Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the show where we talk about all things drugs. But any of views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media, Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, Heed, as an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not even represent my own and nothing contained in this show should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today's episode is one I've been thinking about doing for a while. It's about the drug war in the Philippines, and as many of you may know, when the current President of the Philippines Do d got elected six years ago, he made this his number one issue, launching a drug war, telling the police to go kill drug pushers, drug lords, even drug addicts, and do so with incredible popular support. And this thing receives a lot of media attention back five six years ago when it started. But my understanding is that in some respects this drug war still goes on. Now there's an upcoming election the Philippines in early May. Uh. So I'm speaking with my guest today who is Philippino. His name is Gideon Lasco. He's a medical anthropologist. He has a medical degree and a PhD in anthropology. Uh. He's a professor in the Philippines. He's also been affiliated various institutions without Asia, Latin America, the United States. I asked getting to join us on the show today so he can really give us a deeper insight into what's gone on in the Philippines with his drug war. Why is it so popular and what are the facts of all of this. So, Gideon, thank you ever so much for joining me on Psychoactive. Thank you eth that I'm really glad to join you at to me to your story. Why did you take this issue on? I mean, you're going to medical school, you're getting a PC anthropology. Where did the interest in drugs and drug policy and all of this? Uh? Where did this come from? And what's that journey been like? After relating from medicine into two thousand ten, I was part of this research project by my eventual PhD supervisor, Anita hard On. It was a pharmaceutical anthropologist that the project was all about, this documenting what young people take in their everyday lives the different chemicals called them chemicals from cosmetics, tobacco, alcohol, anything that they apply to their bodies or consumed vitamins, etcetera. So when I started in the reviewing people young young men about what they used, they ended up sharing me their stories about shaboo, about metam feta mean and that led me to pursuing that as our research as my master's thesis. So I got to know that their their community. I got to know their life if I got to have out with them, and that taught me started in this direction. I moved on since to other topics, but when a few years later the third embarked on this deadly drug war, my thoughts came back to all the young men I met and wondering if they were targeted at all by by Days, and I knew that the people like them were being killed, and I felt that I had a moral responsibility to go back to this topic to be an advocate of drug reform, because it's completely opposite of what I saw the thirtiest rhetoric painting these young men as addicts, as rapists, skillers. It's far from the reality that I saw and I felt that I had an obligation to challenge that, and that led me to drug policy analysis, political analysis about the politics of the drug war, et cetera. And I realized that there are other academics who are equal concerned, that equally interested to do research, and that led me to continuing that at Bossy and Built the day. So let me just start off, I mean, just let's provide a little historical context. Enrico to Torte is a populist mayor, you know, in a kind of crime writin city Devour in the southern part of the country, and he rides this way to victory in the presidential election six years ago. He seems incredibly crude, rough, but you know, gets elected and launches this huge drug war practically on day one of his administration six years ago. Was this just something that was slowly building up and then just took it to the next level, or was this some kind of significant transformation from what had happened before. That's a very important question to ask, and I would say that it's more of the farmer. I would say that the third, despite how dramatic and violent his campaign has been, it's actually a culmination of decades of Philippine drug policy that has always been punitive towards people who use drugs, and has always employed a kind of populist rhetoric that the third has employed, and that goes all the way back to the to the nineteen seventies, when the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, to justify his declaration of martial law, used drugs as a specter to scare people and say that we need discipline, we need a strong government, and he played up the threat of drugs or what they call the drug mennis at that time in the early nineteen seventies. And would you say it's fairly consistent with what one sees in much of the rest of Asia. I mean, I you know, I always thought, you know that Singapore was sort of notorious for, you know, executing people who got caught with more than an ounce of rojan or a few grams of heroin, punishing people with corporal punishment, and many of the other you know, Asian countries have typically been highly punitive in their drug policies, but in some respects it seems like to Turkey and Philippines have almost displaced Singapore as a kind of new Asian punitive model, So how do you put this do today approach in in a Filipino approach, in the broader asan context, I think that whenever something like the thirty happened in the world, there's a tendency to see it as an exceptional kind of evil, if you will. But if you look at the history of Southeast Asia, just in the early two thousands, we have the Thigh president who absolutely employed very similar tactics in its own bloody, murderous drug wire in two thousand two, and that also had some popular support, with even the King of Thailand expressing some words of support for that campaign. So definitely the third has in terms of the scale of the violence, in terms of the rhetoric that's really really foul unacceptable. So in some ways he's definitely an escalation, but we see that his style is actually quite familiar, and the fact that some other countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh followed the third style speaks of how across the region there's so much resonance, there's so much political resonance of that kind of approach to drugs. But I think that part of the third Ist framing of his drug war is that it is a local response to to the drug problem that he calls us such, the drug menace that he calls us such. And the important thing to note here is that he frames