Daily Archives: March 8, 2022

In the summer and early fall of 2020, as protests and riots swept across the United States, a new consensus began to emerge among progressive activists, writers and politicians. Given that black men, from George Floyd to Daniel Prude, were dying in drug and mental health-related altercations with law enforcement, perhaps police should not be handling these issues at all.

The writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, for instance, wondered whether people with guns should even be responding to mental health calls. Pilot projects were launched all over the country to replace police with civilian response teams for 911 calls involving mental health, drugs and homelessness. Congresswoman Katie Porter introduced a bill to pay states and cities to set up more such units, while her colleague Cori Bush introduced a bill that does much the same.In many cities, decriminalisation, long a rallying cry for progressive critics of policing, became standard operating procedure.

The activists are right that police cannot be the solution to mental illness and drug abuse, which overlap in about 50% of cases. But the programmes developed to replace law enforcement have had mixed results. Thats because in many of Americas progressive enclaves, the problem isnt that its the police who are responding to these emergencies. Its that there is little the police can legally do once they get there.

Lejon Butler is a tall, lean, black man who lives in Rodeo, a bedroom community in the North Bay Area. As a kid in the East Bay in the Eighties, he recalls going to school and being taught to Just Say No to drugs, then coming home and smelling the familiar chemical odour of freebased cocaine wafting through the air.

Lejons mother, Martin, who is now deceased, and his stepfather, Craig, were drug addicts. But Craig was such a high-functioning addict that he was able to conceal his use from his family for years. He ran a successful landscaping business while getting high every day, even trading services with one of his clients for Oxycontin. But a few years ago, he overdosed. After that, dementia set in.

By now Craig was living in Richmond, a working-class residential city in the East Bay. A few months before Lejons mother passed away, Craig had started to become violent towards her. When she died, in April 2021, he fell into a deep depression. He became aggressive and unpredictable. He threatened to kill his grandson with a samurai sword. He put a dagger to his own stomach and threatened to gut himself. On January 5 this year, he started a fire in his kitchen and then refused to leave the house, acting like nothing had happened. His family called 911.

The responding officer was Brian Lande, who, as part of the countys Mental Health Evaluation Team, specialises in handling these sorts of calls. Officer Lande had spoken to Craig only a few days earlier. He makes a point of checking in on people with mental illness and addiction issues when theyre not in crisis. That way hes able to get to know them as they really are, and not just when theyre sick.

When Lande arrived at Craigs house, Lejon, his wife, and his niece Dnaya were already outside. Lande intended to put a psychiatric hold on Craig, which would allow a hospital to keep him for up to 72 hours. He also recommended that Dnaya fill out an application for a restraining order, which might help persuade the hospital to keep him there instead of just releasing him within a few hours.

The family had been through this drill many times before. Craig fell neatly through a gap in the system. He had dementia, but that didnt count as a mental illness for the purposes of institutionalisation. He threatened his relatives lives, but he rarely actually attacked them, so the criminal justice system wasnt inclined to take him seriously. Someones going to have to get killed for them to do anything, Lejon told me.

An ambulance pulled up, and the EMTs walked over to get a rundown from the cops. Then they went inside with two of the officers and came out with Craig on a gurney. Craig is in his seventies, and looks, if anything, older. Hes a small, stout Japanese-American man with sheet-white hair and an unkempt beard and moustache. His belligerence with the family stopped as soon as the first responders arrived. Suddenly he was compliant and reasonable.

This, according to Lejon, was a tactic of his stepfathers. Hes a very intelligent man, Lejon said. Hisantics cease the moment hes interacting with the authorities. Craig was deemed stable and released back to the family that evening, at which point the chaos flared right back up again.

Its a pattern Officer Lande has seen time and again. People have crises, they go to the hospital, they get stabilised, he said. They agree to a treatment plan. Then theres no follow-up. He continued: Having a system of coercive mental healthcare thats limited to emergency psychiatric crises thats wedded strictly to voluntary participation youre condemning people to not getting the level of care they need. Youre condemning them to never get better.

Craig is drug-addicted and psychologically debilitated, but he at least has a house to sleep in and a family to keep tabs on him. Hundreds of thousands of Americans suffering mental illness and substance addiction lack even that basic structure to their lives. In recent months, weve seen what happens when the most violent among them are left to their demons: Americas cities have been struck by a series of grisly, unprovoked murders of women committed by homeless men.

The deceased in these homicides were not the only victims. The acutely mentally ill and drug-addicted are prisoners of their sicknesses, and despite all the money weve thrown at homelessness, our policies have amounted to a wholesale abandonment of these broken people to their grim fates.

