PRESIDENT Rodrigo R. Duterte’s deadly war on drugs has failed, with authorities having seized only 1% of the contraband since he assumed office almost four years ago, according to the country’s opposition leader.

Mr. Duterte focused on “street-level enforcement by going after drug pushers and users,” Vice President Maria Leonor G. Robredo said at a briefing streamed on Facebook on Monday. “Even if you do this daily without addressing the supply constriction, the problem won’t end,” she added.

Ms. Robredo’s criticisms formed part of her report on the government’s anti-drug drive that she briefly headed as Mr. Duterte’s drug czar.

Mr. Duterte put Ms. Robredo in charge of his campaign against illegal drugs in November, only to fire her weeks later because he said he didn’t trust her.

The presidential palace dismissed the findings. “Her claims are false,” presidential spokesman Salvador S. Panelo told a briefing in Filipino.

He said police have dismantled a number of illegal drug factories and caused the surrender of thousands of drug addicts and pushers.

Mr. Panelo also cited “casualties” in police entrapment operations, as well as the arrest of some suspects including so-called high-value targets. “These are the facts.”

Philippine police have said they have killed about 6,000 people in illegal drug raids, many of them resisting arrest. Some local nongovernmental organizations and the national Commission on Human Rights have placed the death toll at more than 27,000.

Mr. Panelo said the opposition leader had failed to take into account the thousands of families destroyed by illegal narcotics.

Still, Malacañang is leaving it to the police and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency to reconcile drug data inconsistencies that Ms. Robredo had cited in her report.

Ms. Robredo cited police data showing thousands of kilos of crystal meth or shabu worth P25 billion being traded weekly. But PDEA data showed that only about 1,000 kilos of illegal narcotics were seized in the entire 2019.

“I’d rather wait for the PDEA and those involved to respond to that,” Mr. Panelo said.

He said Ms. Robredo was Mr. Duterte’s drug czar for only 19 days, adding that the people sitting on the Dangerous Drugs Board and PDEA should know better. “It’s the experts who should give these recommendations.”

Ms. Robredo last year said she had agreed to head the Duterte administration’s anti-illegal drug campaign, if only to stop the killings.

She accepted the post against the advice of many of her party mates, who said the appointment might be a trap.

Most Filipinos support Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs despite criticisms by the international community, according to a Social Weather Stations poll. — Genshen L. Espedido and Gillian M. Cortez

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