this as opposed to Western approaches. He deliberately taps into this anti colonial notions, anti colonial sentiments in the country to frame his drug war as something that is responsive to the Philippine needs, something that is local. And the more agencies like the UN human rights groups, the more different embassies, different foreign governments, the more they contradict and opposed the drug war. He actually uses this to say that, oh, look at this Western government. They're hypocritical. We have our own response. They have to respect our sovereignty. So he deliberately placed it up as a indigenous response to a indigenous problem. Mm hmm. I see. Now, when he had been the kind of popular mayor of Devol, I mean, he was already known as a tough on crime kind of guy. He bragged about killing people, you know, he would authorize the police to do their own extradicial killings and all this sort of stuff. But it seemed like drugs was not as much his focus when he was a mayor. And then when he gets elevated to the presidency, it seems to become the singular focus of actually the entire presidency um at least in the early years. Now, am I correct in that perception that that his framing of the issue changed, or that he sort of relabeled crime problem is drug problem? And if so, why the think The note with the third is that he has actlutely been known to be tough on drugs and crime, and in in the Philippines, actually there's so much conflation between the two. People who are accused of he knews crimes like rape are automatically labeled as addicts, So people are automatically assumed to be addicts when they commit crime, when they commit all kinds of scandalous crimes. So the third day is stopping into both, and they're really conflated in the popular imagination. So it was very easy for him to be more explicitly against drugs because for in people's minds, there's very little distinction between the two I see. Another interesting thing to note is that when a former Philippine president, Gloria Arroyo in the early two thousand's, she also embarked on an anti drug campaign and her advisor was the Thurthday. So two decades ago, we have this mayor who is known as tough on crime and drugs, and that made him actually popular for people. It was seen as an approach that's effective, and I was reading as part of my research. I've been reading some of the the comments, like the lets to the editor at that time, and they were really supporting this approach. When another former President of the Philippines, Joseph Estrada, one of his cabinet members decided that they will shame suspected drug pushers by spray painting their houses just to shame them too. The surrender, some of the events that I was reading in the newspaper were saying, why you just stop there, You should kill them. As early as the early two thousand's late people were already demanding a kind of approach that the third time would be happy to absolutely implement. Two decades later, the drug was more than just the extra judicial killings. And my understanding is that is the number roughly thirty thousand extra judicial killings have been committed over the last six years. Is that a rough estimate. That's another issue that is embedded in the fact that me the outlets in the Philippines have been avoiding this topic, and they've stopped counting, partly because people have lost interest, unfortunately, and also partly because they didn't want to antagonize the the government. I believe there's only one academic group, the Third World Study Center in Dilemma, who has continued trying to count the numbers. So the estimates the wildly vary, but I think it's definitely in the tens of thousands, and the Philippine National Police itself says that there's at least several thousands in their what they call legitimate police operations. But these actually killings. I mean, if you read about policing, for example, in Brazil or in other parts of Latin America Central America, you often times read that extra killings are just kind of part of what the cops do, you know. I mean, you know a bunch of you know, teenagers who are commuting all sorts of petty crime, and sometimes the cops will just shoot a bunch of them. You know. One gets the sense that there's a kind of ta sit public support for this until a kind of line is crossed where somebody who's obviously anything gets killed or a kid gets killed or you know, by standards, but the general support. Now, did you have the same thing in the Philippines with extraditional killing sort of being part of what cops did for many decades, going back to the Marcos years or even before. Yes, definitely, and that's not emphasized. That's some of the things that we are trying to emphasize as scholars, as local scholars, is that there's a history of both the violence and this attempt to control drugs in a very punitive way. So this definitely has the long standing history the very methods that are being used today. Writing in tandem, that's what they call, went to people writing in a motorcycle, just go to a community and should these people. That has absolutely been documented even before the third and the only difference being that the scale every day at some point dozens were being killed, hundreds were being reported by the week. And yes, to go back to your earlier point, it had about where they're turning points where there's something that's clearly lines being crossed. There's definitely some incidents during the drug war, most famously the killing of y and de Losantos and Desantos is the seventeen year old boy who was killed as part of this campaign. But there was a video footage of him being dragged by the police, contradicting their frequent refrain that no, they actually thought they were doing it in self defense. None laban, that's what the Filipino term for it, meaning they fought. But this boy was clearly being dragged by police and witnesses even a report that his last words were I have an example tomorrow. So this is clearly as student who has nothing to do with any kind of offense and he was killed despite begging for mercy by these cops. And that high profile case led to a boss in terms of the number of killings, but eventually it still went back. So there's a moment where the sort of the conscience of the public gets shocked, the media jumps on it, the cops pulled back. And what this happened about a year year and a half into do to Day's term. Yes, in August seventeen. Yeah, it's little over a year after the took office. You know, there's this feeling where you just wonder, is there just a kind of blood thirsty nous in Filipinos society that supports this kind of thing. Or are there. Filipino is really no different than many other societies in other parts of the world, where there's a lot