In San Francisco, that chronic failure has become the citys official policy. An entire downtown neighbourhood, right in the heart of the city, has been effectively ceded to drug dealers, addicts and the mentally ill, all in the name of compassion. Users in the Tenderloin smoke fentanyl and shoot heroin on the sidewalks in broad daylight. When it rains, the train station there becomes a huge underground shooting gallery.

Following the spectacular failure of the War on Drugs, the prevailing ideology in the addiction treatment world became harm reduction. Harm reduction aims to respect the rights and dignity of drug addicts by destigmatising their drug use; to minimise the social harms that accompany drug addiction such as crime, incarceration and discrimination; to save lives by providing safeguards against overdoses; and to offer detoxification but not to require it as a condition for social services and subsidies. The motto of harm reduction is meeting people where theyre at, rather than compelling abstinence as a one-size-fits-all-solution.

But the approach has its critics, who view it as well-intentioned but ineffective. There are aspects of harm reduction that I support, and there are aspects that blur the lines between harm reduction and enabling, said Tom Wolf, a former addict in San Francisco. The most important thing is to have a full continuum of care that focuses on recovery, not an indefinite maintenance of ones addiction.

Out of thousands of people I saw maybe two get clean, said Ginny Burton, a former addict in Seattle, describing her work as a case manager employing the harm reduction model. What Ive seen actually work, and experienced myself, is separation. Separate the person from the destructive environment. Maintain that separation long enough for the person to get clarity. Then implement services based on priority of need.

This is how she got clean. Thank God I was arrested, she said. But in cities like Seattle and San Francisco, the enforcement policies that resulted in her arrest dont exist anymore. If I was loaded today, I wouldnt be able to pull myself out, she said. I wouldnt be arrested.

Tom Ostly, who was a prosecutor under the former San Francisco District Attorney, agrees that the states coercive powers are what are needed to jolt drug-addicted people into making the commitment to go clean. He once prosecuted a man who had walked up to a random man on the street, punched him in the face and broke his nose. The whole assault was caught on video. With his priors, the defendant was facing 12-15 years in prison.

It turned out the mans son had died, and the grief had turned the father into a drug addict. The day of the assault was the anniversary of his sons death. He had been on a self-destructive spiral. Facing 15 years in prison, he agreed to go to intensive drug rehab instead, where he received counselling for PTSD. Hes now taking classes to be a drug counsellor and will soon graduate from college.

Those kinds of prosecutions just dont happen anymore in San Francisco, where its considered more humane to allow people to continue killing themselves with drugs than to force them to stop. The current administration lets everyone out and gives them no services, said Ostly. Its bullshit.

Jail is a lousy place to get clean, and drug use in and of itself should not be treated as a crime. Those lessons have come across loud and clear from the failed War on Drugs. But in rejecting the politics of mass incarceration, weve also thrown out the very idea of coercion. And without that, were empty-handed in the struggle against addiction and the rampant crime that it engenders.

Drug addiction itself is coercive. Giving an addict the choice to continue to use or to voluntarily get clean is as illusory as pushing someone off a roof and giving them the choice to either fall or fly. The current approach in cities such as San Francisco, Officer Lande said, assumes people exercise full voluntary volition over their behaviour, and they dont. The decision to get clean has to be as non-optional as an addicts choice to continue using. It has to be forced.

That doesnt have to mean jail in fact, it shouldnt. Ginny was incarcerated repeatedly, but she finally got clean not through the criminal justice system but through her diversion to drug court and mandated rehabilitation. Nevertheless, coercion was an indispensable element in that successful intervention. The certainty of consequences is what finally broke through the fog of addiction.

You dont want to overly criminalise people, said Officer Lande. But you have to have some non-carceral way. Some judicial process beyond what the current system has.

Right now its very black or white, he continued. Youre either a psychotic or youre not. Youre either a grave danger to others or youre not. We dont have anything in that grey area. We just have to wait until people are hitting rock bottom before we can do something.

More:

Why America is losing the war on drugs - UnHerd

Baden Hicks battled drug addiction for 20 years, during which he says he survived 18 overdoses, five by the skin of his teeth.

He has experienced homelessness, been in and out of psychiatric wards and jail. But the 36-year-old wants to be known as more than just a drug addict.

Im a father, Im a brother, Im a son, Im a grandson, Im an uncle. Through my functional addict years, I got a boilermaker apprenticeship, I went to night school and did further studies in that. I worked in the dive industry for eight years. Im a scuba diver and a spear fisher, he tells Guardian Australia.

People dont choose to become drug addicts. Theres a reason why people generally use drugs. For me, I used drugs to deal with a lot of pain in my life, which really felt unbearable.

