Former Philippine President Duterte Arrested And Flown To The Hague For Trial

Real Reporting… 11 March 2025

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested Tuesday, March 11, 2025 on a warrant from the International Criminal Court. The Associated Press reports ("Philippine ex-leader Duterte is being flown to The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity," March 11, 2025) that:

"The global court in The Hague had ordered Duterte’s arrest through Interpol after accusing him of crimes against humanity over deadly anti-drug crackdowns he oversaw while in office, Marcos said in a late-night news conference. Duterte had been arrested at the Manila international airport Tuesday morning when he arrived with his family from Hong Kong."

According to The Guardian ("Duterte flown to The Hague after arrest over Philippines drug war killings," March 11, 2025):

"Duterte became president in 2016 after promising a merciless, bloody crackdown that would rid the country of drugs. On the campaign trail he once said there would be so many bodies dumped in Manila Bay that fish would grow fat from feeding on them. After taking office, he publicly stated he would kill suspected drug dealers and urged the public to kill addicts.

"Since his election, between 12,000 and 30,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed in connection with anti-drugs operations, according to data cited by the ICC."

A copy of the International Criminal Court warrant for Duterte's arrest can be downloaded from the ICC website.

Rest In Power: Kevin B. Zeese, 1955-2020

We are sad to report that the co-founder and President of Common Sense for Drug Policy, Kevin B. Zeese, passed away on September Fifth, 2020. He is sorely missed.

Kevin was one of the nation's foremost authorities on drug policy issues. He worked on a wide array of drug related issues since he graduated from George Washington University Law School in 1980.

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Rest In Power: Kevin B. Zeese, 1955-2020

Real Reporting… 12 September 2020

We are sad to report that the co-founder and President of Common Sense for Drug Policy, Kevin B. Zeese, passed away on September Fifth, 2020. He is sorely missed.

Kevin was one of the nation's foremost authorities on drug policy issues. He worked on a wide array of drug related issues since he graduated from George Washington University Law School in 1980.

Kevin wrote for newspapers and journals on a range of drug issues, including an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the Colombian drug war. He also appeared on every major television network as a commentator. He served as a consultant to Walter Cronkite for the Discovery Channel special: The Drug Dilemma: War or Peace? He spoke at nationally recognized legal seminars and testified before Congress on drug related issues.

A Feb. 2005 interview with Kevin on the syndicated radio program Cultural Baggage is available. In April 2002, Kevin debated DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson at a conference hosted by Rice University's James Baker Institute. Segments of the forum, "Moving Beyond the 'War on Drugs'," including the Zeese-Hutchinson debate, are available as streaming video. A listing of articles in which Kevin appears is available by clicking here.

He was the author of Drug Testing Legal Manual, Drug Testing Legal Manual and Practice Aids and co-author of Drug Law: Strategies and Tactics, all published by Clark Boardman Callaghan. Kevin served as editor of Drug Law Report for Clark Boardman Callaghan from 1983 to 1998. In addition, he was the author of Drug Prohibition and the Conscience of Nations. Mr. Zeese was the editor of Friedman and Szasz On Liberty and Drugs and edited numerous books on drug policy and manuals on criminal defense.

Kevin Zeese litigated a variety of drug policy-related issues. Among these are the medical use of marijuana, the use of the military and national guard in domestic drug enforcement, the spraying of herbicides in the United States and abroad on marijuana, drug testing of government workers and the right to privacy as it relates to marijuana in the home. He had been a legal advisor to needle exchange workers prosecuted for their anti-AIDS efforts, buyer's clubs who distribute marijuana to the seriously ill, and medical marijuana patients prosecuted for the medical use of marijuana.

Kevin facilitated the Alliance of Reform Organizations, a network of all the major reform organizations in the United States. He served on the Executive Committee of the Harm Reduction Coalition. He served on the Board of Directors of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas and was a Board member emeritus of the DrugSense.

He was a co-founder of the Drug Policy Foundation (now renamed the Drug Policy Alliance), where he served as Vice President and Counsel, and is a former Executive Director and Chief Counsel of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Zeese served on Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's Mayor's Working Group on Drug Policy Reform and served on San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan's Harm Reduction Council. Both were efforts to implement a model urban drug policy. Zeese was also involved with advocacy related to the fatal shooting of Esequiel Hernandez, the legal rights of patients, doctors and their caregivers in California, and the UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs (the UNGASS).

In 2000, Kevin Zeese was the recipient of the Richard J. Dennis DrugPeace Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Field of Drug Policy Reform from the Drug Policy Foundation at its 13th Annual International Conference on Drug Policy Reform.

Psychedelics

"Psychedelics can be divided into three classes based on their chemical structure: tryptamines, ergolines, and phenethylamines (Figure 1). Tryptamines are characterized by an indole, which is a 6-member benzene ring fused to a 5-member pyrrole ring with an ethylamine chain at the C3 position. Addition of methyl groups to the ethylamine chain and different functional groups at other positions, e.g.

Ayahuasca

"Ayahuasca is a particularly interesting case of a psychedelic plant medicine that left its traditional context in the Amazon jungle to spread throughout the world. Any history of the ayahuasca brew will usually mention a lineage of White men who discovered, reported on, or studied it. One of the earliest western encounters was recorded in 1853 by Richard Spruce, a botanist looking for new plants to collect and classify in the Vaupés area in Colombia (Spruce, 1908).

Psychedelics, Entheogens, and Altered States of Consciousness

"Today, the fact that psychedelics create powerful religious feelings in people cross-culturally is considered unlikely to be coincidental. Winkelman (2000) suggests a “neurophenomenological” framework to approach Altered States of Consciousness (ASCs). He argues that psychedelics do not merely cause temporary “psychoses” or “mere hallucinations” in people but instead work with existing, adaptive mechanisms in the brain for generating ASCs that can be used constructively.

Effects of Prenatal Exposure to Psychotropic Drugs on Newborns

"This study investigated the effect of psychotropic medication use during pregnancy on short-term neonatal outcomes, focusing on the implications of non-opioid psychotropic polypharmacy and co-exposure. The incidence of adverse events was not clearly increased in newborns exposed to one or two maternal psychotropic medications compared to unexposed infants. However, in cases involving maternal use of three or more psychotropic medications, a higher frequency of short-term respiratory support and NAS-related symptoms was observed, although the number of such cases was limited.

Deprescribing, Tapering Down, Reducing or Stopping Use of Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor Antidepressants

"Currently, available dosage strengths in standard drug formularies are too limited to support gradual SRI tapers (Table 2). For instance, the lowest marketed dose of duloxetine (20 mg) averages at least 70% SERT occupancy with short-term treatment, 9 and 10 mg of citalopram averages at least 60% SERT occupancy.

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