of poverty and there's crime, and there's fear of crime and killing a bunch of poor people who are involved in joy or crime is just kind of like, you know, that's what you got to do to keep order. I mean, what is it Because my minor sty is to Turty right has remained popular but with strong majority support through all six years. If he's not allowed to run for office again, but if he was, he would probably win reelection, you know, and it's not just a matter of his suppressing his political opposition. There seems to be some real support for him. What is it that How do you explain this high levels of support for for him? That's a very important question that we really struggled with. But I would say I would argue that part of the answer lies in this decades of people having this moral panic around the image of this inspector, of this addict who for decades has been blamed by by media, has been blamed by politicians, has been blamed even by the church. Asked one of the evils of society. So this guy in of background that people really have a very low view of these so called addicts and the so in popular imagination, there's very little difference between someone who uses drugs and this addicted. This image of this addicquo is murderous. So all of these has succeeded in making people think that this is a lesser evil for the Philippines. The succeeded in making people feel it. Oh, but what about the human rights of the public. What about the human rights of the victims, the rape victims, the victims of kidnapping, of murder that these addicts have been doing for decades. So that kind of thinking, how however, simplistic and flawed, has allowed the third to justify his drug war. In fact, surveys say that people disagree with the release, but obviously they tolerated to appoint Then the third day, as you rightfully said, it remains popular and put very well win the elections. The stigmatization, the demonization of drug addicts, of junkies, of that whole thing. That's not just in the Philippines, right, It's not just in Asia. I mean we had in the United States. It's part of what drove mass incarceration, and these hobby punitty approaches you see in many parts of the world. But what's somewhat distinctive about the Philippines and the Philippines drug war is a the extent of the extradicial killings, right, which which is at a level you don't see in almost any of the countries except briefly in Thailand about twenty years ago. And the fact that the president himself is right out there on TV. You know that that that infamous quote of his hitler killed. He claimed three million Jews. I can kill three million drug addicts, and yet nobody castigates them for it. It's like, okay, you know, I mean, going out on the media and saying, hey, police, I don't want you to kill people in cold blood, but if they show the slightest resistance, well you have I permission to kill them, and I'll have your back. I mean, this very blatant public support from the very top for extradicial killing. I mean, that's something that is quite distinctive, and yet he's still immensely popular, it seems, among the Filipino public, you know, I mean, I mean, we can look around the world. We'll get into this shortly about other populists using outrageous language and all this sort of stuff. But the notion of a president directly condoning extradicial killings into the tens of thousands and yet retaining public support, what is that? Is there something distinctively Filipino about that, some high level of tolerance for this over the top rhetoric or or what. Well, that's really a mystery. That's a big mystery. But I think that again that if you look at the third athartic how no matter how exceptional, but if you look at the history, and I can give you several other examples of even the bishops, the athletic bishops in the Philippines calling drug users they are the word saboteurs and worthy of the highest punishment. They are physical irecks that are hopelessly doomed to ignominy. And that's a pastoral letter in the nineteen seventies. So definitely the third test, the fact that he can get away with it is a puzzle. But the part of the puzzle is that we have to really extend our gaze into the history because so many other people have echoities language. And now with the elections coming up, some candidates are also saying that we should continue the extra ductional killing. If you look at the victims of these campaigns, they're mostly, almost exclusively, these are very poor young men in urban communities, low income urban communities. So for many Filipinos they may never meet anyone who has been a victim of these somempaigns. The very inequity of society is working in the favor of populist like the third Day, because people don't see it, people don't feel that people are getting killed because their communities are not affected. You know, I was trying to compare this to like what we've seen in the United States, especially going back to the drug war in the eighties and early nineties. And on the one hand, you know, with all the violence associated with the drug war, which at that time there was there were police killings, but huge numbers of killings, buying among people involved in the illicit drug markets, and sometimes killing innocence and by standards. But what you saw was that initially you had support, for example, among older people in the black communities for the tough crackdown the war on drugs approach. And this continued for a while, and then at some point, you know, people began to wake up and began to realize that the cops are doing nothing really to make neighbors any safer, But they were sending hundreds of thousands of young black kids up to you know, upstate prisons, and so you began to see it turning around on this. Now, you know, one could see sort of middle class Filipinos going, oh, well, this is part of the inner city problem. Doesn't touch us. These are you know, drug addicts whatever. But within the communities where this is actually playing out, I mean, is your sense that in many of these communities there's still a sort of majority support for this or for certain aspects of this, or are the poor communities where people actually know people who are getting killed? Is there substantially more resistance to it? Even there, there's a lot of division, And some sociologists have interviewed people in communities where it is happening, and even there, maybe we can hear people saying that they support this because there's even more fear in these communities among the image of the the addict and in their mind people who commit crimes and people who use drugs. It's conflated as one. So there is still support those communities. The works. The third thing, even though there are also people's ordentizations, especially