify the means. Is violating human
rights the right and most effective way to achieve results? This will be done through history as an area
of knowledge, since we will also be looking up past situations in other countries to compare, like
Portugal. We will also use ethics as an area of knowledge to see to what extent ethics was disregarded
in this gruesome war on drugs. (need include reason and emotion ways of knowing)

Another way of looking into it can be seen from the supporters of the drug war - they argue
that the collective opinions of drug users and sellers do not matter since they do not work, pay taxes,
and only solicit illegal activities in their communities. This dehumanizing of drug abusers allows the
seemingly brutal policies of the drug war. Policemen are able to kill suspects related to drugs without a
trial, and are entirely justified by the government. This added to the fact that the murders of alleged
drug abusers by assassins are not investigated, results in a country where the poor are always at risk of
being murdered in cold-blood. On the other hand, due to these polices, the illegal transfer of drugs into
Philippines fell by up to 90 percent. Furthermore, fearing the consequences of those polices a lot of
drug addicts turned themselves in to police, where they received a proper trial, and only a select few
even received rehabilitation treatment. The justification to this law is that while the law is in place, it
prevents future generations from becoming addicts.

However, the war, which disregards most ethics, has its flaws. Firstly, the fact that policemen
can kill civilians without a trial, coupled with another fact that police is highly corrupt, has a result
were there are even cases where policemen kill innocent people, and then plant drugs and guns as
evidence. Secondly, Duterte has encouraged members of the public to kill drug addicts and criminals,
which have made it easier for militaristic gangs to take action themselves, endangering the lives of
civilians. What is more is that this war is only treating the symptoms of the problem, that is the number
of drug addicts, but not the real problem, that is why were there so many drug addicts in the first place.
So real problems such as poverty, lack of clean water and other poor living conditions are not
addressed. Which also means that when the drug war is over, everything will be the same as it was
before.

To sum up, while it may be easier to disregard lack of ethics, those decisions usually bring only short-
term rewards while not solving the real problem. And so many innocent people suffered too because of
the trade war, fearing both the police, as well as gangs.

In conclusion, these questions do not come about from nowhere. Before the drug war Philippine had
already deep problems within its country, and the ones who were affected most by the drug cartels
were the ones of the poorer class. Out of constant struggle and corruption from the government came
about radical ideas, which were fulfilled by Duterte. His declared war on drugs had very little ethics
and constraint, which, of course, were justified not only by him, but by, almost, the entire country.
However when dealing with humans, that are imherintly social creatures, and human problems ethics is
not something that is not possible to avoid. Thus, even if seperately bringing positive outcomes, at least
involving real people reason cannot fully justify lack of ethics