The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte has built his entire presidency on his deadly war against illegal drugs but he may have been making an exemption for himself.
Duterte said that he uses marijuana to stay awake during a speech at the conferment of awards for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) National Organizing Committee in the Malacañang Palace earlier today.
He made the comment while complaining about the schedule of the 33rd ASEAN Summit in Singapore last month, ABS-CBN News reported.
“It’s (ASEAN Summit) a killing activity and I think the — my age, me not so much because I take marijuana to stay awake, for others, they can’t take it,” the 73-year-old said, according to Rappler.
The mercurial leader missed four of the eleven meetings he was slated to attend during the summit, as well as a gala dinner hosted by Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. When he received backlash about skipping the meetings, he simply asked, “What’s wrong with my nap?”
“You know, we start at 8:30 in the morning … and we end up almost 10, 11. And it’s every 30 minutes… Maybe the ASEAN Secretariat thinks we’re Boy Scouts. I can’t handle it,” Duterte said earlier today.
While Duterte has been waging a bloody war on drugs, targeting mostly meth dealers and users, he has expressed support for legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes.
“Medicinal marijuana — yes, because it is really an ingredient of medicine now,” Duterte told reporters in May 2016. “There are medicines right now being developed or already in the market that contain marijuana as a component.”
Still, those caught dealing marijuana are not exempt from the police’s anti-drug operations.
In March, five students were arrested for selling “high-grade” marijuana.
In October, a Grade 9 student was nabbed for illegal possession of marijuana. The student admitted that he smokes pot to ease his asthma which he said attacks after he plays basketball.
According to the Human Rights Watch, over 12,000 urban poor Filipinos have been killed by the drug war since Duterte took office in 2016. The report stated that over 2,555 of the killings have been linked to the Philippine National Police (PNP).
However, Duterte was quick to take back what he said about using marijuana and has said that he was just joking.
“It was a joke. Of course, it was a joke. But nobody can stop me from just doing my style,” he told ABS-CBN News. “It’s too late to change. If I want to joke, I will joke. If you believe me, you’re morons.”
Another unfunny joke from the president, everyone.
Despite Duterte’s inconsistencies and the thousands of deaths his drug war has brought, a majority of Filipinos are still satisfied with his anti-drug campaign.
Data released by local social research institution Social Weather Stations (SWS) in September showed that 78 percent of Filipinos surveyed were still satisfied with the administration’s campaign against illegal drugs, while only 13 percent were dissatisfied with it. The numbers were based on a survey conducted in June where 1,2000 adults were interviewed nationwide.
And the government has no plans of stopping the drug war.
In his State of the Nation Address this year, Duterte said the war “will be as relentless, as chilling, if you will, as the day it began.”
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