those who are families of victims of the drug war, So there's also resistance in those communities, but it's not the overwhelming resistance that you might expect. We'll be talking more after we hear this ADM. You know, I spent the last couple of days reading this book that you recently edited, called Drugs and Philippines Society, and it's fascinating and among the more fascinating chapters is won by you. And then I think there are a couple of else like this, you know, which point out that for many people, especially poor people, especially poor men, because I think it's much more men using the amphetamine which is I guess known as shabu and Philippines that many of them use it. You know, it's very functional that that the users make a distinction between you know, those people have control of their drug using those who lose control. You know that it's helpful for you know, doing all sorts of physical labors. It's all this sort of stuff. Yet at the same time, it seems like there's very little perception of the kind of functional and non addictive nature of much methymphetamine use within the Philippines, maybe even within poor communities. Yes, what when we see about schabo in particular, about the tempete in particular, is that it is exceptionally ascribed a particular effect. And even the Third Day has spoken about how shambo is really a different category of drugs. It really destroys the brain. It's unlike marijuana, it's unlike other drugs because if you're adictant to chabo or beyond rehabilitation. But that's the narrative coming from the Third d and I even wrote a paper dedicated to that, to that idea that chabu is exceptional among the different drugs, and that kind of exceptionalism is really quite common among the people that I have spoken with. So I think that's part of the part of the answer. And of course, if you think of chabou as this really evil drug, then committed in that narrative. Excluded in that narrative is the fact that people actually use it in their everyday lives as a functional drug. Aside from those that I have written in my scholarship, I have talked to taxi drivers, I have talk to truck drivers who say that they needed to stay awake. They call it there like a vitamin for them or like an energy drink for them. And it's quite common, not just in the Philippines but across the region. People use it for functional reasons and just well show more about this. I mean, do you see this among Is it mostly young men or the people successfully use shabu for years or even decades without developing a significant problem. Yeah, people use it, uh, young men, but also older men who are involved in very difficult jobs, jobs that require them to stay awake all night. We have even interviewed, for example, butchers who need to stay up at early hours too am so that they can prepare for the market. We have heard of fisher men who say that they take shaboo so they can dive deeper so that they can catch whatever they're cat like fish or or whatever seafood that they're looking for. So it's used in a variety of contexts, mostly economic, and people who do this say that they're not really addicted to If they change jobs, if they can find a better job, then they will stop using it because they're only using it in the context of this economic activities. I mean, if people are a functional user and they're using it for work, are they using it multiple times a day. Are they getting up in the morning using it and then in a lunch break and then waiter or what are the various patterns of use you see around this The ones that they observed did they just use it once in a day, like before they go to work. So, for example, in my original ethnography back in twenty eleven, I observe them use it before they go to the port where they work all kinds of jobs, and then that will give them enough enough high until until the next day. So the challenge for them is how to fall asleep. And sometimes they drink beer they say that marijuana and help them fall asleep afterwards. So the effect for them apparently lasts for overnight. It was just shift for a second to marijuana because I remember reading this is even before deterte that on the one hand, I'd read about Philippines producing some of the better marijuana when found around the world in some parts of the country. And the other hand, I think the Philippines was one of the few countries that had this massive effort to have drug testing in the schools. I means, something we saw in the US, but the Philippines really to seem to be almost fanatically oriented towards this. So what is the perspective on on on cannabis and marijuana in the Philippines And it has it evolved kind of in a more open minded way or a more closed minded way over the last few decades. That's a very good question, because we're seeing this drug testing. In fact, that's really another problem for many of these young men that I interviewed. They want to quit. They want to quit the informal economy that they find themselves in that they want to seek jobs that are more part of the formal economy, for example, be working in fast food chains, working in the supermarkets as bag baggers. So they are seeking some of these jobs, and they're afraid of this drug testing because they feel that if they fail it, they will be targeted and they would be subjected either healings or incarceration depends on. So this drug testing, as you point out, is so common and it's so pervasive. Even the presidential candidates for the elections that are coming up, some of them even publicly underwent tests to show that they're not addicts. So again the inflation between us of any kind of drug and addict. So people talk about the drug war and talk about the healings, and rightfully so, it's the most brutal manifestation. But we also have this drug testing regime that has affected universities, affect that high schools administrators don't know what to do. There's no mechanism of what happens when someone that's positive, what do you do? And then there's also this incarce massive incarceration of people. I don't know, ethan if you saw this really harrowing photos of people crowded in the jails in the Philippines, it's really in humane. People die, dozen'ts die every month in Philippine prisons, in jails because of the inhumane conditions, and the drug war has only caused even more crowding in the jails in the Philippines. So that's another component of the drug wire. The attention typically is on the extradicial killings, but there is this whole other element to it, right, I mean people being arrested. I mean I think there's millions of people have been added to government lists. Right the cops are going door the door asking drug uses to turn themselves in or else and had been forced to give permission