Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: of views expressed here do not represent those of I
Speaker 1: Heart Media, Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, Heed,
Speaker 1: as an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may
Speaker 1: not even represent my own and nothing contained in this
Speaker 1: show should be used his medical advice or encouragement to
Speaker 1: use any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is one I've been thinking about doing for a while.
Speaker 1: It's about the drug war in the Philippines, and as
Speaker 1: many of you may know, when the current President of
Speaker 1: the Philippines Do d got elected six years ago, he
Speaker 1: made this his number one issue, launching a drug war,
Speaker 1: telling the police to go kill drug pushers, drug lords,
Speaker 1: even drug addicts, and do so with incredible popular support.
Speaker 1: And this thing receives a lot of media attention back
Speaker 1: five six years ago when it started. But my understanding
Speaker 1: is that in some respects this drug war still goes on.
Speaker 1: Now there's an upcoming election the Philippines in early May. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I'm speaking with my guest today who is Philippino.
Speaker 1: His name is Gideon Lasco. He's a medical anthropologist. He
Speaker 1: has a medical degree and a PhD in anthropology. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's a professor in the Philippines. He's also been affiliated
Speaker 1: various institutions without Asia, Latin America, the United States. I
Speaker 1: asked getting to join us on the show today so
Speaker 1: he can really give us a deeper insight into what's
Speaker 1: gone on in the Philippines with his drug war. Why
Speaker 1: is it so popular and what are the facts of
Speaker 1: all of this. So, Gideon, thank you ever so much
Speaker 1: for joining me on Psychoactive. Thank you eth that I'm
Speaker 1: really glad to join you at to me to your story.
Speaker 1: Why did you take this issue on? I mean, you're
Speaker 1: going to medical school, you're getting a PC anthropology. Where
Speaker 1: did the interest in drugs and drug policy and all
Speaker 1: of this? Uh? Where did this come from? And what's
Speaker 1: that journey been like? After relating from medicine into two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, I was part of this research project by
Speaker 1: my eventual PhD supervisor, Anita hard On. It was a
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical anthropologist that the project was all about, this documenting
Speaker 1: what young people take in their everyday lives the different
Speaker 1: chemicals called them chemicals from cosmetics, tobacco, alcohol, anything that
Speaker 1: they apply to their bodies or consumed vitamins, etcetera. So
Speaker 1: when I started in the reviewing people young young men
Speaker 1: about what they used, they ended up sharing me their
Speaker 1: stories about shaboo, about metam feta mean and that led
Speaker 1: me to pursuing that as our research as my master's thesis.
Speaker 1: So I got to know that their their community. I
Speaker 1: got to know their life if I got to have
Speaker 1: out with them, and that taught me started in this direction.
Speaker 1: I moved on since to other topics, but when a
Speaker 1: few years later the third embarked on this deadly drug war,
Speaker 1: my thoughts came back to all the young men I
Speaker 1: met and wondering if they were targeted at all by
Speaker 1: by Days, and I knew that the people like them
Speaker 1: were being killed, and I felt that I had a
Speaker 1: moral responsibility to go back to this topic to be
Speaker 1: an advocate of drug reform, because it's completely opposite of
Speaker 1: what I saw the thirtiest rhetoric painting these young men
Speaker 1: as addicts, as rapists, skillers. It's far from the reality
Speaker 1: that I saw and I felt that I had an
Speaker 1: obligation to challenge that, and that led me to drug
Speaker 1: policy analysis, political analysis about the politics of the drug war,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And I realized that there are other academics
Speaker 1: who are equal concerned, that equally interested to do research,
Speaker 1: and that led me to continuing that at Bossy and
Speaker 1: Built the day. So let me just start off, I mean,
Speaker 1: just let's provide a little historical context. Enrico to Torte
Speaker 1: is a populist mayor, you know, in a kind of
Speaker 1: crime writin city Devour in the southern part of the country,
Speaker 1: and he rides this way to victory in the presidential
Speaker 1: election six years ago. He seems incredibly crude, rough, but
Speaker 1: you know, gets elected and launches this huge drug war
Speaker 1: practically on day one of his administration six years ago.
Speaker 1: Was this just something that was slowly building up and
Speaker 1: then just took it to the next level, or was
Speaker 1: this some kind of significant transformation from what had happened before.
Speaker 1: That's a very important question to ask, and I would
Speaker 1: say that it's more of the farmer. I would say
Speaker 1: that the third, despite how dramatic and violent his campaign
Speaker 1: has been, it's actually a culmination of decades of Philippine
Speaker 1: drug policy that has always been punitive towards people who
Speaker 1: use drugs, and has always employed a kind of populist
Speaker 1: rhetoric that the third has employed, and that goes all
Speaker 1: the way back to the to the nineteen seventies, when
Speaker 1: the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, to justify his declaration of martial law,
Speaker 1: used drugs as a specter to scare people and say
Speaker 1: that we need discipline, we need a strong government, and
Speaker 1: he played up the threat of drugs or what they
Speaker 1: call the drug mennis at that time in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. And would you say it's fairly consistent with
Speaker 1: what one sees in much of the rest of Asia.
Speaker 1: I mean, I you know, I always thought, you know
Speaker 1: that Singapore was sort of notorious for, you know, executing
Speaker 1: people who got caught with more than an ounce of
Speaker 1: rojan or a few grams of heroin, punishing people with
Speaker 1: corporal punishment, and many of the other you know, Asian
Speaker 1: countries have typically been highly punitive in their drug policies,
Speaker 1: but in some respects it seems like to Turkey and
Speaker 1: Philippines have almost displaced Singapore as a kind of new
Speaker 1: Asian punitive model, So how do you put this do
Speaker 1: today approach in in a Filipino approach, in the broader
Speaker 1: asan context, I think that whenever something like the thirty
Speaker 1: happened in the world, there's a tendency to see it
Speaker 1: as an exceptional kind of evil, if you will. But
Speaker 1: if you look at the history of Southeast Asia, just
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands, we have the Thigh president
Speaker 1: who absolutely employed very similar tactics in its own bloody,
Speaker 1: murderous drug wire in two thousand two, and that also
Speaker 1: had some popular support, with even the King of Thailand
Speaker 1: expressing some words of support for that campaign. So definitely
Speaker 1: the third has in terms of the scale of the violence,
Speaker 1: in terms of the rhetoric that's really really foul unacceptable.
