Philippines eradication campaigns (2026)
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Philippines eradication campaigns (2026) covers cannabis eradication reporting from the Philippines during 2026. State enforcement activity rose sharply from the previous year. In the first six weeks of 2026, the Police Regional Office Cordillera Administrative Region (PRO CAR) reported destroying cannabis valued at approximately ₱364 million, nearly triple the ₱123 million destroyed in the same window of 2025.[1] PRO CAR director Brig. Gen. Ericson Dilag attributed the increase primarily to aerial surveillance following the deployment of the SQUADRONE drone unit in late 2025.[1] In February alone, Police Regional Office 1 (PRO 1) reported ₱88 million in cannabis eradicated across 191 operations, putting the Ilocos Region alongside the Cordillera as a main theatre.[2] Reporting clusters in the northern Luzon highland cultivation belt spanning Benguet, Kalinga, Mountain Province, Ilocos Sur and Nueva Vizcaya, with secondary theatres in Sulu (Army-led operations), Cebu and Caraga. Cultivator arrests run far behind plant destruction across every theatre.
Map
Background
2026 Philippine cannabis eradication reporting inherits an operational framework assembled across 2025, centred on PRO CAR and the Cordillera Inter-agency Committee on Anti-illegal Drugs (ICAD). Three elements of that framework shape how 2026 coverage reads: a PRO CAR leadership transition, the deployment of dedicated aerial surveillance capacity, and a set of named eradication programmes briefed at the mid-2025 ICAD meeting.
PRO CAR leadership transition. PRO CAR's regional directorship transitioned from Brig. Gen. David Peredo Jr. to Brig. Gen. Ericson Dilag between mid-2025 and February 2026. Peredo's leadership was attested in Cordillera enforcement reporting through at least July 2025;citation needed Dilag held the post at the 20 February 2026 press briefings.[3][1]
SQUADRONE drone unit. In the fourth quarter of 2025, PRO CAR deployed a 49-operator drone unit designated the Smart Quadrotor Unit for Advanced Deployment, Detection, Reconnaissance, Observation and Networked Enforcement (SQUADRONE). The unit provides aerial surveillance for cultivation-site identification across CAR's mountainous terrain. According to Dilag, the deployment accounts for most of the year-on-year increase in seizure values reported for early 2026.[1]
Named eradication programmes. A 1 July 2025 briefing by the Cordillera ICAD named four then-active PRO CAR programmes, most of which continue to underlie 2026 reporting:[4]
- Oplan Binnadang Gabot (Benguet PPO): year-long programme across Kibungan, Kapangan and Bakun. Named for the Cordilleran cooperative-labour concept binnadang. Operationally continuous with Oplan Ultimate Grasscutter, which succeeded it in February 2026 and is described in the CAR regional summary below.
- Oplan Marso (Benguet PPO): March-only, dry-season aerial-and-ground surveillance programme. Underlies the annual March spike in CAR reporting.
- Oplan Charlie Weed (Kalinga PPO): year-round surveillance and eradication focused on Tinglayan and other remote barangays.
- Oplan Ganja 2 (Kalinga PPO): rapid land-navigation entry tactic.
These four programmes and the ICAD briefing are detailed on the Philippines eradication campaigns (2025) hub.
Regional summaries
Luzon — Cordillera Administrative Region
The Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) is the most heavily reported area of Philippine cannabis eradication activity in 2026. Operations are concentrated in Benguet and Kalinga, with additional reporting from Mountain Province and Baguio City. Reporting typically takes the form of weekly roll-ups issued by PRO CAR in La Trinidad. Individual operations often surface only at aggregate level.