for a police to monitor them. I mean, I mean, it does sound like a fairly pernicious, almost fascist like approach to using the drug ward to basically, you know, survey millions of people in your country exactly. And people who object most prominently against these policies are also subject to punishments themselves. So until now, my dear friend, Senator Delima It is now in jail for more than five years and her only offense to the president is to call for an investigation of this drug wire and he's round surrounding for senator in May. But unfortunately, because of this vilification against her, because of the accreciations that she herself is somehow absurdly huddling drug lords, those oblisation and have taken at all on her political capital, and she's not even a contender despite her running for senator based on the surveys. She's bowling very low and she might lose in the electrons, unfortunately. But that goes to show you how years of this kind of almost fascist regime, as you said, people can get desensitized to it. The value of news about people getting killed no longer has the same vaillance as before. That's why it continues, and it drugs on because people have been desensitized to them. On the other hand, we're seeing more openness with talking about marijuana as a medical as a medical treatment, and there are movements in the Philippines that are vocally adverting for for marijuana. And then I really do CHURCHI himself had at one point said he was a fair medicalmara juana if they were buils in the Congress to legalized medical marijuana. But what's the latest with all of that is detergy did he back away from that? And is there still movement? And you know where is this issue in the Philippines right now? Yeah, you're you're right. The third really really at one point said that he's open to medical marijuana. But you know that the interesting thing with this cannabis legalization, which is why it's really worthy of study as well, is that the University of the Philippines College of Medicine, they themselves released a very strong statement opposing medical knnabis, calling it a serious threat to health, in response to when the Third said that he was open to it. So that goes to show how people prejudices against drugs. It's really so pervasive in the Philippines that even the academics are against any kind of discuss arton regarding uh medical kadaba event. So that's how different, I'll tell you, Giddy. And it's not so different elsewhere. I mean the United States, the American Medical Association, many of the medical associations remained firmly against it. They didn't like the fact that it was a sort of plant medicine. They didn't like the cultural associations. So they were among the last to come on. And even when you looked at set of health ministries, I think in Jamaica or Mexico, Colombia, oftentimes they were they were the most problematic on the medical marijuana stuff. You had more of the support coming from foreign ministries or or people in other walks of life. So I don't think the Philippines is that distinctive. But when you look at Thailand, for example, moving forward on medical marijuana, and I think even some other countries opening up a discussion on this. In Philippines, is this actually making some real progress at this point or is it kind of be um? Did it sort of get stalled in the Congress and is going nowhere now? I think it got stalled, and I think it's partly because of this opposition coming from having from medical groups. Now, it's interesting about the Philippines thing. You know, in the US and some other countries, we typically say that the war on drugs is deeply in interwoven, if not all about race and racism. But in the Philippines, I mean there's all different sorts of ethnicities in the Philippines, right, But is there any ethnic or racial element to this or is it basically a issue of class of poverty and its ana of class. It is a war on the poor, and that's why it continues because in a way, it's really a continuation of what's been going on for so long. And people don't feel empathy because there there's a distant from the experiences of these people who are in low income communities. M So it does nothing involving having darker scan or being from a particular ethnic minority. It's basically flat out poverty and people associated with this stuff. It's an interesting sort of counter example to what we see in many other countries in the US, but even Latin American Europe where the racials I mensioned. You know, it is so powerful in all of this. Yes, yeah, And just to go back to your comment about whether the drug war is racialized in the Philippines, has ever been racialized. So if you go back in the nineteen seventies, for didn't Markos the dictate or at the time, he painted the drugs as a foreign threat and singling out drug lords from China, So Chinese drug lords as the ones bringing drugs to the country, and he dramatically televised the execution of a drug lord by firing squad in the first few months of his martial law I think January nineteen seventy three. So that vein of this idea of drugs cutting from China has continued until today, especially with tensions between the Philippines and China because of the South China see West Philippines Heat territory parties. So there's that. So if I recall a few years into the drug war, you started to hear claims by Deterked I think and people around him and his supporters and the cops that it was working, you know, not just in terms of body counts and people getting killed or people admitting to being drug users and going off to facilities, but that robberies were down, rapes were down, other types of crime were down and people felt safer walking the streets in the poor neighborhoods um to what extent was this true? People claim that the police, of course will claim that that these are safer, but the ethnographic evidence points to the fact that the opposite is true. That there's actlutely a claimate of fear in many of these communities. They're afraid at night, especially because they might be targeted by the police or by these identified men who do their killings. So it's really the opposite of what they say. But perhaps some people who who don't themselves belong to those particular areas would say that it's safe, But the people themselves the ethnographic evidence, and some of it has been included in the book that I edited. Some of our writers have written about how a climate of fear and suspicion has pervaded these communities precisely because of the healings that are happening. And now now that the Third is weakening in terms of his political capital, now that the Third is a lame duck as an outgoing president, even the senators who used to support him are now saying that this druguar was a