MANILA – Malacañang brushed off criticisms on Rodrigo Duterte who said he was using the prohibited drug marijuana to stay awake but later retracted it, saying he was joking.
Duterte is “entitled” to make jokes even if he is the chief executive and his pronouncements somehow make an impact on national policy, his spokesperson said.
“Everybody is entitled to a joke,” Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo told reporters during a Palace briefing.
“He [Duterte] does it because usually events are boring … First, marijuana is not a stimulant to make you awake. It’s the opposite, so obviously there was no logic there, so he was joking,” said Panelo.
Duterte complained of his tight schedules in previous meetings, saying he could “not handle” them.
“Don’t say I told you but [Brunei Sultan Hassanal] Bolkiah always falls asleep, but he has a talent … and you don’t notice,” he said in a speech Monday, talking about the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Singapore last month. “It’s a killing activity.”
“Me, [I don’t fall asleep] as much because I was taking marijuana to stay awake,” he said. “For others, it’s not possible.”
But after his speech, he told reporters he was just joking.
Marijuana, or cannabis, is illegal in the Philippines and is not a stimulant.
“Of course, it was a joke. But nobody can stop me from just doing my style,” said Duterte. “You sometimes say that I’m a misogynist in some of my jokes. That’s my style. It’s too late to change.”
Panelo had said Duterte missed several meetings and events at last month’s ASEAN summit in Singapore to catch up on his sleep.
ON ‘LEGAL MARIJUANA’
The administration has been waging a controversial war on drugs that has killed thousands since Duterte took power in 2016, targeting mostly users and traders of shabu, or crystal meth.
While he is against synthetic substances like shabu, the President is open to the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
The President believes medicinal marijuana is “an ingredient of modern medicine.”
“There are medicines being developed, or are now in the market, that contain marijuana for medical purposes,” he previously said.
Panelo confirmed this. “President Duterte said that, for purposes of medicine to heal, he is in favor of legalizing marijuana, but not for use other than that.”
Told that Duterte’s statements could be taken seriously by the younger audience, Panelo said the President “has set a good example by being a good leader.”
“One joke does not make him a bad leader,” he added.
Panelo insisted that Duterte had “never” taken marijuana in his life while admitting that he never discussed the matter with the President.
“I don’t have to ask him because we’ve been together for 30 years,” said the presidential spokesman.
Duterte’s comment was bound to upset families of the victims of his crackdown on narcotics. “This will definitely anger the families even more,” Carlos Conde, a Philippine researcher with the New York-based Human Rights Watch, told Reuters.
“There is a disconnect between what the President admitted to do and what the President said he will do to those who use drugs,” said Conde. (With Reuters and Philippine News Agency/PN)