Speaker 1: So in some ways he's definitely an escalation, but we
Speaker 1: see that his style is actually quite familiar, and the
Speaker 1: fact that some other countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh
Speaker 1: followed the third style speaks of how across the region
Speaker 1: there's so much resonance, there's so much political resonance of
Speaker 1: that kind of approach to drugs. But I think that
Speaker 1: part of the third Ist framing of his drug war
Speaker 1: is that it is a local response to to the
Speaker 1: drug problem that he calls us such, the drug menace
Speaker 1: that he calls us such. And the important thing to
Speaker 1: note here is that he frames this as opposed to
Speaker 1: Western approaches. He deliberately taps into this anti colonial notions,
Speaker 1: anti colonial sentiments in the country to frame his drug
Speaker 1: war as something that is responsive to the Philippine needs,
Speaker 1: something that is local. And the more agencies like the
Speaker 1: UN human rights groups, the more different embassies, different foreign governments,
Speaker 1: the more they contradict and opposed the drug war. He
Speaker 1: actually uses this to say that, oh, look at this
Speaker 1: Western government. They're hypocritical. We have our own response. They
Speaker 1: have to respect our sovereignty. So he deliberately placed it
Speaker 1: up as a indigenous response to a indigenous problem. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I see. Now, when he had been the kind of
Speaker 1: popular mayor of Devol, I mean, he was already known
Speaker 1: as a tough on crime kind of guy. He bragged
Speaker 1: about killing people, you know, he would authorize the police
Speaker 1: to do their own extradicial killings and all this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. But it seemed like drugs was not as
Speaker 1: much his focus when he was a mayor. And then
Speaker 1: when he gets elevated to the presidency, it seems to
Speaker 1: become the singular focus of actually the entire presidency um
Speaker 1: at least in the early years. Now, am I correct
Speaker 1: in that perception that that his framing of the issue changed,
Speaker 1: or that he sort of relabeled crime problem is drug problem?
Speaker 1: And if so, why the think The note with the
Speaker 1: third is that he has actlutely been known to be
Speaker 1: tough on drugs and crime, and in in the Philippines,
Speaker 1: actually there's so much conflation between the two. People who
Speaker 1: are accused of he knews crimes like rape are automatically
Speaker 1: labeled as addicts, So people are automatically assumed to be
Speaker 1: addicts when they commit crime, when they commit all kinds
Speaker 1: of scandalous crimes. So the third day is stopping into both,
Speaker 1: and they're really conflated in the popular imagination. So it
Speaker 1: was very easy for him to be more explicitly against
Speaker 1: drugs because for in people's minds, there's very little distinction
Speaker 1: between the two I see. Another interesting thing to note
Speaker 1: is that when a former Philippine president, Gloria Arroyo in
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's, she also embarked on an anti
Speaker 1: drug campaign and her advisor was the Thurthday. So two
Speaker 1: decades ago, we have this mayor who is known as
Speaker 1: tough on crime and drugs, and that made him actually
Speaker 1: popular for people. It was seen as an approach that's effective,
Speaker 1: and I was reading as part of my research. I've
Speaker 1: been reading some of the the comments, like the lets
Speaker 1: to the editor at that time, and they were really
Speaker 1: supporting this approach. When another former President of the Philippines,
Speaker 1: Joseph Estrada, one of his cabinet members decided that they
Speaker 1: will shame suspected drug pushers by spray painting their houses
Speaker 1: just to shame them too. The surrender, some of the
Speaker 1: events that I was reading in the newspaper were saying,
Speaker 1: why you just stop there, You should kill them. As
Speaker 1: early as the early two thousand's late people were already
Speaker 1: demanding a kind of approach that the third time would
Speaker 1: be happy to absolutely implement. Two decades later, the drug
Speaker 1: was more than just the extra judicial killings. And my
Speaker 1: understanding is that is the number roughly thirty thousand extra
Speaker 1: judicial killings have been committed over the last six years.
Speaker 1: Is that a rough estimate. That's another issue that is
Speaker 1: embedded in the fact that me the outlets in the
Speaker 1: Philippines have been avoiding this topic, and they've stopped counting,
Speaker 1: partly because people have lost interest, unfortunately, and also partly
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to antagonize the the government. I
Speaker 1: believe there's only one academic group, the Third World Study
Speaker 1: Center in Dilemma, who has continued trying to count the numbers.
Speaker 1: So the estimates the wildly vary, but I think it's
Speaker 1: definitely in the tens of thousands, and the Philippine National
Speaker 1: Police itself says that there's at least several thousands in
Speaker 1: their what they call legitimate police operations. But these actually killings.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you read about policing, for example, in
Speaker 1: Brazil or in other parts of Latin America Central America,
Speaker 1: you often times read that extra killings are just kind
Speaker 1: of part of what the cops do, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know a bunch of you know, teenagers who are
Speaker 1: commuting all sorts of petty crime, and sometimes the cops
Speaker 1: will just shoot a bunch of them. You know. One
Speaker 1: gets the sense that there's a kind of ta sit
Speaker 1: public support for this until a kind of line is
Speaker 1: crossed where somebody who's obviously anything gets killed or a
Speaker 1: kid gets killed or you know, by standards, but the
Speaker 1: general support. Now, did you have the same thing in
Speaker 1: the Philippines with extraditional killing sort of being part of
Speaker 1: what cops did for many decades, going back to the
Speaker 1: Marcos years or even before. Yes, definitely, and that's not emphasized.
Speaker 1: That's some of the things that we are trying to
Speaker 1: emphasize as scholars, as local scholars, is that there's a
Speaker 1: history of both the violence and this attempt to control
Speaker 1: drugs in a very punitive way. So this definitely has
Speaker 1: the long standing history the very methods that are being
Speaker 1: used today. Writing in tandem, that's what they call, went
Speaker 1: to people writing in a motorcycle, just go to a
Speaker 1: community and should these people. That has absolutely been documented
Speaker 1: even before the third and the only difference being that
Speaker 1: the scale every day at some point dozens were being killed,
Speaker 1: hundreds were being reported by the week. And yes, to
Speaker 1: go back to your earlier point, it had about where
Speaker 1: they're turning points where there's something that's clearly lines being crossed.
Speaker 1: There's definitely some incidents during the drug war, most famously
Speaker 1: the killing of y and de Losantos and Desantos is
Speaker 1: the seventeen year old boy who was killed as part
Speaker 1: of this campaign. But there was a video footage of
Speaker 1: him being dragged by the police, contradicting their frequent refrain
Speaker 1: that no, they actually thought they were doing it in
Speaker 1: self defense. None laban, that's what the Filipino term for it,
Speaker 1: meaning they fought. But this boy was clearly being dragged
Speaker 1: by police and witnesses even a report that his last
Speaker 1: words were I have an example tomorrow. So this is
Speaker 1: clearly as student who has nothing to do with any
Speaker 1: kind of offense and he was killed despite begging for
Speaker 1: mercy by these cops. And that high profile case led
Speaker 1: to a boss in terms of the number of killings,
Speaker 1: but eventually it still went back. So there's a moment
Speaker 1: where the sort of the conscience of the public gets shocked,
Speaker 1: the media jumps on it, the cops pulled back. And
Speaker 1: what this happened about a year year and a half
Speaker 1: into do to Day's term. Yes, in August seventeen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's little over a year after the took office. You know,
Speaker 1: there's this feeling where you just wonder, is there just
Speaker 1: a kind of blood thirsty nous in Filipinos society that
Speaker 1: supports this kind of thing. Or are there. Filipino is
Speaker 1: really no different than many other societies in other parts
Speaker 1: of the world, where there's a lot of poverty and
Speaker 1: there's crime, and there's fear of crime and killing a
Speaker 1: bunch of poor people who are involved in joy or
Speaker 1: crime is just kind of like, you know, that's what
Speaker 1: you got to do to keep order. I mean, what
Speaker 1: is it Because my minor sty is to Turty right
Speaker 1: has remained popular but with strong majority support through all
Speaker 1: six years. If he's not allowed to run for office again,
Speaker 1: but if he was, he would probably win reelection, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's not just a matter of his suppressing his
Speaker 1: political opposition. There seems to be some real support for him.
