Philippines eradication campaigns (2026)
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Philippines eradication campaigns (2026) is the hub page tracking cannabis eradication operations in the Philippines during the 2026 calendar year. Each reported operation is logged as an individual News Item and linked to this hub via the Template:Code field. Coverage spans three island groups — Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao — with the highest volume of reporting concentrated in the northern Luzon cultivation belt. Regional and campaign-specific pages will be spun off from this hub when material warrants.
Map
Markers are colored by event category. Events without coordinates do not appear on the map — refer to the timeline below for the complete log.
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 the Police Regional Office Cordillera Administrative Region (PRO CAR) in La Trinidad, with individual operations often only surfaced at aggregate level.
Cultivation sites in the region are characteristically small, dispersed, and sited in high-altitude terrain requiring several hours of foot access. PRO CAR director Brig. Gen. Ericson Dilag, in a 20 February 2026 press 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. 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.
Two notable 2026 operational shifts have been announced for CAR:
- Oplan Ultimate Grasscutter — a Benguet-specific program launched by the Benguet Provincial Police Office on 25 February 2026, 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.
- SQUADRONE — a 49-operator drone unit (Smart Quadrotor Unit for Advanced Deployment, Detection, Reconnaissance, Observation, and Networked Enforcement) deployed by PRO CAR in the fourth quarter of 2025. Dilag has attributed the near-tripling of seizure values year-on-year (₱364 million in the first six weeks of 2026, vs. ₱123 million in the same window of 2025) primarily to aerial surveillance.
A persistent feature of CAR reporting is the asymmetry between plant destruction and cultivator arrest. Dilag reported only five cultivation or transport arrests across PRO CAR's prior year of operations, and the 33 eradication operations conducted from 9 to 15 March 2026 yielded no arrests from the eradication component itself. Tinglayan municipality in southern Kalinga — particularly barangay Loccong and the boundary with Sadanga, Mountain Province — has been the most prominent specific locality in 2026 CAR reporting.
Luzon — Cagayan Valley
Reporting in 2026 identified 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.
The framing of Kimbutan cultivation differs from CAR reporting in specific and repeated respects. 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. This language, which points to infrastructure-supported cultivation rather than dispersed hidden plots, appears consistently across reporting on Kimbutan.
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. Whether the Kimbutan cultivation represents an extension of CAR cultivation patterns, a distinct tradition, or externally introduced operations is not established in current reporting.
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. 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) and 3 March 2026 (11,500 plants across two plots totalling 3,000 square metres, ₱10.35 million).
The Sulu reporting differs structurally from northern Luzon reporting in several respects. 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. 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.
Whether Sulu cannabis cultivation represents a genuinely distinct category (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 is not resolvable from current reporting alone.
Timeline
Agencies
- Philippine National Police (PNP)
- Primary agency in CAR, Cagayan Valley, and Visayas reporting. Relevant sub-units include the Police Regional Office Cordillera Administrative Region (PRO CAR), the Benguet Provincial Police Office (under Col. Lambert Suerte), municipal stations in affected localities, Regional Intelligence Divisions, Provincial Mobile Force Companies, and the PRO CAR Smart Quadrotor Unit for Advanced Deployment, Detection, Reconnaissance, Observation, and Networked Enforcement (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 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).
Background
See also
References
Sources are listed on each individual news item linked from the timeline above.