failure. Well, I mean, that's true. But on the other hand, I'm reading that the leading candidates, I mean, I guess the leading candidate is the son of the former president and dictator, Fernando Marcos, whose nicknamed bang Bang Marcos. And the leading vice presidential candidate, who I gather doesn't run on the same ticket with the president but basically has allied with the president, is Sarah do turtey right, do Turte's daughter and and former mayor as well of de val in the South, the city where do Turte was mayor. I mean, it sounds like they're basically saying they're going to continue the drug war, maybe just with less of the rhetoric. And then that Filipino boxer, I forget what his name is, Many the Power or something like that. I mean, he's basically saying, well, I'm not going to kill the drug addicts, but I'm going to kill the pushers. And and then I saw a public opinion poll recently that a majority of Filipinos still support the drug war and that maybe even a majority regard the drug war as do Turkey's greatest legacy. So I mean, what's going on there. It sounds like, you know, this is seen generally speaking as a great success of of this soon to be ex president. Yeah, it's true that they're still significant support for the test drug war, and including the leading candidates, but now there's more dissenting voices, even though they still remain in the minority. For example, another another residential candidate, pan Philo laps and a former police chief, said that it is really a failure the drug war. So there's more voices now who are saying that, but they remain in the minority. And people like Bombo Marcos, who is the leading candidate and the son of this dictator that I mentioned earlier, who was the first I would think the first Philippine president to use drugs as a populist trop So he himself is saying that he will continue. But the third as started, and they're even saying that they will shield the third from investigations because now a case has been filed against him in the International Creaming or it. So one of the campaign questions to all this candidate is what will you do? Will you allow him to be arrested by the i c C. And of course this bumble market is saying that no, we will protect him. M hmm. So who has been the opposition. I mean, obviously academics like yourself, and obviously you know the senator who's been sitting in prison for five years, and I guess it was Maria Ressa, the journalists who have recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. Um. But say more about the opposition is their opposition within anybody in law enforcement? Is there are you know, where is the church, the Catholic Church, the Evangelical Church and all this um. Where are other you know, law association's folks like that? I mean, how where is that opposition and how does it manifest? So one of the impacts of the drag wire is that these organizations, including the church, including human rights groups, including lawyers, groups who were previously apathetic towards drugs or have held a negative view that's similar to to the other politicians before, but now that they have seen what's at staked with drugs, they have taken a more vocal position that they're against this kind of approach to drugs. The Catholic Church. I wrote a paper with the Sociology of Religion about how the Catholic Church, after spending decades really saying that drugs are a great evil that must be destroyed. They have basically changed their rhetoric to that of mercy and and redemption. So they have changed their rhetoric around drugs and are now vocally opposed to the drug war. The same with many groups, many academic and human rights organizations, civil society groups, So they're the ones who are calling for are stopping this kind of approach, but they're also not clear about what the alternative is. People talk about rehab as a magic word that as an alternative to the killings, but people don't have a clear idea of what this so called rehabilitation means because the rehab status school in the Philippines consists of compulsory detention centers and many institutions that are tantamount to being in prison. So it's not really the kind of approach that's needed. I believe in addressing drugs. And of course there are some political candidates, presidential candidates who have rightfully pointed out that we need to respond to the economic needs of many people that lead them to using drugs like shaboo in the first place. So there are some ideas that are coming out, but they're not very clear about what they mean when they say rehabilitation. Let's take a break here and go to an ad. It's always kind of been a challenge with stimulant drugs, I mean cocaine or amphetamine, right, because when you're dealing with opioids, with heroine, with fentonyl, you know, people can talk about getting people onto method on or rupern orphane or even setting up pharmaceutical you know, heroin programs. Um With stimulants, it's always been a lot trickier what does treatment mean in any kind of medical dimension? And you know, and I think throughout much of Asia the issue is focused around meth amphetamine. I remember there was some a while ago. I don't know if it's still the case where Vietnam had I think hundreds of thousands of people and these basically, you know, refurbished communist re education camps that had now become drug abuser re education camps. And you saw this phenomena in other countries as well. Does the Philippines also have tens or hundreds of thousands of people basically sitting in these large facilities? You know, we're drug treatment consists of a of a sermon by a priest and a lecture by a reformed adrect or something like that. Yes, there are substantial numbers of people who basically that's what they do in in these rehab centers. The third at one point ordered the construction of megaur rehab centers that can house thousands of people with that kind of of idea, Although some advocates of drug quality reform in the Heartry are saying that despite all of these developments, the past few years have actually also been an opportunity to talk about drugs and for the first time that people actually listen because people now recognize that lives are at stake with this, so ideas like community based rehabilitation, the psychologists, psychology but ssioners have stepped in to offer some kind of alternative approaches, but so far there's no consensus or finality as to what this might look like. And as you said, stimulants have always been challenging to begin with, so it will really take some time before people can come up with a clearer idea of what a response should look like. Where does harm reduction into all of this, Well, people have been advocating. There are some organizations in the