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But we cannot understand our youth who abhor anything which smacks of colonial mentality yet imitate their counterparts across the ocean who have initiated this vice besides the growing, not grooming of their hair.

But the fact is they do use drugs. They ought likewise to detest them, if they are to be consistent. Throughout the rest of the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos — , the CBCP issued 46 pastoral letters without any reference to drugs. During the time of Corazon Aquino — who took over from Marcos after the EDSA Revolution, 28 pastoral letters were issued but none ever mentioned drugs.

Likely, this interlude was influenced by the lack of political attention to substance abuse. Condom use was heavily resisted, for example. In the late s, however, drugs would again resurface in the episcopal discourse. While the youth remained in the discussions, drug use would be framed as part of a broader argument: they are an affront to human life and dignity. Today never has our country been menaced so dangerously and seriously by a health and moral crisis since AIDS exploded into our national consciousness.

And the name of the crisis is Drugs, dangerous illegal, addictive drugs[…] Already more than 1. The youth are especially hard hit. They are the greatest number of drug users. The pastoral letter would once again highlight concern for young people. Medical studies have proven the serious injury in terms of physical harm and addiction, and psychological and social difficulties and dependence, which these vices can cause.

More culpable still are drug dealers and pushers who, for the sake of money, care nothing about drawing others, especially innocent youth, into addictive dependency that ruins their very lives. The statement concluded by calling on stronger legislative and executive action. This was how the Church hierarchy made its position clear on using the law as crime deterrence, a theme that echoed justifications for the death penalty.

Lawmakers should re-examine our present laws and see if they actually embolden rather than deter criminals; stiffer laws with stiffer penalties should be enacted[…] We urge government authorities and courts of justice to faithfully and zealously perform their task of promoting law and order and eradicating this scourge of drugs.

The seriousness of drug use took on a more serious tone in separate statements a year later. In a statement released on January 31, drug abuse was listed as a predisposing factor for incest and rape. Taken together, these statements were written to uphold human dignity. Drug use was a threat. The caveat, however, was that to respond to the threat, the Church hierarchy adopted a criminal view of drug use, which could only be addressed in terms of crime deterrence.

In the course of our analysis, we observed that drug use once again disappeared from Church statements during the presidencies of Joseph Estrada — , Gloria Arroyo — , and Benigno Aquino III — This is an interesting finding, given that both administrations embarked on their respective antidrug campaigns.

Meanwhile, during the time of Aquino, only one statement, written in , specifically mentioned drug use. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense. We propose that the answer lies once again in the policies that defined these administrations. The death penalty took center stage during the time of Estrada, only to be prohibited by Arroyo later on.

Although Duterte had not formalized his candidacy at this time, talks about his potential run did abound. Shabu is also daringly ubiquitous, oftentimes peddled openly in parks, bars, and street corners.

Echoing their statements in the past, the bishops called on stronger measures from the government. While the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines reiterates that the Church is against the death penalty, it calls for resoluteness from the police and law-enforcement agencies to prevent the trafficking of drugs; to apprehend those involved in the trafficking of drugs; to dismantle the syndicates and cartels involved in the drug trade, and to make sure that the drugs they seize are not recycled and brought back to the underground market.

We call for the relentless prosecution of those responsible for trafficking in drugs and for those who traffic persons to be their drug mules. Clandestine production of and trafficking in drugs were scandalous practices. They constituted direct cooperation with evil, since they encouraged people to practices gravely contrary to moral law. Some of these themes at this point are already familiar.

Church leaders have articulated in the previous decades the concern for the youth, the culpability of drug traffickers, and the need to have stronger laws to deter crime.

But perhaps what is noticeably different here is the social concern for those affected by drug abuse. The poor and the young were considered vulnerable to the proliferation of illegal drugs. We argue that a consistent theme runs through the official documents discussed above.

While the themes may have changed over the years, the concern has been consistently about a general moral decline that affects the youth, the poor, and the family. In effect, drug abuse places the future of the nation at stake. We have identified three such moments: the period before Martial Law — and the campaign periods that led to the election of two populist leaders: Joseph Estrada —98 and Rodrigo Duterte — How do we make sense of the upsurge in those particular periods?

