During a speech at an event celebrating the 115th anniversary of the founding of the Philippine Bureau of Customs, President Rodrigo Duterte gave a customarily blunt response to an op-ed written by former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria. Gaviria, who presided over the hunt for and killing of Pablo Escobar , cautioned against deploying armed police and troops to fight the drug trade and called for more efforts to address the social factors related to drug use in a New York Times op-ed titled ” President Duterte is repeating my mistakes .”