Having graduated from marijuana to cocaine, heroin, speed and ice, Hicks credits lawyer Michelle Goldberg from First Step with saving his life after she represented him in a case, introduced him to a mental health worker and helped him get a place in the services ResetLife program.

He has now been in recovery for 15 months and has completed a certificate IV in alcohol and other drugs, is volunteering at First Step and working in peer support at Turning Point, an addiction research and education centre in Richmond, Melbourne.

He has also spent time at Victorias parliament in recent weeks to garner support for a bill put forward by Reason party MP Fiona Patten to decriminalise drugs.

Under Pattens bill, to be debated on Wednesday, police would issue a compulsory notice and referral to drug education or treatment to people believed to have used or possessed a drug of dependence.

If they comply, there would be no finding of guilt and no recorded criminal outcome.

Patten has described the war on drugs as one of the most disastrous public policy failures in modern history, which has destroyed lives, wasted money and created a black market that has enriched organised criminals.

What were doing hasnt reduced arrests, it hasnt reduced harm. It hasnt reduced use, she tells Guardian Australia.

Decriminalisation is supported by the United Nations and the World Health Organization and in Australia by the Australian Medical Association, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the Royal Australian College of Physicians, as well as several key drug and alcohol bodies.

But getting politicians to buy in is another matter entirely. Both the Andrews government and the opposition have ruled out supporting Pattens bill.

We know the harmful impact illicit drug use can have on the community thats why Victoria police is constantly focused on targeting drug dealers and manufacturers to break up their criminal activity, a government spokesperson says.

Thats despite costings by the Parliamentary Budget Office that found Pattens proposal would save the state $33m between 2021/22 and 2024/25 and more in following years, thanks to a reduction in drug enforcement activity by courts and prisons, although this would be partially offset by a decrease in revenue of $1.3m due to a reduction in fines.

Patten describes her model as a streamlined version of whats in place in Portugal, which saw drops in problematic drug use, HIV and hepatitis infection rates, overdose deaths, drug-related crime and incarceration rates when it became the first country to decriminalise the possession and consumption of all illicit substances in 2001.

Victoria isnt the first Australian jurisdiction to debate decriminalisation. Possession of cannabis has been decriminalised in Australian Capital Territory, South Australia and Northern Territory for decades.

Theres also a private members bill before the ACT parliament that, if passed, would allow people found with a personal supply of drugs to pay a small fine rather than face criminal charges.

In New South Wales, a plan to introduce a three chance warning system for people found with small quantities of drugs was put to cabinet in December 2020 but opposed by several ministers including deputy premier John Barilaro and police minister David Elliott.

Patrick Lawrence, CEO of First Step, says in his 20 years working in the sector he has never met someone dealing with addiction who hasnt suffered trauma.

The greatest impact of our current drug laws is felt not by the recreational drug user but people who have survived childhood poverty, sexual abuse, homelessness and the absence of love and bonding, he says.

According to the Victoria Police Drug Strategy 2020/2025, police are focused on targeting drug dealers and manufacturers to break up their criminal activity and connecting those suffering addiction with treatment and support services.

The strategy states drug problems are first and foremost health issues and urges officers to show empathy: Drug users could be our children, members of our family, our friends or people who have lost their way. When we see the human, we will see the way forward.

Greg Denham was part of Victoria police in the mid-1990s when a drug policy expert committee set up by then-premier Jeff Kennett recommended the adoption of a harm-minimisation approach.

The committee, headed by academic David Penington, also called for the use and possession of small amounts of cannabis no longer to be an offence, while heroin and other drugs to remain illegal, but with the use of cautions and referral to drug treatment centres for the first offence.

Diversions were introduced and were being used in 80% of circumstances, Denham says.

At the time police were advised that they should use it as often as they can, that a person can get more than one drug diversion. But a lot of police started to say Well, why should we give them a second chance? Why should we give them a slap on the wrist so many times? he says, noting diversions are currently being used in 20% of circumstances.

We need policies that are actually enshrined in law rather than just words that can be easily ignored and disregarded.

Denham says the state has slipped backwards when it comes to drug policy reform and blames politicians.

Its almost become a taboo topic. Theyre so concerned their words may be misconstrued or they may be the next headline in the tabloid press, Denham says.

The Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt, however, maintains Pattens bill is not needed, given officers have been issuing cautions and diverting people into treatment programs for many years.

To be quite honest the settings at the moment are quite balanced. Its simply a fallacy to suggest that low-level drug users are all going to jail, he told reporters last month.

Patten, who has successfully led campaigns on other social reforms, including the Richmond supervised injecting room, the enactment of the nations first assisted dying laws and most recently, the decriminalisation of sex work, concedes her bill wont pass without the support of one of the major parties.