Sites in the region are small and scattered, usually at elevations requiring several hours of foot access. Dilag, in the 20 February 2026 briefing, described the plots as covered by foliage rather than "plantation na ekta-ektarya" (hectares-wide plantations) and attributed low arrest rates to the persistence of growers and the six-to-eight-hour hikes needed to reach them.[3] At the same briefing, Dilag framed the trade as syndicate-driven, with outside financiers providing capital and purchasing processed output converted to brick or tubular form for transport via exit routes at the tri-boundary of La Union, Ilocos and Benguet. Wholesale prices were given as approximately ₱10,000 per kilogram in the region, rising to ₱25,000 per kilogram in other parts of the country.[3]
In February 2026, the Benguet Provincial Police Office launched Oplan Ultimate Grasscutter, a Benguet-specific programme pairing eradication ("hard approach") with community engagement and livelihood interventions ("soft approach"). Initial implementation targets five barangays across Bakun, Kapangan and Kibungan. Provincial director Col. Lambert Suerte has signalled possible future charges against barangay officials in areas repeatedly subject to eradication.[5] Ultimate Grasscutter is operationally continuous with the 2025-era Oplan Binnadang Gabot described in the Background section above: same provinces, same year-long structure, same multisectoral framing. Early April 2026 operations under the programme destroyed 6,300 plants across 11 sites in Bakun, Kapangan and Kibungan.[6]
Across 2026 CAR reporting, plant destruction runs far ahead of cultivator arrest. Dilag reported only five cultivation or transport arrests across PRO CAR's prior year of operations,[3] and the 33 eradication operations conducted from 9 to 15 March 2026 yielded no arrests from the eradication component itself.[7] Tinglayan municipality in southern Kalinga (particularly barangay Loccong and the boundary with Sadanga, Mountain Province) has appeared most often in 2026 CAR reporting, with 159,100 plants destroyed in 20 Tinglayan operations over the 2025–2026 holiday season alone.[8]
CAR cultivation is continuous across administrative boundaries with adjacent highland provinces. The Sugpon, Ilocos Sur / Kibungan, Benguet boundary zone (Barangays Licungan and Tacadang) has been repeatedly targeted in joint operations through 2026 and is covered in the Region I section below.[9] Similar continuity extends eastward into Nueva Vizcaya via the Carao highland corridor.
Luzon — Region I (Ilocos)
Police Regional Office 1 reported 191 anti-illegal drug operations across the Ilocos region in February 2026, with cannabis eradication accounting for ₱88 million of a ₱94.2 million total. The bulk of operations were in Pangasinan and Ilocos Sur.[2] Region I reporting is dominated by sustained activity in Sugpon, Ilocos Sur, particularly Barangay Licungan, which sits on a long-disputed boundary with Barangay Tacadang in Kibungan, Benguet. Operations in this boundary zone have repeatedly destroyed substantial cultivation, with material returning between operations.[9]
Region I cultivation is continuous with CAR cultivation across the Amburayan watershed and adjacent highland terrain, and cultivators appear to use the Sugpon–Kibungan boundary to shift across jurisdictions when one side's enforcement arrives.[9] PDEA Region 1 is a major operational lead alongside the Ilocos Sur Provincial Police Office. Regional Director leadership transitioned from Atty. Benjamin Gaspi (active January 2026) to Julius Paredes (active March 2026).citation needed
Luzon — Cagayan Valley
In 2026, reporting surfaced a distinct cultivation cluster outside CAR, in the adjacent Cagayan Valley region (Region II). The focus to date has been Barangay Kimbutan, Dupax del Sur, Nueva Vizcaya, where two operations within one week destroyed cannabis reported at a combined ₱32.9 million.[10]
State reporting describes Kimbutan cultivation differently from CAR cultivation. Dupax del Sur police chief Maj. Anthony Ayungo described sites in the barangay as showing "systematic and methodical planting" with fertilizer use and a "well-developed water system" for irrigation. The initial 17 March 2026 site (a 1,200-square-metre plot with 10,311 plants in Sitio Gunot) was accessed only after an approximately four-hour mountain trek.[11] The language of infrastructure and organisation recurs across reporting on Kimbutan, contrasting with CAR's dispersed-hidden-plot framing.
Dupax del Sur has been culturally and geographically connected to Benguet since the eighteenth century, with Carao settlers from Benguet among the earliest tribal inhabitants alongside the Isinai.citation needed Current reporting does not establish whether the Kimbutan cultivation is an extension of CAR patterns, a distinct tradition or externally introduced.
Visayas — Cebu
Visayan cannabis enforcement reporting in 2026 is limited to a single operation at Barangay Sohoton, Badian, Cebu on 8 April 2026, in which approximately 400 plants were uprooted and burned. The operation was joint across Badian Municipal Police Station, Dalaguete Municipal Police Station, Regional Intelligence Division 7 and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency. The alleged cultivator, a 45-year-old farmer from neighbouring Barangay Manlapay in Dalaguete, was already in police custody on a separate offence at the time of the raid.[12] The scale is an order of magnitude smaller than northern Luzon or Sulu operations.