Speaker 1: What is it that How do you explain this high
Speaker 1: levels of support for for him? That's a very important
Speaker 1: question that we really struggled with. But I would say
Speaker 1: I would argue that part of the answer lies in
Speaker 1: this decades of people having this moral panic around the
Speaker 1: image of this inspector, of this addict who for decades
Speaker 1: has been blamed by by media, has been blamed by politicians,
Speaker 1: has been blamed even by the church. Asked one of
Speaker 1: the evils of society. So this guy in of background
Speaker 1: that people really have a very low view of these
Speaker 1: so called addicts and the so in popular imagination, there's
Speaker 1: very little difference between someone who uses drugs and this addicted.
Speaker 1: This image of this addicquo is murderous. So all of
Speaker 1: these has succeeded in making people think that this is
Speaker 1: a lesser evil for the Philippines. The succeeded in making
Speaker 1: people feel it. Oh, but what about the human rights
Speaker 1: of the public. What about the human rights of the victims,
Speaker 1: the rape victims, the victims of kidnapping, of murder that
Speaker 1: these addicts have been doing for decades. So that kind
Speaker 1: of thinking, how however, simplistic and flawed, has allowed the
Speaker 1: third to justify his drug war. In fact, surveys say
Speaker 1: that people disagree with the release, but obviously they tolerated
Speaker 1: to appoint Then the third day, as you rightfully said,
Speaker 1: it remains popular and put very well win the elections.
Speaker 1: The stigmatization, the demonization of drug addicts, of junkies, of
Speaker 1: that whole thing. That's not just in the Philippines, right,
Speaker 1: It's not just in Asia. I mean we had in
Speaker 1: the United States. It's part of what drove mass incarceration,
Speaker 1: and these hobby punitty approaches you see in many parts
Speaker 1: of the world. But what's somewhat distinctive about the Philippines
Speaker 1: and the Philippines drug war is a the extent of
Speaker 1: the extradicial killings, right, which which is at a level
Speaker 1: you don't see in almost any of the countries except
Speaker 1: briefly in Thailand about twenty years ago. And the fact
Speaker 1: that the president himself is right out there on TV.
Speaker 1: You know that that that infamous quote of his hitler killed.
Speaker 1: He claimed three million Jews. I can kill three million
Speaker 1: drug addicts, and yet nobody castigates them for it. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, going out on the media and saying, hey, police,
Speaker 1: I don't want you to kill people in cold blood,
Speaker 1: but if they show the slightest resistance, well you have
Speaker 1: I permission to kill them, and I'll have your back.
Speaker 1: I mean, this very blatant public support from the very
Speaker 1: top for extradicial killing. I mean, that's something that is
Speaker 1: quite distinctive, and yet he's still immensely popular, it seems,
Speaker 1: among the Filipino public, you know, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: we can look around the world. We'll get into this
Speaker 1: shortly about other populists using outrageous language and all this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But the notion of a president directly
Speaker 1: condoning extradicial killings into the tens of thousands and yet
Speaker 1: retaining public support, what is that? Is there something distinctively
Speaker 1: Filipino about that, some high level of tolerance for this
Speaker 1: over the top rhetoric or or what. Well, that's really
Speaker 1: a mystery. That's a big mystery. But I think that
Speaker 1: again that if you look at the third athartic how
Speaker 1: no matter how exceptional, but if you look at the history,
Speaker 1: and I can give you several other examples of even
Speaker 1: the bishops, the athletic bishops in the Philippines calling drug
Speaker 1: users they are the word saboteurs and worthy of the
Speaker 1: highest punishment. They are physical irecks that are hopelessly doomed
Speaker 1: to ignominy. And that's a pastoral letter in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: So definitely the third test, the fact that he can
Speaker 1: get away with it is a puzzle. But the part
Speaker 1: of the puzzle is that we have to really extend
Speaker 1: our gaze into the history because so many other people
Speaker 1: have echoities language. And now with the elections coming up,
Speaker 1: some candidates are also saying that we should continue the
Speaker 1: extra ductional killing. If you look at the victims of
Speaker 1: these campaigns, they're mostly, almost exclusively, these are very poor
Speaker 1: young men in urban communities, low income urban communities. So
Speaker 1: for many Filipinos they may never meet anyone who has
Speaker 1: been a victim of these somempaigns. The very inequity of
Speaker 1: society is working in the favor of populist like the
Speaker 1: third Day, because people don't see it, people don't feel
Speaker 1: that people are getting killed because their communities are not affected.
Speaker 1: You know, I was trying to compare this to like
Speaker 1: what we've seen in the United States, especially going back
Speaker 1: to the drug war in the eighties and early nineties.
Speaker 1: And on the one hand, you know, with all the
Speaker 1: violence associated with the drug war, which at that time
Speaker 1: there was there were police killings, but huge numbers of killings,
Speaker 1: buying among people involved in the illicit drug markets, and
Speaker 1: sometimes killing innocence and by standards. But what you saw
Speaker 1: was that initially you had support, for example, among older
Speaker 1: people in the black communities for the tough crackdown the
Speaker 1: war on drugs approach. And this continued for a while,
Speaker 1: and then at some point, you know, people began to
Speaker 1: wake up and began to realize that the cops are
Speaker 1: doing nothing really to make neighbors any safer, But they
Speaker 1: were sending hundreds of thousands of young black kids up
Speaker 1: to you know, upstate prisons, and so you began to
Speaker 1: see it turning around on this. Now, you know, one
Speaker 1: could see sort of middle class Filipinos going, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is part of the inner city problem. Doesn't touch us.
Speaker 1: These are you know, drug addicts whatever. But within the
Speaker 1: communities where this is actually playing out, I mean, is
Speaker 1: your sense that in many of these communities there's still
Speaker 1: a sort of majority support for this or for certain
Speaker 1: aspects of this, or are the poor communities where people
Speaker 1: actually know people who are getting killed? Is there substantially
Speaker 1: more resistance to it? Even there, there's a lot of division,
Speaker 1: And some sociologists have interviewed people in communities where it
Speaker 1: is happening, and even there, maybe we can hear people
Speaker 1: saying that they support this because there's even more fear
Speaker 1: in these communities among the image of the the addict
Speaker 1: and in their mind people who commit crimes and people
Speaker 1: who use drugs. It's conflated as one. So there is
Speaker 1: still support those communities. The works. The third thing, even
Speaker 1: though there are also people's ordentizations, especially those who are
Speaker 1: families of victims of the drug war, So there's also
Speaker 1: resistance in those communities, but it's not the overwhelming resistance
Speaker 1: that you might expect. We'll be talking more after we
Speaker 1: hear this ADM. You know, I spent the last couple
Speaker 1: of days reading this book that you recently edited, called
Speaker 1: Drugs and Philippines Society, and it's fascinating and among the
Speaker 1: more fascinating chapters is won by you. And then I
Speaker 1: think there are a couple of else like this, you know,
Speaker 1: which point out that for many people, especially poor people,
Speaker 1: especially poor men, because I think it's much more men
Speaker 1: using the amphetamine which is I guess known as shabu
Speaker 1: and Philippines that many of them use it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's very functional that that the users make a distinction
Speaker 1: between you know, those people have control of their drug
Speaker 1: using those who lose control. You know that it's helpful
Speaker 1: for you know, doing all sorts of physical labors. It's
Speaker 1: all this sort of stuff. Yet at the same time,
Speaker 1: it seems like there's very little perception of the kind
Speaker 1: of functional and non addictive nature of much methymphetamine use
Speaker 1: within the Philippines, maybe even within poor communities. Yes, what
Speaker 1: when we see about schabo in particular, about the tempete
Speaker 1: in particular, is that it is exceptionally ascribed a particular effect.