But she is hopeful for a commitment to progress, potentially through a trial, which wouldnt require legislation.

On Hickss right arm is a tattoo of a moral compass. Instead of coordinates, he is guided by morality, wisdom, humility and courage. He hopes politicians will take the same approach.

I hear politicians say they want to focus on mental health and physical health issues. My mental health issues and physical issues have been caused by addiction. You treat addiction and then youre going to be treating mental illness, he says.

You treat addiction, you change peoples lives.

Crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14.

The National Alcohol and Other Drug hotline is at 1800 250 015; families and friends can seek help at Family Drug Support Australia at 1300 368 186.

The Opioid Treatment Line is at 1800 642 428 or call the National Alcohol and Other Drug hotline on 1800 250 015.

Originally posted here:

'People don't choose to become addicts': the push to end Victoria's war on drugs - The Guardian

Toekies residents expressed their disappointment in governments failure to help rid the streets of drugs and other issues in the area.

Executive Mayor of the West Rand District Municipality (WRDM) Hullet Hild; MMC for Health and Social Development, Una Dickson; and Brigadier Mashole Jacob Manamela, the Randfontein Police station commander were among the panellists during the meeting spearheaded by Gauteng MEC for Community of Safety, Faith Mazibuko.

Also read: No woman gives birth to an addict and no father raises a gangster MEC to Toekies community

The venue of the meeting on Wednesday March 2 was the Emmanuel New Life Centre.

Residents took to the floor and spoke out about the many recreational facilities in Toekomsrus that had been neglected and turned into white elephants, resulting in youngsters turning to drugs to pass the time.

They said such circumstances were a breeding ground for thugs and lawlessness, exacerbated by the increasing unemployment among the youth who have the potential to do much better.

Residents said police had failed them, adding that although drug dealers were arrested, theyd soon be seen roaming the streets freely and continuing to cause destruction among the youth of the area, many of whom were suffering irreversible effects of prolonged substance abuse.

They decried the fact that although there were facilities that could be used as a good distraction, they had been neglected and no one would be willing to give answers as to why theyve not been upgraded or revived to nurture those who have good potential to excel in sport.

When it comes to fighting crime, residents said theyre working in silos, and even though their common goal was to combat crime, a collective entity had to be establish to clean up the streets effectively.

Another participant said the issue of drugs in the area had become out of hand so much that there was a house in Toekomsrus where users were known to be queuing to get their fix in broad daylight.

The resident who cannot be named for her protection said she had since taken it upon herself to chase users away. The woman who is selling the drugs there is even swearing at me.

My son was one of the drug victims and hes not normal anymore, and I have to face that every day. If we dont act against drugs now there will no longer be a future for our children as these drugs are finishing our children, the woman said.

Conrad Moses was upset that resolving the matter had not been given the serious attention it warranted, saying whats happening in Toekomsrus was no laughing matter.

We dont know how many millions were spent on the stadium, but today it looks much worse. How are we going to prevent crime if our children dont play sport? Moses asked.

Another resident spoke about the lack of response from the police, saying the community was at the mercy of young children with unlicensed firearms who were desperate to make a quick buck, and were capable of doing anything for it.

Enrique Bhana of WAWA expressed his disappointed because the MEC was not even aware of WAWAs existence in the West Rand region doing its bit to help.

As a former professional soccer player, it pains me to see our facilities in such a state of decay. We cant even help kids who have the potential for sport because of whats going on. Years ago soccer legends came from here, but today we dont have proper facilities, Bhana said.

Desmond Lephale said he had lost many potential boxers to drugs.

Bruce Nimmerhoudt, MMC for Human Settlement in the Rand West City Local Municipality, spoke in his personal capacity and expressed his wish that the engagement with the MEC was not just another exercise of all talk and no action. I am asking for an open-door policy with communication thats going to be robust and not just happen once in a blue moon, or once every five years. We should have practical workshops to find practical solutions that will address and speak to the challenges of this community.

Nimmerhoudt went on to criticise Randfontein Police management based on the fact that their crime statistics had shown an increase, which he said was a clear indication that police had failed the community.

Views of those like Dalmain Hogans were welcomed as he suggested to the MEC to take those from rehab centres into recyclables centres, where funds could be raised to clean and revive public facilities, and promote agriculture to help impoverished families put food on the table.

In his response to some of the issue raised on crime, Brigadier Mashole Jacob Manamela, the Randfontein Police station commander said the police had noted every concern that was raised in the meeting.

We encourage people that when they intend to work with us, they should do so through the CPF.