One clue lies in the fact that those moments were associated with heightened moral panics around drugs. This is because media coverage allows for the circulation of intensified emotional responses on moral issues.

In the s, newspapers evoked the dangers of drugs, which found personification in the Chinese drug lord Lim Seng. His execution was a televised public spectacle.

Death by musketry! This was the price exacted by society at 6 a. Furthermore, in the weeks leading up to the release of the pastoral letter, drugs figured in news articles as well, suggesting the existence of another round of moral panic around drug use. Arguably, a generalized moral panic around drugs has been around since the s. The film, which won the FAMAS Award for Best Picture in , was the first of many to involve the negative consequences of drugs as a major part of the plot. In , it was Ferdinand Marcos who sought to paint a picture of a country under attack.

In , Joseph Estrada tapped then Manila mayor and presidential aspirant Alfredo Lim to lead a controversial campaign that involved spray-painting the houses of suspected drug personalities. In , it was Davao mayor and eventual president Rodrigo Duterte who would revive the drug discourse.

What validates our observation is that during the years in which the Catholic Church did not make any statement about drugs, other issues were at play for religious leaders.

In the early s, for instance, the major debate in the country was birth control, and this was also reflected in the pastoral letters. Their stance was likewise reflected in their pastoral letters during this period. We do not wish to make claims of causality or overstate the influence of bishops in government policy.

What we propose instead is that the CBCP through its statements during these periods has contributed to the moral panic over drug use, given its institutional influence as a moral entrepreneur. Specifically, Church leaders placed a spotlight on drug use as a social and moral problem. For one, they underscored the need for stronger and even relentless measures to address the proliferation of illegal drugs.

But at the same time, their statements did not only echo political and public concern over drug abuse. They provided the religious justification for the moral disgust toward illegal drugs. It imposed the death penalty for drug-related offenses, presaging the declaration of Martial Law and the execution of Lim Seng. Indeed the association between public opinion and drug policy is well-documented. We revisit two important points about morality politics and then relate them to the situation of the Catholic Church in the Philippines.

The first, as we have pointed out above, is that morality politics is the struggle to define what is acceptable and not for society. Morality politics involves state policies and interventions that are underpinned by a moral worldview.

This leads us to the second point. Morality politics is not just about actions sanctioned by law and the state. Ultimately, morality politics is a discursive act that creates divisions within a society between a moral group and its adversary. What we have done in the previous section is to show that the Catholic Church has played a significant role as a moral entrepreneur that, while outside politics, remains influential in articulating religious and moral discourses about drug use and its effect on the youth, the poor, the family, and society as a whole.

For a religious society like the Philippines, the Catholic Church is influential insofar as it draws on its teaching to shape much of the moral worldviews of many Filipinos.

While the moral gravitas of the Catholic Church is increasingly open to question, especially in such areas as contraceptives and divorce, it remains to be a compelling voice on other matters such as gender equality, marriage, and in the case of this article, drug use.

What accounts for its enduring influence in society? The first is that the Catholic Church is an institution that defends conservative values surrounding sexual propriety, heteronormativity, and the family in the country.

The Catholic Church may have been instrumental in reclaiming democracy especially in the post-Marcos period, but it does not uphold liberal values concerning these matters. It also matters that Filipinos have by and large heteronormative attitudes when it comes to marriage and the family.

For example, they have argued repeatedly that the youth have to be protected because they are the future of the nation. Another example is the view the proliferation of drugs is a menace that needs to be arrested through the law. Taking all of these together, the concern about moral decay is about the family, the poor, and once again, the youth, whose morality are in effect being sacrificed. The view that the Philippines is a Christian nation is of course not new.

In fact, this discourse is what makes the Catholic Church a hegemonic moral entrepreneur in the Philippines.

Among the youth, notions of religiosity and spirituality are changing in ways that question the moral authority of the Catholic Church. This article has been concerned with the historical writings of the Catholic Church on illegal drugs in the Philippines. From the s up until , the statements reflected a deep concern for the welfare of the youth, the poor, and the family. Church bishops framed the proliferation of illegal drugs not only as a result of the influence of Western culture. They also related it to corruption and moral decay, both of which attack human dignity and endanger the future of the nation.