Speaker 1: And even the Third Day has spoken about how shambo
Speaker 1: is really a different category of drugs. It really destroys
Speaker 1: the brain. It's unlike marijuana, it's unlike other drugs because
Speaker 1: if you're adictant to chabo or beyond rehabilitation. But that's
Speaker 1: the narrative coming from the Third d and I even
Speaker 1: wrote a paper dedicated to that, to that idea that
Speaker 1: chabu is exceptional among the different drugs, and that kind
Speaker 1: of exceptionalism is really quite common among the people that
Speaker 1: I have spoken with. So I think that's part of
Speaker 1: the part of the answer. And of course, if you
Speaker 1: think of chabou as this really evil drug, then committed
Speaker 1: in that narrative. Excluded in that narrative is the fact
Speaker 1: that people actually use it in their everyday lives as
Speaker 1: a functional drug. Aside from those that I have written
Speaker 1: in my scholarship, I have talked to taxi drivers, I
Speaker 1: have talk to truck drivers who say that they needed
Speaker 1: to stay awake. They call it there like a vitamin
Speaker 1: for them or like an energy drink for them. And
Speaker 1: it's quite common, not just in the Philippines but across
Speaker 1: the region. People use it for functional reasons and just
Speaker 1: well show more about this. I mean, do you see
Speaker 1: this among Is it mostly young men or the people
Speaker 1: successfully use shabu for years or even decades without developing
Speaker 1: a significant problem. Yeah, people use it, uh, young men,
Speaker 1: but also older men who are involved in very difficult jobs,
Speaker 1: jobs that require them to stay awake all night. We
Speaker 1: have even interviewed, for example, butchers who need to stay
Speaker 1: up at early hours too am so that they can
Speaker 1: prepare for the market. We have heard of fisher men
Speaker 1: who say that they take shaboo so they can dive
Speaker 1: deeper so that they can catch whatever they're cat like
Speaker 1: fish or or whatever seafood that they're looking for. So
Speaker 1: it's used in a variety of contexts, mostly economic, and
Speaker 1: people who do this say that they're not really addicted
Speaker 1: to If they change jobs, if they can find a
Speaker 1: better job, then they will stop using it because they're
Speaker 1: only using it in the context of this economic activities.
Speaker 1: I mean, if people are a functional user and they're
Speaker 1: using it for work, are they using it multiple times
Speaker 1: a day. Are they getting up in the morning using
Speaker 1: it and then in a lunch break and then waiter
Speaker 1: or what are the various patterns of use you see
Speaker 1: around this The ones that they observed did they just
Speaker 1: use it once in a day, like before they go
Speaker 1: to work. So, for example, in my original ethnography back
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, I observe them use it before they
Speaker 1: go to the port where they work all kinds of jobs,
Speaker 1: and then that will give them enough enough high until
Speaker 1: until the next day. So the challenge for them is
Speaker 1: how to fall asleep. And sometimes they drink beer they
Speaker 1: say that marijuana and help them fall asleep afterwards. So
Speaker 1: the effect for them apparently lasts for overnight. It was
Speaker 1: just shift for a second to marijuana because I remember
Speaker 1: reading this is even before deterte that on the one hand,
Speaker 1: I'd read about Philippines producing some of the better marijuana
Speaker 1: when found around the world in some parts of the country.
Speaker 1: And the other hand, I think the Philippines was one
Speaker 1: of the few countries that had this massive effort to
Speaker 1: have drug testing in the schools. I means, something we
Speaker 1: saw in the US, but the Philippines really to seem
Speaker 1: to be almost fanatically oriented towards this. So what is
Speaker 1: the perspective on on on cannabis and marijuana in the
Speaker 1: Philippines And it has it evolved kind of in a
Speaker 1: more open minded way or a more closed minded way
Speaker 1: over the last few decades. That's a very good question,
Speaker 1: because we're seeing this drug testing. In fact, that's really
Speaker 1: another problem for many of these young men that I interviewed.
Speaker 1: They want to quit. They want to quit the informal
Speaker 1: economy that they find themselves in that they want to
Speaker 1: seek jobs that are more part of the formal economy,
Speaker 1: for example, be working in fast food chains, working in
Speaker 1: the supermarkets as bag baggers. So they are seeking some
Speaker 1: of these jobs, and they're afraid of this drug testing
Speaker 1: because they feel that if they fail it, they will
Speaker 1: be targeted and they would be subjected either healings or
Speaker 1: incarceration depends on. So this drug testing, as you point out,
Speaker 1: is so common and it's so pervasive. Even the presidential
Speaker 1: candidates for the elections that are coming up, some of
Speaker 1: them even publicly underwent tests to show that they're not addicts.
Speaker 1: So again the inflation between us of any kind of
Speaker 1: drug and addict. So people talk about the drug war
Speaker 1: and talk about the healings, and rightfully so, it's the
Speaker 1: most brutal manifestation. But we also have this drug testing
Speaker 1: regime that has affected universities, affect that high schools administrators
Speaker 1: don't know what to do. There's no mechanism of what
Speaker 1: happens when someone that's positive, what do you do? And
Speaker 1: then there's also this incarce massive incarceration of people. I
Speaker 1: don't know, ethan if you saw this really harrowing photos
Speaker 1: of people crowded in the jails in the Philippines, it's
Speaker 1: really in humane. People die, dozen'ts die every month in
Speaker 1: Philippine prisons, in jails because of the inhumane conditions, and
Speaker 1: the drug war has only caused even more crowding in
Speaker 1: the jails in the Philippines. So that's another component of
Speaker 1: the drug wire. The attention typically is on the extradicial killings,
Speaker 1: but there is this whole other element to it, right,
Speaker 1: I mean people being arrested. I mean I think there's
Speaker 1: millions of people have been added to government lists. Right
Speaker 1: the cops are going door the door asking drug uses
Speaker 1: to turn themselves in or else and had been forced
Speaker 1: to give permission for a police to monitor them. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, it does sound like a fairly pernicious, almost
Speaker 1: fascist like approach to using the drug ward to basically,
Speaker 1: you know, survey millions of people in your country exactly.