We also have many complaints from parents who are being victimised by their children as they demanded their next fix and weve tried our best but we cant be a solution to every problem in the community. Parents must also take full responsibility for their own children, because if we as parents let children to do as they please, it is obvious theyre going to do the wrong things, Manamela said.

Manamela furthered responded that their high statistics reflected the fact that the police were attending to the issue, but also admitted that the war against drugs was far from over.

MEC Mazibuko who closed the meeting said the Gauteng Department of Community Safetys safety plan strategy is underway.

We will demand a report from those who have been assigned with this task, and if they underperform we will show them the door, MEC Mazibuko said.

The rest is here:

The war on drugs: Toekies residents take a strong stand - Randfontein Herald

Barely a month into his new job as president of the Philippines and Rodrigo Duterte was dressing down the worlds most powerful. In May 2016, when the Popes visit to the country created traffic jams in Manila, the president lambasted him as a son of a whore a once unthinkable feat in the worlds third most Catholic nation. Months later, when President Obama criticized the human toll of the Philippine Drug War, Duterte likewise called him a bastard and suggested he go to hell. The European Union didnt even stand a chance: its condemnation was met with the casual flash of two middle fingers. Dont fuck with us, the Philippine leader bristled as he threatened to eject 12 of the European ambassadors from the country.

Everyone, it seems, has incurred Dutertes wrath, including, and perhaps mostly vehemently, Filipino detractors. In 2017, the regime arrested Senator Leila DeLima, the chair of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights, who unearthed damning information about Dutertes Davao death squads. The journalist, and now Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Maria Ressa was also targeted, along with her news organization, Rappler, for reporting on the drug wars casualties and challenging police impunity.

Duterte quickly became known as the Trump of the East for his vulgar outbursts and authoritarian tendencies. Yet unlike Trump, Dutertes popularity seemed invincible. In fact, even as the pandemic squeezed Filipinos wallets and last breaths, the punisher of Southeast Asia enjoyed a 91 percent approval rating.

These apparent contradictions make up the heart of The Sovereign Trickster, a new book from University of Washington historian Vicente Rafael. In covering topics ranging from Dutertes obscene speeches that are greeted with laughter to the mass indifference of the Philippine public toward extrajudicial deaths, Rafaels essays lend analytical clarity to the chaotic politics of a democracy in retreat. As Dutertes term nears its end and the return of the Marcos family looms with the May elections, I talked with Rafael about the presidents legacy: his Teflon popularity, his regime of violence and fear, and the significance of his likely successor.

Patrick Peralta: First, I want to talk about the books title, The Sovereign Trickster. Tell me more about how you arrived at this name, and why you chose to frame President Duterte in this way.

Vicente Rafael

Vicente Rafael: Ive always been interested in the history of the present. In fact, you could say that everything Ive written about tries to think about history as something that speaks to certain moments that were living through. So this book on Duterte is part and parcel of that concern with thinking historically about the present.

Before COVID, I used to go to the Philippines, and of course you couldnt go there after 2016 without running into these questions of Duterte: who is he, why is he doing what hes doing, why is he so popular? And so I didnt set out to write a book about Duterte; at the time, I was writing shorter op-eds about him. I was very fascinated by his style, by his politics, and I was trying to situate him within the history of Philippine political thought. And out of the short pieces, what grew were the longer essays.

Another reason why I ended up writing about Duterte is because at the time I was teaching the work of the philosopher Michel Foucault, which I found to be very useful for situating the political aesthetic of Duterte: his style of rule, the way he governs, the overlapping and contradictory ways in which he tries to assert his sovereignty and power. Hence, the title of the book, The Sovereign Trickster, which encapsulates the paradoxical way in which Duterte seeks to govern the Philippines. On the one hand, he draws upon notions of sovereignty that are linked to fantasies of absolutist rule, but on the other hand, he twists sovereignty in such a way that he subverts his authority only in order to assert it. The latter is the style of a certain kind of tricksterism.

Peralta: Speaking of tricksterism, the second half of Dutertes sovereign trickster regime moves beyond coercion and focuses on the presidents use of humor to foster conviviality against his political enemies. Do you know of any other instances in history or world affairs in which humor is used for violent or authoritarian ends?

Rafael: Certainly the stuff philosopher Achille Mbembe talks about when he talks about African rulers, wherein a certain kind of conviviality is established between rulers and ruled by way of this display of vulgarity. He talks about the aesthetic of vulgarity as essential to the establishment of hegemony, wherein people consent to incivility by joking among each other. You can see that in the United States with Donald Trump, who can be very funny. He has a way of establishing himself as an entertainer figure. After all, he comes from the reality TV world, so theres a certain way hes able to project a kind of humor that is part of his charmwith his supporters. Bolsonaro, Im told, is the same. He also has a way of projecting a kind of humorous persona. Im not sure about Putin or Xi, maybe Modi. But I wouldnt be surprised if humor is one of the ways in which a certain kind of intimacy is established between rulers and ruled.

