[Webinar] ISSDP-UNODC - A scientific look at the 2020 World Drug Report

As a drug policy scholar and member of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP), I participated in a webinar jointly organized by the ISSDP and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on the occasion of the release of the 2020 World Drug Report, on July 2, 2020.

The webinar featured an overview of the World Drug Report by by Angela Me (Chief Research and Trend Analysis Branch, UNODC), followed by reactions from Suzanne Nielsen of Monash University, Alexander Soderholm of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and myself, with Alex Stevens (University of Kent) and Kaitlin Hughes (Flinders University) serving as moderators. 

In the webinar, I welcomed the attention to the socio-economic linkages of drug use, but argued that beyond looking at the impacts of drug use disorders on people's socio-economic lives, we should also look at how people's socio-economic contexts shape their use of drugs - both problematic and non-problematic.

[Presentation] 4th Philippine Studies Conference in Japan, Hiroshima - Living with ‘tokhang’

During the 4th Philippine Studies Conference in Hiroshima, Japan on November 2018, I organized a panel entitled The Philippine War on Drugs: Critical Perspectives. In this panel, Filomin C. Gutierrez (Department of Sociology, University of the Philippines, Diliman) gave a presentation about the "Experiences of Persons Arrested in Operation Tokhang" while Aaron Abel Mallari (Department of History, University of the Philippines, Diliman) reported the initial insights in our joint research about the "Social constructions of drugs and drug users in contemporary Philippines".

For my part, I presented a paper entitled "Living with ‘tokhang’: Mistrust and fear in a drug war-affected community in the Philippines" based on my research in an urban poor community in Metro Manila where some drug war-related killings have been reported.

Our papers are just among the growing number of works that seek to make sense of and interrogate the Philippine drug war. One important task ahead is to create a community around scholars pursuing this urgent topic - and create venues for public dissemination of their major insights.