Speaker 1: And people who object most prominently against these policies are
Speaker 1: also subject to punishments themselves. So until now, my dear friend,
Speaker 1: Senator Delima It is now in jail for more than
Speaker 1: five years and her only offense to the president is
Speaker 1: to call for an investigation of this drug wire and
Speaker 1: he's round surrounding for senator in May. But unfortunately, because
Speaker 1: of this vilification against her, because of the accreciations that
Speaker 1: she herself is somehow absurdly huddling drug lords, those oblisation
Speaker 1: and have taken at all on her political capital, and
Speaker 1: she's not even a contender despite her running for senator
Speaker 1: based on the surveys. She's bowling very low and she
Speaker 1: might lose in the electrons, unfortunately. But that goes to
Speaker 1: show you how years of this kind of almost fascist regime,
Speaker 1: as you said, people can get desensitized to it. The
Speaker 1: value of news about people getting killed no longer has
Speaker 1: the same vaillance as before. That's why it continues, and
Speaker 1: it drugs on because people have been desensitized to them.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, we're seeing more openness with talking
Speaker 1: about marijuana as a medical as a medical treatment, and
Speaker 1: there are movements in the Philippines that are vocally adverting
Speaker 1: for for marijuana. And then I really do CHURCHI himself
Speaker 1: had at one point said he was a fair medicalmara
Speaker 1: juana if they were buils in the Congress to legalized
Speaker 1: medical marijuana. But what's the latest with all of that
Speaker 1: is detergy did he back away from that? And is
Speaker 1: there still movement? And you know where is this issue
Speaker 1: in the Philippines right now? Yeah, you're you're right. The
Speaker 1: third really really at one point said that he's open
Speaker 1: to medical marijuana. But you know that the interesting thing
Speaker 1: with this cannabis legalization, which is why it's really worthy
Speaker 1: of study as well, is that the University of the
Speaker 1: Philippines College of Medicine, they themselves released a very strong
Speaker 1: statement opposing medical knnabis, calling it a serious threat to health,
Speaker 1: in response to when the Third said that he was
Speaker 1: open to it. So that goes to show how people
Speaker 1: prejudices against drugs. It's really so pervasive in the Philippines
Speaker 1: that even the academics are against any kind of discuss
Speaker 1: arton regarding uh medical kadaba event. So that's how different,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, Giddy. And it's not so different elsewhere.
Speaker 1: I mean the United States, the American Medical Association, many
Speaker 1: of the medical associations remained firmly against it. They didn't
Speaker 1: like the fact that it was a sort of plant medicine.
Speaker 1: They didn't like the cultural associations. So they were among
Speaker 1: the last to come on. And even when you looked
Speaker 1: at set of health ministries, I think in Jamaica or Mexico, Colombia,
Speaker 1: oftentimes they were they were the most problematic on the
Speaker 1: medical marijuana stuff. You had more of the support coming
Speaker 1: from foreign ministries or or people in other walks of life.
Speaker 1: So I don't think the Philippines is that distinctive. But
Speaker 1: when you look at Thailand, for example, moving forward on
Speaker 1: medical marijuana, and I think even some other countries opening
Speaker 1: up a discussion on this. In Philippines, is this actually
Speaker 1: making some real progress at this point or is it
Speaker 1: kind of be um? Did it sort of get stalled
Speaker 1: in the Congress and is going nowhere now? I think
Speaker 1: it got stalled, and I think it's partly because of
Speaker 1: this opposition coming from having from medical groups. Now, it's
Speaker 1: interesting about the Philippines thing. You know, in the US
Speaker 1: and some other countries, we typically say that the war
Speaker 1: on drugs is deeply in interwoven, if not all about
Speaker 1: race and racism. But in the Philippines, I mean there's
Speaker 1: all different sorts of ethnicities in the Philippines, right, But
Speaker 1: is there any ethnic or racial element to this or
Speaker 1: is it basically a issue of class of poverty and
Speaker 1: its ana of class. It is a war on the poor,
Speaker 1: and that's why it continues because in a way, it's
Speaker 1: really a continuation of what's been going on for so long.
Speaker 1: And people don't feel empathy because there there's a distant
Speaker 1: from the experiences of these people who are in low
Speaker 1: income communities. M So it does nothing involving having darker
Speaker 1: scan or being from a particular ethnic minority. It's basically
Speaker 1: flat out poverty and people associated with this stuff. It's
Speaker 1: an interesting sort of counter example to what we see
Speaker 1: in many other countries in the US, but even Latin
Speaker 1: American Europe where the racials I mensioned. You know, it
Speaker 1: is so powerful in all of this. Yes, yeah, And
Speaker 1: just to go back to your comment about whether the
Speaker 1: drug war is racialized in the Philippines, has ever been racialized.
Speaker 1: So if you go back in the nineteen seventies, for
Speaker 1: didn't Markos the dictate or at the time, he painted
Speaker 1: the drugs as a foreign threat and singling out drug
Speaker 1: lords from China, So Chinese drug lords as the ones
Speaker 1: bringing drugs to the country, and he dramatically televised the
Speaker 1: execution of a drug lord by firing squad in the
Speaker 1: first few months of his martial law I think January
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three. So that vein of this idea of
Speaker 1: drugs cutting from China has continued until today, especially with
Speaker 1: tensions between the Philippines and China because of the South
Speaker 1: China see West Philippines Heat territory parties. So there's that.
Speaker 1: So if I recall a few years into the drug war,
Speaker 1: you started to hear claims by Deterked I think and
Speaker 1: people around him and his supporters and the cops that
Speaker 1: it was working, you know, not just in terms of
Speaker 1: body counts and people getting killed or people admitting to
Speaker 1: being drug users and going off to facilities, but that
Speaker 1: robberies were down, rapes were down, other types of crime
Speaker 1: were down and people felt safer walking the streets in
Speaker 1: the poor neighborhoods um to what extent was this true?
Speaker 1: People claim that the police, of course will claim that
Speaker 1: that these are safer, but the ethnographic evidence points to
Speaker 1: the fact that the opposite is true. That there's actlutely
Speaker 1: a claimate of fear in many of these communities. They're
Speaker 1: afraid at night, especially because they might be targeted by
Speaker 1: the police or by these identified men who do their killings.