All of this goes into the formation of what I call the authoritarian imaginary. If youre going to determine the popularity of an authoritarian figure, you have to be able to ask what he imagines himself doing, and what his supporters imagine themselves doing when theyre in his presence. So theres a kind of mirroring relationship that circulates between rulers and ruled. One of the things people dont get about authoritarians is their weaponization of humor, which adds to their charm and disarms you, making it very difficult for you to dissent when youre confronted with it.

Peralta: In your chapter Dutertes Phallus: On the Aesthetics of Authoritarian Vulgarity, you write about how Duterte exercises the authoritarian phallus, or forms of obscenity that project his power and allow him to govern by fear. Among other tactics, he curses his critics, praises his own virility, boasts about his penis size, and fantasizes about rape. At the same time, as you argue, Duterte is able to create a sense of community among Filipinos who enjoy his vulgarity, laugh at his sexual innuendos, and continuously lend him enthusiastic public support. What does this embrace of vulgar authoritarianism say about our current politics and the electoral audiences that shape them? Has personality so subsumed policy?

Rafael: First of all, the vulgarity and the humor are crucial elements of Dutertes trickster persona. If you read the ethnographic literature on tricksterism, youll see that the trickster shares some characteristics with the authoritarian: the trickster is vulgar, hes funny, and he pulls all kinds of pranks, if you will, in order to win sexual conquests, accumulate money, defy authority, etc. So, its this phallic humor thats crucial to his trickster persona.

Second, these vulgar and sexist jokes are not something unusual with Duterte; its something you will see in a lot of local political gatherings. This is characteristic of so much of Filipino male culture; patriarchy in the Philippines precisely thrives on this kind of sexism and misogyny. Its the sort of thing you might encounter if youre sitting around the sari sari store (convenience store) drinking and joking and trying to one-up one another, which is what a lot of these gatherings are about. A lot of it is status competition. And Duterte certainly comes out of this provincial atmosphere, so the notion of humor as an attempt to both establish authority and status and form a sense of solidarity and conviviality is nothing new.

But what Duterte does, though, is elevate a practice usually kept within small circles to the national scale. And I think its precisely respectable middle class people who dont participate in these kinds of ritual one-upmanship who are shocked, but, in fact, the people in Dutertes audiences are laughing. So, one of the things Duterte does is he opens up, or makes visible, a certain kind of class cleavage.

Peralta: Like many people, Im really puzzled as to how Dutertes obscene challenges to morality are popular in the third most Catholic nation in the world. What explains this apparent contradiction?

Rafael: Again, Duterte makes visible something thats always been there, which is this tension between devout followers of the Church and its hierarchy and those who might be considered culturally Catholic, or simply raised as Catholic. I would submit to you that the great majority of Filipinos are cultural Catholics: they pray if they need something, they have these devotions to saints in order to seek protection and favors, and so forth.

The other thing is that theres enough resentment in the Philippines towards a kind of clerical order that tends to be very conservative, self-righteous, and asserts its authority to mold behavior to conduct conduct. Sometimes that resentment wells up, and I think Duterte is a figure that taps into that resentment.

Also, in the case of Duterte, his resentment of the Church is a very personal one. In one of the books chapters, Dutertes Phallus, I talk about how he was molested as a 14-year-old teenager by an American Jesuit priest, and I dont think hes ever gotten over that. Its a trauma that gnaws at him, which is why he constantly tells that story to people as a way of trying to come to grips with it. And when people hear it, they laugh, and I think they laugh because it wouldnt be surprising if many people in the audience were also molested. They share that dilemma, that trauma, with Duterte. So here, there is a political as well as a personal reason to be anti-Church.

Peralta: Your chapter Photography and the Biopolitics of Fear examines the unique role and work of photojournalists who document the Philippine Drug Wars indiscriminate and often nightly killings. What unique legacies do you think Dutertes drug war will leave?

Rafael: You can think of Philippine society as one that is constituted by all kinds of wars: counterinsurgent wars, revolutions, war on crime, war on terror. And so the war on drugs follows in the wake of, for example, anti-communist wars and wars against gangs. Theres also a brutal war against Muslims (in the Philippines, the Moros) and indigenous peoples (in the Philippines, the Lumads). So, I dont want to make it seem like the war on drugs is sui generis or brand new. Its not. It comes from this long history of warfare thats constitutive of Philippine society, which is why I talk about the war on drugs as much as a class war that victimizes the poor and, even more, as a civil war because of the lines drawn. It is not only rich people against poor people, but poor people against poor people. Many of the cops and vigilantes that kill these drug dealers and users are from the same class.

