bugoylandia

With some 7,000 tropical islands, the Philippines counts itself among the most beautiful countries in the world. But tourism has barely developed, as a result of the ailing economy, the enormous social inequality and the ever-present poverty in the country. The adventurous traveller however will find himself in Paradise: deserted, snow-white Bounty beaches, uncountable diving opportunities and a generous and friendly population. At the moment a strong ‘war on drugs’ is being waged. But it is a public secret that a large part of the population smokes a joint regularly. Highlife’s Charlie Stone brings us this report from the scene.

The Philippines
By Charlie Stone

Anyone taking a look at the Filipino daily newspapers could not fail to conclude that ‘drugs’ are Enemy of the State number 1. Which is quite remarkable for a country where the majority of the population still lives under the poverty line and where a handful of stinking rich families still own everything. Communist guerrillas and Islamic separatist movements are active on a daily basis, but the columnists of the daily press only seem to have eyes for the drugs plague sweeping across the land. In editorial commentaries heavy crackdowns are insisted upon and on TV and radio they point incessantly to the ‘devastation’ caused by drugs. One effect of this is that ever more forces and individuals feel themselves actually involved in the Filipino ‘war on drugs’, with violent consequences.

The rice terraces of Banaue

In this way the PSG, the paramilitary bodyguard of the President, threw themselves into the battle. This Presidential Security Group took part in Manila in a combined police operation. At one person’s home, accused of links to the drugs Mafia, a bust took place. Due to poor coordination, the PSG and the police did not work in tandem, and when the smoke had settled after the raid, it became clear that the seven-year-old daughter of the accused had been shot dead. The guilty members of the PSG were immediately placed under protection from high up. Just one small example of how the war on drugs looks in the Philippines…

Another example occurred simultaneously in Ermita, one of the 17 districts of the Manila metropolitan area. There, Mayor Lim – nicknamed Dirty Harry – painted the doors of suspected drug dealers red as a warning. The Mayor did not stand alone in this remarkable action: police, barangays (a sort of armed civilian security force) and watchful citizens supported him in his crusade against the accused, and in the media he was held up as a hero. Only when one of the accused sought the assistance of a human rights organisation were question marks raised about the action. Didn’t it go too far to publicly tie a suspect to the whipping post like this? Those opposed to it were very much in the minority.

The lack of opposition is not so strange when one considers that 80% of the Filipino population are confirmed Catholics (the Pope, in contrast to much of the rest of the world, is unbelievably popular there), and another 10% are devout Christians. Not people one associates with criticising authority, in short. Lim, with one hand on the Bible and another on his pistol, was praised to the skies by the population.

Earner on the side

It is clear that a debate about the drugs situation is not on the cards. However, I do want to learn more about marijuana and smoking in the Philippines. Even though I read to my horror several times of huge jail sentences being handed out for merely being caught smoking a joint.

“Look, in the media and from the authorities you get a strongly anti-drugs message, but among the general population there is a general tolerance of smoking a weed joint,” says Johnny, a Hawaiian who has lived for years in the Philippines. “Just as long as you stay off the shabu, most people think.”

Johnny (32) and his Filipino mate Marty (26) come from Baguio, on the largest, northerly main island of Luzon. Johnny has an American father and a Filipino mother, and has lived for years in the United States. For the last eight years or so he has been back in the Philippines, where he makes ends meet as a sort of hustler. Together with Marty, a trike-driver (motorbike taxi chauffeur), he occasionally sorts out some marijuana for locals or tourists. Neither of the two friends are exactly unfamiliar with the dope scene on the island.

Sometimes the two spend some time in the fields near Baguio or Pangasinan where most of the marijuana in the country comes from. The farmers secrete their marijuana plots among the large maize and rice fields. The world famous rice terraces of Banaue are also often used for marijuana production. (These terraces are often referred to as the “Eighth Wonder of the World”: they were hacked 2000 years ago into the mountain slopes by a local mountain tribe. The terraces have been used uninterrupted since then for rice growing). The harvest that comes from here is sent abroad as well as supplying the national market. The crap stays here and the good stuff is for export.

Johhny (right) & Marty

“Do the farmers around Baguio rely on weed for the main income?” I ask the two guys in-the-know. Johnny: “No, it is purely a side-earner, a bit of cash to top up their meagre incomes. The local police and the army know all about it; they ‘protect’ the fields even, at least for a fee.”

Marty: “Often, farmers who are not growing weed will have their land confiscated by local council officials, or put them under pressure to grow too, so that the officials can get their slice of the action. You have to realise, this is one of the most corrupt countries in the world…”

Growing

Johnny: “The marijuana in the fields is divided up even while it’s growing into that destined for the home market and that that will be exported. The ‘export’ plants are treated with extra care, that is to say, the farmers come and visit more often to take off double or sick branches. They grow Indicas as well as Sativas here. The Indicas are for export, the Sativas for local use. The plant seeds are carefully collected for sowing later. No-one works with clones or anything like that. The Indicas are also allowed to grow for the whole year, that’s to say ten months, and during the last blooming period all the leaves are trimmed off the branches. Then all you see is plants with buds, no leaves. In this way the farmers get heavier buds and therefore a better harvest. Once they actually have to be harvested, their watering is stopped, and the plants are left another month to grow. By then the buds are purple. During this process the buds pump out THC while sucking all the water out of the branches, to the extent that when you come to harvest the buds you can just snap the branches off. The buds though are still moist.