Speaker 1: So it's really the opposite of what they say. But
Speaker 1: perhaps some people who who don't themselves belong to those
Speaker 1: particular areas would say that it's safe, But the people
Speaker 1: themselves the ethnographic evidence, and some of it has been
Speaker 1: included in the book that I edited. Some of our
Speaker 1: writers have written about how a climate of fear and
Speaker 1: suspicion has pervaded these communities precisely because of the healings
Speaker 1: that are happening. And now now that the Third is
Speaker 1: weakening in terms of his political capital, now that the
Speaker 1: Third is a lame duck as an outgoing president, even
Speaker 1: the senators who used to support him are now saying
Speaker 1: that this druguar was a failure. Well, I mean, that's true.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I'm reading that the leading candidates,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess the leading candidate is the son
Speaker 1: of the former president and dictator, Fernando Marcos, whose nicknamed
Speaker 1: bang Bang Marcos. And the leading vice presidential candidate, who
Speaker 1: I gather doesn't run on the same ticket with the
Speaker 1: president but basically has allied with the president, is Sarah
Speaker 1: do turtey right, do Turte's daughter and and former mayor
Speaker 1: as well of de val in the South, the city
Speaker 1: where do Turte was mayor. I mean, it sounds like
Speaker 1: they're basically saying they're going to continue the drug war,
Speaker 1: maybe just with less of the rhetoric. And then that
Speaker 1: Filipino boxer, I forget what his name is, Many the
Speaker 1: Power or something like that. I mean, he's basically saying, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to kill the drug addicts, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to kill the pushers. And and then I saw
Speaker 1: a public opinion poll recently that a majority of Filipinos
Speaker 1: still support the drug war and that maybe even a
Speaker 1: majority regard the drug war as do Turkey's greatest legacy.
Speaker 1: So I mean, what's going on there. It sounds like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is seen generally speaking as a great
Speaker 1: success of of this soon to be ex president. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true that they're still significant support for the test
Speaker 1: drug war, and including the leading candidates, but now there's
Speaker 1: more dissenting voices, even though they still remain in the minority.
Speaker 1: For example, another another residential candidate, pan Philo laps and
Speaker 1: a former police chief, said that it is really a
Speaker 1: failure the drug war. So there's more voices now who
Speaker 1: are saying that, but they remain in the minority. And
Speaker 1: people like Bombo Marcos, who is the leading candidate and
Speaker 1: the son of this dictator that I mentioned earlier, who
Speaker 1: was the first I would think the first Philippine president
Speaker 1: to use drugs as a populist trop So he himself
Speaker 1: is saying that he will continue. But the third as started,
Speaker 1: and they're even saying that they will shield the third
Speaker 1: from investigations because now a case has been filed against
Speaker 1: him in the International Creaming or it. So one of
Speaker 1: the campaign questions to all this candidate is what will
Speaker 1: you do? Will you allow him to be arrested by
Speaker 1: the i c C. And of course this bumble market
Speaker 1: is saying that no, we will protect him. M hmm.
Speaker 1: So who has been the opposition. I mean, obviously academics
Speaker 1: like yourself, and obviously you know the senator who's been
Speaker 1: sitting in prison for five years, and I guess it
Speaker 1: was Maria Ressa, the journalists who have recently won the
Speaker 1: Nobel Peace Prize. Um. But say more about the opposition
Speaker 1: is their opposition within anybody in law enforcement? Is there
Speaker 1: are you know, where is the church, the Catholic Church,
Speaker 1: the Evangelical Church and all this um. Where are other
Speaker 1: you know, law association's folks like that? I mean, how
Speaker 1: where is that opposition and how does it manifest? So
Speaker 1: one of the impacts of the drag wire is that
Speaker 1: these organizations, including the church, including human rights groups, including lawyers,
Speaker 1: groups who were previously apathetic towards drugs or have held
Speaker 1: a negative view that's similar to to the other politicians before,
Speaker 1: but now that they have seen what's at staked with drugs,
Speaker 1: they have taken a more vocal position that they're against
Speaker 1: this kind of approach to drugs. The Catholic Church. I
Speaker 1: wrote a paper with the Sociology of Religion about how
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church, after spending decades really saying that drugs
Speaker 1: are a great evil that must be destroyed. They have
Speaker 1: basically changed their rhetoric to that of mercy and and redemption.
Speaker 1: So they have changed their rhetoric around drugs and are
Speaker 1: now vocally opposed to the drug war. The same with
Speaker 1: many groups, many academic and human rights organizations, civil society groups,
Speaker 1: So they're the ones who are calling for are stopping
Speaker 1: this kind of approach, but they're also not clear about
Speaker 1: what the alternative is. People talk about rehab as a
Speaker 1: magic word that as an alternative to the killings, but
Speaker 1: people don't have a clear idea of what this so
Speaker 1: called rehabilitation means because the rehab status school in the
Speaker 1: Philippines consists of compulsory detention centers and many institutions that
Speaker 1: are tantamount to being in prison. So it's not really
Speaker 1: the kind of approach that's needed. I believe in addressing drugs.
Speaker 1: And of course there are some political candidates, presidential candidates
Speaker 1: who have rightfully pointed out that we need to respond
Speaker 1: to the economic needs of many people that lead them
Speaker 1: to using drugs like shaboo in the first place. So
Speaker 1: there are some ideas that are coming out, but they're
Speaker 1: not very clear about what they mean when they say rehabilitation.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break here and go to an ad.
Speaker 1: It's always kind of been a challenge with stimulant drugs,
Speaker 1: I mean cocaine or amphetamine, right, because when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with opioids, with heroine, with fentonyl, you know, people can
Speaker 1: talk about getting people onto method on or rupern orphane
Speaker 1: or even setting up pharmaceutical you know, heroin programs. Um
Speaker 1: With stimulants, it's always been a lot trickier what does
Speaker 1: treatment mean in any kind of medical dimension? And you know,
Speaker 1: and I think throughout much of Asia the issue is
Speaker 1: focused around meth amphetamine. I remember there was some a
Speaker 1: while ago. I don't know if it's still the case
Speaker 1: where Vietnam had I think hundreds of thousands of people
Speaker 1: and these basically, you know, refurbished communist re education camps
Speaker 1: that had now become drug abuser re education camps. And
Speaker 1: you saw this phenomena in other countries as well. Does
Speaker 1: the Philippines also have tens or hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: people basically sitting in these large facilities? You know, we're
Speaker 1: drug treatment consists of a of a sermon by a
Speaker 1: priest and a lecture by a reformed adrect or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yes, there are substantial numbers of people who
Speaker 1: basically that's what they do in in these rehab centers.
Speaker 1: The third at one point ordered the construction of megaur
Speaker 1: rehab centers that can house thousands of people with that
Speaker 1: kind of of idea, Although some advocates of drug quality
Speaker 1: reform in the Heartry are saying that despite all of
Speaker 1: these developments, the past few years have actually also been
Speaker 1: an opportunity to talk about drugs and for the first
Speaker 1: time that people actually listen because people now recognize that
Speaker 1: lives are at stake with this, so ideas like community
Speaker 1: based rehabilitation, the psychologists, psychology but ssioners have stepped in
Speaker 1: to offer some kind of alternative approaches, but so far
Speaker 1: there's no consensus or finality as to what this might
Speaker 1: look like. And as you said, stimulants have always been
Speaker 1: challenging to begin with, so it will really take some
Speaker 1: time before people can come up with a clearer idea
Speaker 1: of what a response should look like. Where does harm
Speaker 1: reduction into all of this, Well, people have been advocating.