The second thing in terms of the legacy of this war against drugs is that it is characterized by, of course, the prevalence of extrajudicial killings. With Duterte, what you have is the amplification and intensification of extrajudicial killings. Again, extrajudicial killings have been par for the course for earlier administrations. But with Duterte, theres a certain kind of celebration of the hypervisibility of these killings. What I think is happening now, though, is that theyre becoming so commonplace to the point of being banal. And lets admit it: from 2016 to 2018, it was pretty nerve-wracking and traumatic, but after 2018, there were almost no more photographs and the reporting became very scattered. Its still happening, and all throughout the COVID pandemic, but people seem to have lost interest. This normalization is one of the legacies of Dutertes drug war. Vigilantism will continue long after Duterte is gone, especially if Duterte is not brought up on charges in the International Criminal Court (ICC), which I doubt he will be. People will try to put this behind us, but its still happening.

Peralta: For months, BongBong Marcos has been the frontrunner in the 2022 Philippine presidential race. There are multiple similarities between him and Duterte: Marcos Jr. is a dictators son; Duterte is a dictator; Marcos Jr. has deflected accusations of his familys ill-gotten wealth; Duterte has had his own corruption scandals. And both have armies of social media supporters. Yet the appeal of the two politicians appears different: Marcos Jr., like Marcos Sr., is composed, measured, and glamorous while Duterte is coarse, meandering, and modest. Despite their controversial backgrounds and stylistic differences, what is it about Marcos and Duterte that speaks so strongly to the Filipino electorate? Is Marcos also exercising the authoritarian phallus to win over voters?

Rafael: I dont think BongBong is exercising the phallus; Sara probably has a bigger dick than him, so to speak. But its very interesting, the current situation. Duterte has no love lost with BongBong; hes criticized BongBong and called him out as a drug user, which he is. Duterte has no respect for BongBong; he says the senator hasnt done anything for the country, that hes very lazy, a mommas boy. Also, if you look at the campaign, youll notice it has a long history. YouTube is the site of a lot of his campaign activity, which goes all the way back to 2012 when you could see them paving the way with revisionist histories of martial law, with very PR-type videos of their family, and so forth.

And, of course, theres the role of Cambridge Analytica, which has been hired by the Marcoses to do a lot of their social media work and trolling. So, its a very complex operation going on, and one of the ways to understand his popularity isnt because BongBong has personal charisma he has none but that his charisma has been completely manufactured through social media and Cambridge Analytica. Also, because the Marcoses have billions and billions of dollars of plunder, BongBong has been giving regular monthly pay-offs to local officials. Were not talking about one-time payments as the election approaches. This has been going on for a couple of years. Everyone from council members to barangay (village) captains to municipal mayors has been getting envelopes of support from the Marcoses. And when you have local officials supporting a particular candidate, its not hard to mobilize support from everybody else in the community because some of that money is often dispersed to those people.

So you have to understand BongBongs popularity as the result of a much longer history of campaigning and the presence of unlimited amounts of plundered cash. Its understandable. He doesnt like to debate, he doesnt want to be in the public eye. For him, the less said, the better. This makes him very different from Duterte. You could argue that Duterte came to power on the strength of his own charisma, whether or not you agree with him. BongBong has nothing to offer.

Peralta: To close, you emphasize that your book is diagnostic rather than prescriptive. In other words, you seek to explain Philippine political life under Duterte and how we arrived at this moment instead of recommending a solution or method to resist him. Yet with a President BongBong Marcos and a Vice President Sara Duterte on the horizon, do you think the Philippines can overcome the kind of crass and cruel politics Duterte unleashed?

Rafael: First of all, Duterte certainly nationalized and popularized that style of politics, but its not unique to him. Its quite common among local politicians. So will it change? Probably not because its so deeply rooted; its a certain kind of vernacular politics. In the books conclusion, I draw from a very rich ethnographic study of Bagong Silang a slum in Caloocan City, Manila and you can certainly project that outwards and see that political style happening in other places in the Philippines. And not just among poor communities, you can probably see that happening in more middle-class and wealthier communities.

So, theres a certain kind of post-colonial Philippine political culture that still relies on patron-client relations, fantasies of revenge in order to deliver justice, seeing rights in terms of the rights of the wealthy as opposed to the rights of the poor and disenfranchised.

And why does this happen? I think it occurs against the backdrop of prevailing inequality, of a very deep ambivalence towards democracy, where, on the one hand, you have a desire for more freedom, and on the other hand, a nervousness towards or rejection of democracy in favor of something like security. In the end, overcoming Dutertismo will require social revolution, and Filipinos have tried and failed many times, which is why the book ends on a pessimistic note.

