Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 10, 2025
Color Spot Test As a Presumptive Tool for the Rapid Detection of Synthetic Cathinones
Published on: February 5, 2018
Drug-free nation: Reconstructing the 'official drug narratives' in Singapore and the Philippines
1Department of Anthropology, University of the Philippines Diliman, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines; Department of Development Studies, Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City 1106, Philippines; Centre for Criminology, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR.
Background:
This paper reconstructs and analyses the "official drug narratives" in Singapore and the Philippines as recounted by its drug enforcement agencies and government officials. Drawing inspiration from narrative analyses and works that have explored official and institutional narratives, it defines such narratives as government accounts of how drugs figured in its country's history and how it responded to the challenges posed by drugs to society. It then identifies common elements in these narratives, namely plot, settings, characters, and moral of the story.
Methods:
Documents and other material from drug-policy and-enforcement related institutions, primarily the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for Singapore, and the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) for the Philippines, from 2015 to 2024, with particularly attention to drug policy-related anniversaries and official commemorations.
Findings:
In both countries, official drug narratives highlight the national(list) character of their drug policies and cast their longstanding campaigns in existential terms, relying on the language of statistics and expertise, as well as a curation of the past, to legitimise the righteousness of their initiatives. While people involved with drugs were the expected 'villains' and the citizenry, especially the youth, the expected victims, notable was the characterisation of drug enforcers as underdogs pit against powerful enemies.
Conclusion:
Analysing official drug narratives offers a way to examine a country's policy trajectories and overall paradigms and call attention to aspects that may be overlooked because they are not directly related to policy. By reconstructing the narrative content and structure of governments' discourses on drugs, official drug narratives can contribute towards a better understanding not just of the making of national drug policies, but on the stories on which they stand.
More Related Videos
10:13Author Spotlight: An Efficient Methodology to Confidently Differentiate and Characterize Fentanyl Analogs
Published on: November 8, 2024
10:17High-throughput and Comprehensive Drug Surveillance Using Multisegment Injection-Capillary Electrophoresis-Mass Spectrometry
Published on: April 23, 2019
Related Concept Videos
01:25Drug Regulation
01:03Drug Control Governance: Regulatory Bodies and Their Impact
01:19Pharmacovigilance
This process, termed pharmacovigilance, aims to detect, evaluate, and minimize harmful effects related to medication use. The data collection for pharmacovigilance depends on spontaneous reporting systems, where healthcare professionals or patients voluntarily report suspected ADRs.
In some cases, there...
01:15Drug Abuse and Addiction: Pharmacological Phenomena
01:17Drug Nomenclature
01:02Prescription, Nonprescription and Orphan Drugs
The misuse and addiction to prescription drugs is a growing problem that can affect people of all age groups, specifically teenagers. This can happen when prescription medications are used in ways not intended by the prescriber, such as taking someone else's prescription or using medication for...