Speaker 1: There are some organizations in the Philippines who have been
Speaker 1: speaking of harm reduction as an approach, and even one
Speaker 1: senator even filed a bill that's inspired by harm reduction,
Speaker 1: although they didn't want to say it as harm reduction
Speaker 1: because that very term, it's very, very sensitive in the
Speaker 1: political discourse. There's one very influential Senator, Tita Soto, who
Speaker 1: is now running for vice president, who has declared that
Speaker 1: harm reduction is a it's like a Western idea that
Speaker 1: will poison the country. So they didn't call it exactly
Speaker 1: harm reduction, but the idea is there. There's some no
Speaker 1: matter how few. There are some lawmakers and there's some
Speaker 1: advocates that are pushing for this, and at the local
Speaker 1: government level there's much more weager room to the pilot
Speaker 1: these approaches. I mean, was there ever much of an
Speaker 1: issue with injection drug use in the Philippines, So if
Speaker 1: either stimulants or opioids. For a time there was injection
Speaker 1: drug use, and until now in Cembu, in the city
Speaker 1: of Sembu, people in jacnal buffin what is what is
Speaker 1: now Buffin? Yes, now buffin. I believe it's like a
Speaker 1: it's like a pain. It's more of a drug for pain,
Speaker 1: like an opioid, analgetic, but it's the drug of choice
Speaker 1: among people who inject drugs in Sembu City in the Philippines,
Speaker 1: and for a time there was a very big concern
Speaker 1: about HIV cases I seeing, so they piloted a needle
Speaker 1: syringe needle exchange program in that area, but it was
Speaker 1: quickly shut down by this influential senator said this of
Speaker 1: the third who said that there's a Western minded thinking
Speaker 1: that seeks to minimize the harm done to others by
Speaker 1: using the so called harmarductional strategy. So he basically said
Speaker 1: that Western solutions are not fit for Eastern mindset. We
Speaker 1: are losing hundreds of thousands of our youth to drugs
Speaker 1: and we cannot adopt something as disastros as this harmarductional strategy.
Speaker 1: So he opposed this nettle exchange program in Simbu, and
Speaker 1: people like him are likely to keep opposing these programs
Speaker 1: in the next few years at least. And are they
Speaker 1: aware that even countries like Malaysia and Indonesian, Vietnam and
Speaker 1: others have set up their own little needle exchange programs.
Speaker 1: I mean, is there an awareness that Asia has changed
Speaker 1: at least a little bit, even in the midst of
Speaker 1: all their drug wars, they still recognize the need for
Speaker 1: these programs. In a limited way to try to deal
Speaker 1: with HIV and such. Yeah, that kind of response wasn't
Speaker 1: captured or wasn't salient in those debates at that time.
Speaker 1: One of the challenges is to have voices who would
Speaker 1: actually prominent voices wh would astolutely refute prominently these arguments.
Speaker 1: We didn't see that that then, But now that the
Speaker 1: drug war of the third day has really awakened people
Speaker 1: into the need to respond, I believe that there will
Speaker 1: be more responses, there will be more effective arguments against
Speaker 1: such kinds of approaches. Do I hear a trace of
Speaker 1: optimism in your voice gidding about where things are headed?
Speaker 1: I would like to be optimistic. I think the fact
Speaker 1: that there are enough academics, for example, to even write
Speaker 1: a book about drugs, when if you look at the
Speaker 1: scholarship there was very few people who are doing this.
Speaker 1: That in itself is a statement that academics in the
Speaker 1: country are are not going to accept this status coude
Speaker 1: where we're going to going to challenge it and we
Speaker 1: will continue doing research. There are also civil society organizations
Speaker 1: that have continued to do work around these issues. And
Speaker 1: of course, having seen that the destruction and the death
Speaker 1: that the third has cost over the past six years
Speaker 1: obvious drug war. I think people are really aware of
Speaker 1: what's at stake with things like drug users are a
Speaker 1: subhumans or drug users are zombies. There will be unrehabilitation.
Speaker 1: These discourses can enable the killings of so many people,
Speaker 1: and they have to be challenged forcefully. They have to
Speaker 1: be challenged vigorously, and I think more people are aware
Speaker 1: of that, and that gives be optimizing. So, I mean
Speaker 1: I read about and hear about all of the attacks
Speaker 1: on the people who oppose the drug war. I mean
Speaker 1: de Tourte obviously going after you know, Senator Layla dilemma right,
Speaker 1: um or the attacks and Maria Arressa, the Nobel Prize
Speaker 1: winning journalists has dealt with. You know, they've got these
Speaker 1: what they called patriotic trollers, you know, the people on
Speaker 1: the internet who just gang up on anybody who speaks openly. Um.
Speaker 1: It seems that you know, you know, the church said,
Speaker 1: I'm happy they killed journalists, not just drug addicts. H
Speaker 1: I mean, haven't you been worried about getting into this
Speaker 1: line of work? I mean, if you had to deal
Speaker 1: with with challenges or or any levels of fear or
Speaker 1: threats of that sort. It's definitely I'm a big concerned.
Speaker 1: Just a few weeks ago, one of my colleagues who
Speaker 1: wrote about our religious organization, who was supporting the Third Day,
Speaker 1: receive a cyber relabel case against him, which is a
Speaker 1: criminal offense in the Philippines, and he now has to
Speaker 1: deal with that case. So the law has been weaponized
Speaker 1: against academics, has been weaponized against critics, and also the
Speaker 1: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, which I'm part of the
Speaker 1: board of that organization of investigative journalism, and at one
Speaker 1: point the presidential spokesperson basically declared that our organization was
Speaker 1: a communist front or plotting to overthrow the government. So
Speaker 1: they're outlandish agganizations and you have to deal with it. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: that's the climate right now in the Philippines. But I
Speaker 1: think that the stakes are are really are really so
Speaker 1: high that we cannot even let those threats stop us.
Speaker 1: Let me just following the churchy over these last six years,
Speaker 1: and obviously I've been focused on the drug who are
Speaker 1: in the way in which he is you use that
Speaker 1: and been successful with it, but also looking at his
Speaker 1: you know, overwhelming popularity, and then you look around you know,
Speaker 1: you see Orbon in Hungary, you know Bolson Narrow in Brazil,
Speaker 1: obviously putin um I mean even I mean literally, when
Speaker 1: Trump got elected some months after Deterday was elected back
Speaker 1: in you know, two people understood the reference I would
Speaker 1: talk about. I would describe, you know, Trump as Dode
Speaker 1: with orange hair, I mean, because the same kind of
Speaker 1: outrageous rhetoric and this kind of appealing to people's most
Speaker 1: based instincts. But it does sound like authoritarianism is really
Speaker 1: just gaining ground all around the world, and the Philippines,
Speaker 1: which was among the more democratic nations in Asia for
Speaker 1: many years, looks like it may be sliding down this
Speaker 1: slippery slope as well. What do you think, Well, what's
Speaker 1: truly global for sure in what's happening to the Philippine
Speaker 1: politics today is that candidates have weaponized the Internet too
Speaker 1: to further their propaganda. So if you think about the
Speaker 1: two leading candidates in the elections today, Bambo Marcus and
Speaker 1: Lenny Robredo, these two handidates actually already fought for the
Speaker 1: vice presidency in twenty sixteen, and Lenny Robredo one. So
Speaker 1: Bambo Marcus was defeated by a hair but was still
Speaker 1: defeated by Larry Robretto in What changed is that Bamma
Speaker 1: Marcus invested so much over the past several years in
Speaker 1: this information stargetting young people, creating TikTok videos, creating vlogs,
Speaker 1: YouTube videos, really weaponizing social media. So that has allowed
Speaker 1: him to be very popular today, notwithstanding the the fact
Speaker 1: that just a few decades ago his family basically plundered
Speaker 1: the whole country into bankruptcy and perpetrated so many human
Speaker 1: hearts abuses during his father's two decades right over the country.