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Fear and Loathing in Duterte's Philippines: An Interview with Vicente Rafael - FPIF - Foreign Policy In Focus

Sarah Helm, executive director of the NZ Drug Foundation, is one of many New Zealand fans of the US teen drama Euphoria. So how does she feel about the way it depicts drug use?

Contains spoilers for the season two finale of Euphoria.

This week, fans of the US TV drama Euphoria, me included, were glued to our screens for the agonising finale of season two. Hearts in mouths, we watched as lovable good/bad-boy Fezco saw his brother Ashtray be shot repeatedly by a team of armed police, and messed-up bad/good-boy Nate was driven by his raging internalised homophobia to confront his newly out father Cal.

All of this drama left Rues statement about staying clean for the rest of the year as something of a sidebar, a surprising turn given that her addiction issues have been the main storyline of much of the show so far.

Zendayas portrayal of the attractive and magnetic Rue and arguably also Angus Cloud as Fezco, Dominic Fike as Elliot, and other characters have led to accusations that Euphoria glamorises drug use. The trouble with these takes is that they miss the point that art often reflects reality albeit, in Euphorias case, a distorted, hyper-real version. In the United States right now, thousands of Americans are dying each month due to an opioid epidemic that is spurred on by the inhumane and racist war on drugs, a poorly regulated pharmaceutical industry, a privatised health system, and more specifically, the drug fentanyl entering the black market. Powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl, and its analogues, are causing alarming numbers of drug deaths in communities across North America and Europe.

And so in that context, it makes sense that a US TV show features a young lead character who forms an addiction to prescription pharmaceuticals and other illicitly acquired substances, and is then introduced to fentanyl. Still, this is drama, not documentary, and for all its attempts at verisimilitude, Euphoria cant stop itself romanticising drug use at times. For those who understand the pain inflicted by fentanyl, perhaps the most disturbing line in the entire series so far is the one uttered by Rue in season one: There is not a thing on planet Earth that compares tofentanyl, she says, except Jules. Its a good line but, to me, comparing the romantic and sexual allure of a characters girlfriend to the devastating harms of opioid addiction crosses the line into glamourising drug use.

New Zealand audiences experience Rues storyline in a very different way to those watching in the US. These are not our stories. Thankfully, we havent had a fentanyl crisis here although my colleagues and I live in fear of this possibility, as NZ is grossly under-prepared. Our support options here are very different to those portrayed in the series, including alcohol and other drug practitioners who work as part of school support teams.

One of my biggest issues with Euphorias depiction of drug use is the way it perpetuates some aspects of the failed war on drugs, using stigmatising language that New Zealanders are now used to hearing from American politicians and popular culture. While we empathise with Rue, we still hear that she is striving to be clean, implying that as a drug user she is dirty and that a pure body is the only acceptable state. In fact, many people who use treatment services chose to reduce their use of drugs rather than abstain forever. For some, this is an acceptable outcome and often results in drug harm being significantly reduced. For Rue, and some real-life drug users, abstinence is the only option. But this clean/dirty dichotomy, one of the many myths arising from the war on drugs, does not help anyone.

It is also worth noting that most people who use drugs do not experience addiction. In fact the UN estimates about 90% of people who use drugs do not experience serious harm.

So what does Euphoria get really right on drug use? For one, the stories of both Rue and Fezco demonstrate an important truth: that underpinning the more harmful aspects of drug use can be trauma, parental loss and unmet social and health needs. Meanwhile, we see other characters consume drugs and alcohol with a range of impacts from pure hedonistic pleasure, through to acute incidents and emergencies. The acute incidents are probably much more dramatic than most peoples real experiences, but even showing drug use without it automatically being linked to the myth of one hit and youre hooked is progress.

If youre a parent, should you be worried that your kids are watching Euphoria? To be honest, Id have some concerns fortunately, my own kids are too young to be interested. But our team at the Drug Foundation agree that the best solution isnt banning your kids from watching the show, but having honest, open and calm ongoing conversations with them about drug use. After all, they will encounter other portrayals of drug use in television, social media and film, and likely encounter it in the real world too. Help them build critical thinking skills about what they see on screen watch an episode with them, and ask them questions about what they saw, how that matches up with what they see in their real life, and what parts of the characters behaviour they do or dont like. One thing you should try to avoid is over-reacting, because then its clear you are not someone they can talk to about drug or alcohol use.

Find more information and support at thelevel.org.nz and drugfoundation.org.nz.

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What Euphoria gets right and wrong about drugs and the problem with getting 'clean' - The Spinoff