Philippines who have been speaking of harm reduction as an approach, and even one senator even filed a bill that's inspired by harm reduction, although they didn't want to say it as harm reduction because that very term, it's very, very sensitive in the political discourse. There's one very influential Senator, Tita Soto, who is now running for vice president, who has declared that harm reduction is a it's like a Western idea that will poison the country. So they didn't call it exactly harm reduction, but the idea is there. There's some no matter how few. There are some lawmakers and there's some advocates that are pushing for this, and at the local government level there's much more weager room to the pilot these approaches. I mean, was there ever much of an issue with injection drug use in the Philippines, So if either stimulants or opioids. For a time there was injection drug use, and until now in Cembu, in the city of Sembu, people in jacnal buffin what is what is now Buffin? Yes, now buffin. I believe it's like a it's like a pain. It's more of a drug for pain, like an opioid, analgetic, but it's the drug of choice among people who inject drugs in Sembu City in the Philippines, and for a time there was a very big concern about HIV cases I seeing, so they piloted a needle syringe needle exchange program in that area, but it was quickly shut down by this influential senator said this of the third who said that there's a Western minded thinking that seeks to minimize the harm done to others by using the so called harmarductional strategy. So he basically said that Western solutions are not fit for Eastern mindset. We are losing hundreds of thousands of our youth to drugs and we cannot adopt something as disastros as this harmarductional strategy. So he opposed this nettle exchange program in Simbu, and people like him are likely to keep opposing these programs in the next few years at least. And are they aware that even countries like Malaysia and Indonesian, Vietnam and others have set up their own little needle exchange programs. I mean, is there an awareness that Asia has changed at least a little bit, even in the midst of all their drug wars, they still recognize the need for these programs. In a limited way to try to deal with HIV and such. Yeah, that kind of response wasn't captured or wasn't salient in those debates at that time. One of the challenges is to have voices who would actually prominent voices wh would astolutely refute prominently these arguments. We didn't see that that then, But now that the drug war of the third day has really awakened people into the need to respond, I believe that there will be more responses, there will be more effective arguments against such kinds of approaches. Do I hear a trace of optimism in your voice gidding about where things are headed? I would like to be optimistic. I think the fact that there are enough academics, for example, to even write a book about drugs, when if you look at the scholarship there was very few people who are doing this. That in itself is a statement that academics in the country are are not going to accept this status coude where we're going to going to challenge it and we will continue doing research. There are also civil society organizations that have continued to do work around these issues. And of course, having seen that the destruction and the death that the third has cost over the past six years obvious drug war. I think people are really aware of what's at stake with things like drug users are a subhumans or drug users are zombies. There will be unrehabilitation. These discourses can enable the killings of so many people, and they have to be challenged forcefully. They have to be challenged vigorously, and I think more people are aware of that, and that gives be optimizing. So, I mean I read about and hear about all of the attacks on the people who oppose the drug war. I mean de Tourte obviously going after you know, Senator Layla dilemma right, um or the attacks and Maria Arressa, the Nobel Prize winning journalists has dealt with. You know, they've got these what they called patriotic trollers, you know, the people on the internet who just gang up on anybody who speaks openly. Um. It seems that you know, you know, the church said, I'm happy they killed journalists, not just drug addicts. H I mean, haven't you been worried about getting into this line of work? I mean, if you had to deal with with challenges or or any levels of fear or threats of that sort. It's definitely I'm a big concerned. Just a few weeks ago, one of my colleagues who wrote about our religious organization, who was supporting the Third Day, receive a cyber relabel case against him, which is a criminal offense in the Philippines, and he now has to deal with that case. So the law has been weaponized against academics, has been weaponized against critics, and also the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, which I'm part of the board of that organization of investigative journalism, and at one point the presidential spokesperson basically declared that our organization was a communist front or plotting to overthrow the government. So they're outlandish agganizations and you have to deal with it. Unfortunately, that's the climate right now in the Philippines. But I think that the stakes are are really are really so high that we cannot even let those threats stop us. Let me just following the churchy over these last six years, and obviously I've been focused on the drug who are in the way in which he is you use that and been successful with it, but also looking at his you know, overwhelming popularity, and then you look around you know, you see Orbon in Hungary, you know Bolson Narrow in Brazil, obviously putin um I mean even I mean literally, when Trump got elected some months after Deterday was elected back in you know, two people understood the reference I would talk about. I would describe, you know, Trump as Dode with orange hair, I mean, because the same kind of outrageous rhetoric and this kind of appealing to people's most based instincts. But it does sound like authoritarianism is really just gaining ground all around the world, and the Philippines, which was among the more democratic nations in Asia for many years, looks like it may be sliding down this slippery slope as well. What do you think, Well, what's truly global for sure in what's happening to the Philippine politics today is that candidates have weaponized the Internet too to further their propaganda. So if you think about the two leading candidates in the elections today, Bambo Marcus and Lenny Robredo, these two handidates actually already fought for the vice presidency in twenty sixteen, and Lenny Robredo one. So Bambo Marcus was defeated by a hair but