Mindanao — Sulu
Sulu reporting in 2026 is concentrated on Kalingalan Caluang municipality, specifically the adjacent barangays of Masjid Punjungan and Pitogo, with two major operations to date: 12 February 2026 (21,200 plants, ₱18.2 million)[13] and 3 March 2026 (11,500 plants across two plots totalling 3,000 square metres, ₱10.35 million).[14]
Sulu reporting differs structurally from northern Luzon reporting. Operations are led by the Philippine Army's 1102nd Infantry Brigade (Brig. Gen. Alaric Avelino Delos Santos) under the 11th Infantry Division (Maj. Gen. Leonardo Peña), not by police, with PDEA Region 9, Marines, Special Action Force units and provincial police participating. The 12 February raid also recovered six high-powered firearms from a makeshift shelter on the farm (four M-16 rifles, one M-14 and a Garand), implying armed protection of the cultivation.[13] The alleged cultivator, identified only as "Mods," and his associates evaded arrest at both operations and remained at large. Delos Santos characterised the plantations as evidence of an "organized and well-established illegal cultivation operation," a framing applied consistently across both ops.[13]
Current reporting does not settle whether Sulu cannabis cultivation is genuinely distinct (larger-scale, organised, armed, externally managed) or whether the framing reflects the militarised security posture of Philippine state operations in the Sulu Archipelago more broadly.
Mindanao — Caraga
A 17 April 2026 operation by the Agusan del Sur Police Provincial Office at Sitio Bagtok, Barangay Kasapa 1, Loreto destroyed 11,000 mature cannabis plants and 300 seedlings across an approximately 15,000-square-metre site.[15] The site is roughly an order of magnitude larger than typical CAR plots and at lower planting density (~0.75 plants/sqm vs. CAR's ~4 plants/sqm). The pattern looks closer to traditional Philippine upland swidden (kaingin) agriculture than to the intensive terraced smallholder cultivation of Cordillera.citation needed ADSPPO Director Col. Yahya Bustamante Yusup framed the alleged cultivator (identified only by alias "Gusion") as a "local farmer," a lighter rhetorical register than the syndicate framing of Cordillera reporting or the organised-cultivation framing of Sulu and Nueva Vizcaya.[15] This is the first 2026 reporting from mainland Mindanao outside the Sulu archipelago.
Timeline
Agencies
- Philippine National Police (PNP)
- Primary agency in CAR, Region I, Cagayan Valley, Visayas and Caraga reporting. Relevant sub-units include the Police Regional Office Cordillera Administrative Region (PRO CAR; under Regional Director Brig. Gen. Ericson Dilag), Police Regional Office 1 (PRO 1; under Regional Director Brig. Gen. Dindo Reyes), the Benguet Provincial Police Office (under Col. Lambert Suerte), the Kalinga Provincial Police Office, the Ilocos Sur Provincial Police Office, the Agusan del Sur Provincial Police Office, municipal stations in affected localities, Regional Intelligence Divisions, Provincial Mobile Force Companies and the PRO CAR SQUADRONE drone unit.
- Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA)
- Co-participant in most operations. Operational lead in Sulu (PDEA Region 9 under Director Bryan Bating) and in several Region I campaigns (PDEA Region 1; leadership transitioned from Atty. Benjamin Gaspi to Julius Paredes between January and March 2026). Witness-observer in Nueva Vizcaya operations.
- Philippine Army
- Operational lead in Sulu through the 1102nd Infantry Brigade (11th Infantry Division), supported by 101st Infantry Battalion and 2nd Infantry Regiment.
- Philippine Marine Corps
- 11th Marine Battalion Landing Team (Sulu).
- Special Action Force
- 54th Special Action Company (Sulu).
See also
References
Additional per-event sources are listed on each news item linked from the timeline above.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 [[1]].
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 [[2]].
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 [[3]].
- ↑ ICAD Cordillera Q2 2025 press briefing, 1 July 2025; covered in detail on the Philippines eradication campaigns (2025) hub.
- ↑ [[4]].
- ↑ [[5]].
- ↑ [[6]].
- ↑ [[7]]; [[8]]; [[9]]; [[10]].
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 [[11]].
- ↑ [[12]]; [[13]].
- ↑ [[14]].
- ↑ [[15]].
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 [[16]].
- ↑ [[17]].
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 [[18]].