Manila: The Philippines is stepping up President Rodrigo Duterte’s battle on drugs with incoming college freshmen set to face tests for illegal drug use from next year, an education official said on Friday.

A wave of 2,400 killings unleashed in a war on drugs since Duterte came to power two months ago has gained popular support in the Southeast Asian nation, but has alarmed the United Nations and the United States, Manila’s close ally.

The government seeks to make drug testing a requirement for all incoming college students, said Julito Vitriolo, the executive director of the Commission on Higher Education.

“This was born out of the president’s call to make campuses drug-free, because we see the pervasive effects of drug use,” he said in a television interview.

“What’s important is for students not to use drugs. It will be a deterrent if they want to continue their studies,” Vitriolo said, adding that those testing positive could go through rehabilitation before being admitted to college.

Drug testing for university admission is now done on a voluntary basis.

“It is something that we should be doing because the drug menace is real,” Monico Jacob, president of STI Education Systems Holdings Inc, told Reuters, referring to compulsory tests.

STI, which has more than 103,000 students this academic year, has performed mandatory drug testing for the past five years.

Duterte won the May election by a landslide on a promise to wipe out drugs and dealers. He has named politicians, police generals and judges linked to the drug trade.

Police data show 2,400 deaths in the drug war after Duterte took over, a toll police say is a result of drug dealers resisting arrest or gang feuds.

Duterte, who has railed against the United Nations for criticising his government, has declined a request to meet UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, officials said Thursday.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that “contacts were had to try to set up a time” for a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN forum meeting in Laos next week, but that “no time could be agreed upon.”

A foreign affairs spokesman in Manila said that 11 heads of state had requested meetings with Duterte during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting, and that he had said yes to nine of them.

“Please understand that he cannot accept them all and no one should impute any negatives on those he could not accommodate,” said Charles Jose in Manila.

Duterte’s spokesman Ernesto Abella said the September 6-8 ASEAN meeting in Vientiane was “extraordinarily full” and that “a number of possible meetups have to be presently foregone.”

Duterte has launched several tirades against the world body after a UN special rapporteur criticised his crackdown on crime, even threatening to pull out of the United Nations, a threat he later withdrew.

“Maybe we’ll just have to decide to separate from the United Nations. If you are that disrespectful, son of a whore, then I will just leave you,” Duterte said in a press conference last month.

He later said the threat was just a “joke.”

Nearly 2,000 people have been killed since Duterte was sworn into office on June 30 and immediately launched his war on crime, according to the national police chief.

Duterte has insisted most of the 756 people confirmed killed by police were drug suspects who resisted arrest, while the others died due to gang members waging warfare against each other.

However rights groups, some lawmakers and others have said security forces are engaging in unprecedented extrajudicial killings.