Speaker 1: So there's that element to be mindful of that explains
Speaker 1: in part what's going on. And of course, although the
Speaker 1: third as a populist authoritarian and emerging twenty sixteen, there
Speaker 1: are procedents in the in the countries history of people
Speaker 1: who are also very populist and also received a lot
Speaker 1: of support, So that after Joseph Estrada, who was the
Speaker 1: president from thousand one until he was impeached, he ran
Speaker 1: for president again in twenty ten, and he nearly one.
Speaker 1: If not for this other son of Horizonatino who replaced
Speaker 1: for didn't Marcus when the dictator was outstead she was
Speaker 1: the one who who became the president, So there's really
Speaker 1: a precedent of people who are campaigning on very simplistic
Speaker 1: platforms but are also very popular and managing to win
Speaker 1: despite their past crime, past record of corruption, and even
Speaker 1: human has abuses. So in that sense, the Philippines, again,
Speaker 1: the thirdest Right is not really so much exceptional as
Speaker 1: it is a acculimination of what's been going on in
Speaker 1: Philippine politics for for a long time. Obviously, if this
Speaker 1: Bong book Marcos the Son of the Dictator wins, then
Speaker 1: there's really a lot of concern. I'm very concerned about
Speaker 1: the direction that the country will go, and that means
Speaker 1: more of this disdain for democracy, more of these relations
Speaker 1: of human rights and outright authority. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: if Lenny Robredo wins, who she's basically the leader of
Speaker 1: the opposition right now and they has managed to to
Speaker 1: galvanize various opposition groups, from the leftist groups to people
Speaker 1: who are from the Liberal Party and different other groups.
Speaker 1: If she wins, she has is one of the people
Speaker 1: who have spoken about the need for a humane approach
Speaker 1: to to drugs, So there's reason to hope that he
Speaker 1: will at least and do some of the damage that
Speaker 1: the Third has done so much will really depend on
Speaker 1: the elections that are coming. The fact that Lending Robreto
Speaker 1: managed to win in TwixT despite having traditional politicians as
Speaker 1: her opponents, speaks of the possibility that all hope it's
Speaker 1: not lost and that if she doesn't win in May,
Speaker 1: and the fact that she can still raise a significant
Speaker 1: movement means that the forces in the country who are
Speaker 1: concerned about democracy, about human rights, and about seeing the
Speaker 1: country succeed in many areas, including drugs. It's still a
Speaker 1: significant population and that can be h If not the leadership,
Speaker 1: then they can continue to be a prominent opposition in
Speaker 1: the years to come, and they can challenge whatever rehetord
Speaker 1: it will come our way. Do you think there's any
Speaker 1: hope that to Church or others will ever be held
Speaker 1: accountable for their drug war crimes. I doubt it at
Speaker 1: this point. The Third, even if he doesn't win, and
Speaker 1: in the unlikely event that his daughter doesn't twin, they
Speaker 1: still have a bailwick in their hometown of Davo City,
Speaker 1: where they will continue to command a lot of political capital,
Speaker 1: and they might continue to exert a lot of influence
Speaker 1: with whoever wins or the people who will be in power,
Speaker 1: so it will be very difficult to hold him accountable,
Speaker 1: even though the people who implemented this drug war alongside
Speaker 1: him will have some penalties like that they will not
Speaker 1: be able to travel in other countries probably and that
Speaker 1: might be some kind of sanction to them. But in
Speaker 1: terms of really holding him to account, it will take
Speaker 1: a lot of effort on the part of the country
Speaker 1: to to to do it. So no, I am not
Speaker 1: very optimistic that it will happen, but it's still important.
Speaker 1: It's still very important to continue with these efforts to
Speaker 1: put him into justice, whether or not they have a
Speaker 1: chance to succeed, because it's still important for the record.
Speaker 1: It's still important as a matter of history, historical record
Speaker 1: that they have been charged. So I hope it will
Speaker 1: still continue. And I think even if in the Philippines
Speaker 1: the odds are stacked against justice, there are some cases
Speaker 1: that go in our favor. For example, the Key and Delesantos,
Speaker 1: who I mentioned earlier as the seventh in year old
Speaker 1: boy who was filmed who was caught on camera being
Speaker 1: drugged by police officers who would kill him moments later.
Speaker 1: Those officers were convicted of murder. They were convicted They're
Speaker 1: the only probably at this point, the only case that
Speaker 1: has gone to trial. But the fact that they got
Speaker 1: convicted despite the third test commitment to these police obviosers
Speaker 1: that he will protect them means that justice has a chance.
Speaker 1: We just need to keep fighting for it. We just
Speaker 1: need to keep challenging this kind of drug war well
Speaker 1: getting I admired immensely your commitment to this and your
Speaker 1: courage and embarking on this line of work. I mean
Speaker 1: you and the others in journalism and the human rights
Speaker 1: organizations and others who are you know doing the hard
Speaker 1: work and trying to speak truth to power? Are you know,
Speaker 1: really doing the Lord's work here? So Wison, thank you
Speaker 1: ever so much for joining me on Psychoactive and all
Speaker 1: best wishes. Thank you, Ethan. It's really a privilege to
Speaker 1: join you today. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your
Speaker 1: friends about it, or you can write us a review
Speaker 1: at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We
Speaker 1: love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: share your own stories, comments and ideas, then leave us
Speaker 1: a message at one eight three three seven seven nine sixty.
Speaker 1: That's eight three three psycho zero, or you can email
Speaker 1: us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com or find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Ethan Natalman. You can also find contact
Speaker 1: information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me
Speaker 1: Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by Noham Osband and Josh Stain.
Speaker 1: The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus
Speaker 1: and Darren Aronovsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt
Speaker 1: Frederick from My Heart Radio and me Ethan Naedelman. Our
Speaker 1: music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to
Speaker 1: ab Brio, s F Bianca Grimshaw and Robert BP. Next
Speaker 1: week we'll be talking about Russia, by which I mean
Speaker 1: drug you, drug markets, drug policies, drug wars, all things
Speaker 1: drugs with anious rank perhaps Russia's leading harm reduction activists.
Speaker 1: It was just kind of normal for us witnessing the
Speaker 1: same thing every day for many years in Russia, and
Speaker 1: of course it was a huge strategedy and many people,
Speaker 1: like people did not get any support. They will promise support,
Speaker 1: they will promise that they will be taken to Russia.
Speaker 1: But even like the rebilitation centers and so on, and
Speaker 1: a few people were but a few people also died
Speaker 1: in this, like reputation programs in Russia, or like they
Speaker 1: run away, or it just never happens. Subscribe to Cycle
Speaker 1: Active now see it, don't miss it.