was still defeated by Larry Robretto in What changed is that Bamma Marcus invested so much over the past several years in this information stargetting young people, creating TikTok videos, creating vlogs, YouTube videos, really weaponizing social media. So that has allowed him to be very popular today, notwithstanding the the fact that just a few decades ago his family basically plundered the whole country into bankruptcy and perpetrated so many human hearts abuses during his father's two decades right over the country. So there's that element to be mindful of that explains in part what's going on. And of course, although the third as a populist authoritarian and emerging twenty sixteen, there are procedents in the in the countries history of people who are also very populist and also received a lot of support, So that after Joseph Estrada, who was the president from thousand one until he was impeached, he ran for president again in twenty ten, and he nearly one. If not for this other son of Horizonatino who replaced for didn't Marcus when the dictator was outstead she was the one who who became the president, So there's really a precedent of people who are campaigning on very simplistic platforms but are also very popular and managing to win despite their past crime, past record of corruption, and even human has abuses. So in that sense, the Philippines, again, the thirdest Right is not really so much exceptional as it is a acculimination of what's been going on in Philippine politics for for a long time. Obviously, if this Bong book Marcos the Son of the Dictator wins, then there's really a lot of concern. I'm very concerned about the direction that the country will go, and that means more of this disdain for democracy, more of these relations of human rights and outright authority. On the other hand, if Lenny Robredo wins, who she's basically the leader of the opposition right now and they has managed to to galvanize various opposition groups, from the leftist groups to people who are from the Liberal Party and different other groups. If she wins, she has is one of the people who have spoken about the need for a humane approach to to drugs, So there's reason to hope that he will at least and do some of the damage that the Third has done so much will really depend on the elections that are coming. The fact that Lending Robreto managed to win in TwixT despite having traditional politicians as her opponents, speaks of the possibility that all hope it's not lost and that if she doesn't win in May, and the fact that she can still raise a significant movement means that the forces in the country who are concerned about democracy, about human rights, and about seeing the country succeed in many areas, including drugs. It's still a significant population and that can be h If not the leadership, then they can continue to be a prominent opposition in the years to come, and they can challenge whatever rehetord it will come our way. Do you think there's any hope that to Church or others will ever be held accountable for their drug war crimes. I doubt it at this point. The Third, even if he doesn't win, and in the unlikely event that his daughter doesn't twin, they still have a bailwick in their hometown of Davo City, where they will continue to command a lot of political capital, and they might continue to exert a lot of influence with whoever wins or the people who will be in power, so it will be very difficult to hold him accountable, even though the people who implemented this drug war alongside him will have some penalties like that they will not be able to travel in other countries probably and that might be some kind of sanction to them. But in terms of really holding him to account, it will take a lot of effort on the part of the country to to to do it. So no, I am not very optimistic that it will happen, but it's still important. It's still very important to continue with these efforts to put him into justice, whether or not they have a chance to succeed, because it's still important for the record. It's still important as a matter of history, historical record that they have been charged. So I hope it will still continue. And I think even if in the Philippines the odds are stacked against justice, there are some cases that go in our favor. For example, the Key and Delesantos, who I mentioned earlier as the seventh in year old boy who was filmed who was caught on camera being drugged by police officers who would kill him moments later. Those officers were convicted of murder. They were convicted They're the only probably at this point, the only case that has gone to trial. But the fact that they got convicted despite the third test commitment to these police obviosers that he will protect them means that justice has a chance. We just need to keep fighting for it. We just need to keep challenging this kind of drug war well getting I admired immensely your commitment to this and your courage and embarking on this line of work. I mean you and the others in journalism and the human rights organizations and others who are you know doing the hard work and trying to speak truth to power? Are you know, really doing the Lord's work here? So Wison, thank you ever so much for joining me on Psychoactive and all best wishes. Thank you, Ethan. It's really a privilege to join you today. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your friends about it, or you can write us a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to share your own stories, comments and ideas, then leave us a message at one eight three three seven seven nine sixty. That's eight three three psycho zero, or you can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com or find me on Twitter at Ethan Natalman. You can also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by Noham Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronovsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio and me Ethan Naedelman. Our music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to ab Brio, s F Bianca Grimshaw and Robert BP. Next week we'll be talking about Russia, by which I mean drug you, drug markets, drug policies, drug wars, all things drugs with anious rank perhaps Russia's leading harm reduction activists. It was just kind of normal for us witnessing the same thing every day for many years in Russia, and of course it was a huge strategedy and many people, like people did not get any support. They will promise support, they will promise that they will be taken to Russia. But even like the rebilitation centers and so on, and a few people were but a few people also died in this, like reputation programs in Russia, or like they run away, or it just never happens. 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