Drug addiction destroys whole families as well as the addicts themselves. A complete moral collapse is produced by the craving for a new fix. Addicts will lie and steal from their own friends and relatives to support their habit. And of course their muggings and petty thefts disfigure city streets and shops.

Every decent person must feel disgust and anger at the whole illegal narcotic trade. This business of death starts with the farmers in South America, Afghanistan and Pakistan who are encouraged or forced to grow the cocaine-producing coca plant or the opium poppy from which heroin and morphine are made. Drugs barons from the Mafia to the Taliban organize the collection and processing of the crops then ship them around the world to a pyramid network of dealers that ends with street-level peddlers.

With the possible exception of the original growers, at every step of this hateful trade significant profits are made. Where there is money, there is crime and where there is crime there is misery.

However, murder is also a crime, no matter who commits it. The question is can two wrongs make a right? In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has no doubt that they can. Since he launched his war on drugs last year, thousands of alleged drug dealers and addicts have been gunned down by the police and by vigilante groups. But nobody has been arrested for murder as a result of these killings. And there are no official figures for the number of drug suspects who have perished.

Between January and March this year, following credible allegations that some police officers had been using the extrajudicial execution campaign to extort money from major dealers, the killings by law officers stopped. The vigilantes, however, carried on and after the three-month lull, the police resumed their murders.

This week has seen the largest number of extrajudicial killings. In just 24 hours, 32 suspects were shot dead and more than a hundred arrested in Bulacan province north of Manila. A police spokesman said that all those who died had been armed and had resisted arrest. On past evidence, including footage that has shown police gunning down unarmed suspects, this is unlikely to be completely true.

Nevertheless, there can be no doubting the popularity of Duterte’s no-nonsense war on drugs. Petty crime, such as once prevalent bag-snatching, has dropped dramatically. There has also been a significant decrease in muggings and robberies. The frequent response from ordinary Filipinos is that they feel safer. They are looking forward to the day when addiction-fueled crime disappears entirely.

If that desirable day ever comes, it must be wondered at what price it will have been achieved. The plain fact is that every society is kept safe by its police, who have to uphold the law, which applies to them as much as all other citizens. If law officers have been given official sanction to commit murder, then what is likely to be their attitude to the observation and enforcement of the law against any other crime? Duterte’s campaign against drug use may have short-term successes but the long-term cost is surely the corrosion of the laws and values by which the police should be governed.