Lacson, Sotto accept dare, take drug test

Presidential aspirant Senator Panfilo Lacson and vice presidential running mate Senate President Vicente Sotto III undergo a drug test at the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) headquarters. Photos from Sotto’s office.

MANILA, Philippines — Amid swirling talks that an unnamed presidential candidate was using illegal drugs, aspirant Sen. Panfilo Lacson and his running mate, Senate President Vicente Sotto III, took the drug test at the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency office in Quezon City on Monday, with both yielding a negative result.

Lacson and Sotto subjected themselves to a random voluntary drug test, took a multi-drug screening procedure, which is supposedly capable of detecting all types of illegal substances in a human body.

“This is our way of walking the talk, because of the recent challenges. So, to cut all the talk, we came here, the Senate President and I,” he later told reporters.

Lacson said he was invited by Sotto to take the drug test, even if he was “1,000-percent” sure that he was not the presidential candidate that President Duterte alluded to as a cocaine user.

“Let’s just say it is our responsibility as candidates or prospective candidates to show that we lead by example,” he said.

Lacson, who is standard- bearer of Partido Reporma, dismissed insinuations that he was giving in to public pressure by choosing to take a voluntary “multi-drug testing.”

“So this is not only to detect shabu, marijuana, but all types of [illegal] drugs, but not the vitamin supplements we took,” he said.