“The drying takes place in small huts with ventilators in them, or the buds are simply put in oblong cardboard boxes. What also happens often is that the buds are put in long bamboo poles to dry.

“Baguio and the surrounding district is a natural greenhouse; the climatic circumstances for growing marijuana are almost perfect. Almost everything else is grown that can be grown: fruit, vegetables, rice and ornamental plants.”

Johnny and Marty are obviously well up to scratch. How do things stand with hashish? Is that also produced and smoked? “Hash is not really popular here,” says Marty. “Actually, it is only foreigners that make it and smoke it. They are also the only people in the Philippines who grow indoors. Although on this island there is a local tribe, the Igurot, and they do make it sometimes. Their hash looks most like Red Lebanon. They don’t smoke the hash but eat it, making a sort of hash brownie out of it.”

And what about prices?

Marty: “You buy weed here in bags, boxes or sacks. Or by the joint, that is also possible. But mostly the sale is by the kilo. You buy it locally here for about US$100 a kilo. A 50 gram slab of hashish would go for between 500-1000 dollars.”

Johnny: “OK, a single joint costs between 5-10 pesos (about 10p). A gram bag will cost about 20 pesos (about 30p). A hundred grams goes for about 200 pesos (three quid), 250 grams for 600 pesos (nine quid). A half kilo is 1000 peso (25 quid) and a kilo for between 2500-4000 peso (100 quid tops). When the American military was still here the prices were a lot cheaper, and the quality was ten times better. (Until 1992 there was an enormous US military presence on the Philippines, in the form of an airforce base and a naval port – CS). In the areas where Americans lived you saw significantly fewer police, and so doing business was significantly easier.”

What types of marijuana are sold?

Marty: “By far the best weed you can score is Buntot Pusa, which means ‘Cat’s Tail’. Besides that the most popular is a medium-quality weed variety, Baguio Gold. Then you have Lagkitan, which means ‘Sticky’ and Violet, a purple weed. These are the most common types.

Does much smoking take place in this Catholic country?

Johnny: “I estimate that a good 50% of the population, young or old, light up a joint regularly. Smoking is here a sociable thing; it takes place when you visit friends, if there’s a party at someone’s place, or if you’re hanging out with friends. That takes nothing away from the fact that it all takes place underground and in great secrecy. Smoking in public or where there are strangers you just don’t do here. It’s just asking for problems.”

Smoking techniques

Marty: “King size papers do not exist here, nor are they sold anywhere. People smoke pure grass in self-made skins made from thin papers, or in a pipe. What you often see is smoking out of home-made bamboo pipes.”

Johnny: “Young kids tend to tear the foil out of a cigarette packet and roll that into a tube and bend one end upwards into an improvised pipe. They just stick some finely crumbled weed into the uppermost end. We’re talking again about smoking pure.”

Marty: “Smoking paraphernalia such as bongs and water pipes are not available here. Sometimes foreign tourists bring one along, but in general you never see those sort of things.”

Police

What happens if the worst case scenario happens and you get caught? Johnny: “In 99% of the cases you can buy yourself freedom immediately by bribing the cop who caught you. Every officer here is corrupt. That is why they keep such a close eye on you; not so much because they are against drugs, but because they fancy earning a few more bucks.”

Marty: “If you have no cash with you, you have to make sure that you get some as fast as possible, or you’re going to be in big shit.”

Johnny: “Foreigners obviously pay more than Filipinos. If you’re caught with a joint, you can safely count on it costing you 1000 dollars. If you have an expensive watch or chain on, you’ll lose that too. If you don’t pay, you end up in a cell. And once you’ve been there, with 20 others in a space of a few square meters, you’re soon going to choose the lesser of two evils. Tourists who visit here a lot in general know how things work, so you see it is usually newcomers who are picked up, people without contacts.

Marty: “If as a foreigner you don’t have enough cash in your pocket, the cop will casually walk with you back to your hotel to get it. Or he’ll walk you to a cashpoint machine, or a bank.

Johnny: “This sort of transaction cannot take more than a day, since then it can start to cause problems for the police officer. If you haven’t got hold of the money by then, you’re going to the cell. It happened to an American friend of mine that he was escorted back to his hotel, and when he only had Travellers Cheques and the banks were shut, he had to pay for a room for the cop in the same hotel. Next morning, the two of them went straight to the bank.

Marty: “In the meantime the officer will have made sure that someone was covering for him back at the station so his absence is not noticed. Higher ranks of cop will have subordinates to go that sort of thing for them, so that they are not seen to be doing it themselves.

Johnny: “Lower ranked cops too do not want to be seen by colleagues since they risk losing a percentage of the shake down.”

I thank Marty and Johnny for the useful information, and promise to bring them some king size papers next time. As we were parting, Johnny says: “It is perhaps interesting for you to know that for a short while now, doctors can prescribe medicinal marijuana to patients with asthma or arthritis. So you see, we’re not so backward here after all, haha!”