As we have discussed above, much of the discourse reflects the recurrent moral panic about illegal drugs. We end this article by providing tentative reflections on some of the very recent writings by the CBCP. We find that a shift is taking place. These writings are still emerging, given that the antidrug campaign has not yet ended. At the same time, there are no indications that the public wants it ended.

After initial silence on the subject for which they were criticized , the bishops issued a statement on September 14, We mourn with you at the deaths that we have seen in our communities. Significantly, however, the letter includes the language of compassion in relation to drug users. Our hearts reach out in love and compassion to our sons and daughters suffering from drug dependence and addiction. Drug addicts are children of God equal in dignity with the sober ones.

Drug addicts are sick brethren in need of healing deserving of new life. They are patients begging for recovery. They may have behaved as scum and rubbish but the saving of love of Jesus Christ is first and foremost for them. Succeeding pastoral letters are more explicit in expressing concern over the killings. Their lives have only become worse. The tone then shifts by August , during which the deaths of several teenagers in Metro Manila have been widely reported in the media.

May the justice of God come upon those responsible for the killings! The bishops believe that drug users themselves deserve redemption. They are also concerned about the plight of affected families whose poverty is worsened by the murder of their breadwinners. In our view, it is a reflexive response to the violence of the drug war and its lack of evidence. There is, of course, a difficult irony here. That the CBCP now calls for compassion no longer carries political gravitas.

One reason is that to allay the moral panic that the Catholic Church itself reinforced up until is not going to be an easy task. The other reason is that the state itself has now transformed the moral panic into a moral warfare against what Duterte himself describes as the enemies of the state. Thus, the security of the nation, for many people, now demands that violence is necessary. Compassion, in effect, is too weak a response. Other important studies have repeatedly justified the war on drugs as a righteous intervention sanctified by God for the renewal of the Philippine society.

In light of the above shifts in their discourse, where do the Catholic bishops fit in contemporary drug policy debates?

In terms of their perceptions of drug use, they seem to align with the view shared by most political actors that drugs are evil, disagreeing only with the government on how to deal with its proliferation and arguing for a more compassionate response. By contrast, harm reduction advocates in the country are pushing for a view of drugs as neutral and context-dependent substances.

They believe that much of drug use is nonproblematic. One indelible change, however, is the theme of redemption.

The shift is promising insofar as it creates a different pathway for the public to discuss the inadequacies of the war on drugs. Whether or not these statements are effective in bringing back human dignity into policy making remains to be seen.

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London and New York: Routledge, Johnson, — Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, a. Leipzig: EVA, b. Cornelio, Jayeel, and Dagle, Robbin. Cornelio, Jayeel, and Medina, Erron. Courtwright, David. Curato, Nicole. Drug Archive Philippines.

Esmaquel II, Paterno. Francisco, Jose Mario. Hechanova, Ma Regina M. Holmes, Ronald. Jocano, F. Kusaka, Wataru. Moral politics in the Philippines: Inequality, democracy, and the urban poor. A lot of things happened sort of simultaneously. Jerry Lee Lewis got in trouble for marrying his year old cousin and was ostracized. By the mids, things started percolating, young people started to listen to folk music a bit more, people like Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez and later, Bob Dylan.

So now, instead of a basic two-minute love song, you could have songs about just about anything. You had the British invasion in Instead of having songs written for them, and using studio musicians, now they were writing their own lyrics and music. Combine that with folk music expanding lyrical content and suddenly you have a whole new set of fears. There was more talk of actual drugs, so instead of the suggestion that someone might be on pills or smoking pot, now they are very overtly making psychedelic music.

The Beatles were admitting in interviews that they did LSD. Suddenly the drugs and sexuality were overt. Music started to connect to other social movements, like the civil rights movement. The anti-Vietnam movement was not as strong in the beginning as people think, but it did happen, especially after the bombing of Cambodia.

That started off all these protests of these young people shutting down campuses, and the calling out of the National Guard, the shooting and killing of four students at Kent State University and two at Jackson State University. When you look at social movements around the world, so many of them are led by university students.