SUPERVISED USE | A drug user is allowed to use his drug injecting paraphernalia inside a medically supervised room on the sidelines of the Harm Reduction International Conference 2023 in Melbourne, Australia, on April 15. (Photo by CONOR ASHLEY / Harm Reduction International)
MELBOURNE — For not continuing the violent drug war waged for six years by his predecessor, international drug policy advocates expressed hope that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will be more accepting of offers to engage in discussions for a humane approach to the narcotics problem in the Philippines.
“We have slightly higher hopes on Marcos. At least we haven’t seen an aggressive continuation of the Duterte regime’s drug war, so maybe there’s hope and that there’s more engagement to be done,” Naomi Burke-Shyne, executive director of Harm Reduction International (HRI), said during the 27th Harm Reduction International Conference 2023 (HR23) held from April 16 to April 19.
Shyne, who also served as conference chair, said the scale of violence under former President Rodrigo Duterte prompted global organizations such as HRI and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to contact their Philippine partners in the early years of his term to offer their help.
Speaking to journalists, Shyne recalled that “It was complex for us to move around that space, drawing attention to people who were interested to offer resistance” because the jails were already full while the street killings escalated as early as 2017, when she visited the country.
‘Encouraged’ by Duterte
“We got in touch with our local partners, making sure they knew that we were offering an international voice and doing negotiations with the help of UNHRC to put pressure on the Philippine government,” she said.
But Shyne lamented that “nothing could be fixed overnight with that level of violence and trauma.”
Data provided in 2021 to the International Criminal Court looking to investigate the situation in the Philippines, based on media and civil society reports, placed the number of drug war deaths between 12,000 and 30,000.
In an Inquirer interview, Helen Clark, a former prime minister of New Zealand and current chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP), said “the Philippines presented a total breach of international law with the arbitrary executions of small-scale drug users” during the Duterte administration from 2016 to 2022.
Halfway through Duterte’s tenure, Clark added, the revival of the death penalty was even brought up in Congress, “which was extremely troubling considering that it was outlawed under former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. But years after that, the street killings were encouraged by another president, Duterte.”
Clark said the change of government, with President Marcos taking over, may have slightly cooled off the violence but it is important now for the Philippines to “acknowledge that drug use is a reality and the state has the responsibility within its power to have it occur within a framework that puts people’s health and well-being first.”
Reducing demand
A Philippine government delegate to the conference, RJ Echeverri, deputy executive secretary for internal audit at the Office of the President, said Mr. Marcos’ drug policy had adopted “demand reduction” as a starting point.
“We are in a stage where we are talking to organizations and individuals who know this issue and who we can discuss what to do next in the campaign against illicit drugs,” Echeverri told the Inquirer. “But the government can assure (the people) that it is for harm reduction and not punitive measures.”
Dignified drug policies
The Marcos administration is also keen on learning from the experiences and best practices of other Southeast Asian nations in formulating a better drug policy, he added. Clark keynoted HR23, held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, and was joined by fellow GCDP commissioners Kgalema Molanthe, a former South African president, and Geoff Gallop, a former premier of Western Australia.
HRI convened the conference and gathered more than 1,200 health workers, activists, researchers, policymakers and civil society organizations from over 80 countries. With the theme “Strength in Solidarity,” it underscored the importance of working together as a global movement prodding governments to adopt dignified drug policies.
Clark called on all countries to end the criminalization and incarceration of people who use drugs since there are many options that can be considered in regulating drug use, as demonstrated in many countries by the way they regulate tobacco and alcohol.
“This is the principle of harm reduction that governments must understand and implement,” she said. “Harm reduction is minimizing the harms and risks. It has a wide scope of public health policies and practices that are meant to reduce the negative consequences and damage done by tobacco, alcohol, drugs and other addictive behaviors,” Clark said.
“All drugs have potential harms that is why we need harm reduction,” she said. She noted that globally, excessive use and unregulated practices have resulted in continuously high infections and transmissions of HIV and hepatitis, including broader social and health issues.
“People have been using substances for whatever reason they’ve used them for thousands of years. We’re not dealing with new issues here, but we’re dealing with totally inappropriate and wrong ways of tackling them,” Clark said.
‘No point criminalizing’
In Southeast Asia, Thailand has taken a small step in decriminalizing the use of cannabis (marijuana), she noted, but all the countries in the region are still “heavy prohibition regimes that put people in unsafe situations.”
“There’s no point in criminalizing. We need to consider what terms are useful and safe,” Clark said, citing regulations in Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and Uruguay that prescribe heroin and other drugs on a regulated and safe level of usage.
Australia, one of the earliest to take the harm reduction approach, showcased its best practices to conference delegates, particularly in Canberra and Melbourne where the use—in small amounts—of illicit drugs, such as MDMA, LSD, amphetamine, methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and cannabis has been decriminalized since October 2022.
Cited as an example were the medically supervised injection rooms set up in eastern Melbourne for persons who inject drugs (PWIDs), operated on the principle that health services should also focus on the prevention of drug overdose, public injecting, and, ultimately, crime and deaths.