On 17 November 2025, the second day of the massive Iglesia ni Cristo rally in Manila, Senator Imee Marcos made a startling and shocking public allegation: her brother, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., along with First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and their son, Sandro, are drug users. She claimed that the substance abuse started long ago and has persisted until the current day. She also said that she personally witnessed it in her and Bongbong’s youth, and the revelation also came with it a grave accusation. According to Imee, Bongbong’s drug abuse has fueled corruption at the very heart of his administration. This isn’t just a sibling rivalry anymore. This charge calls into question the president’s fitness, accountability, and moral standing.

Her revelation is deeply political and disturbingly personal. Mental health as a whole, and in particular substance abuse, is rarely discussed in the Philippines without quick recourse to stigma, punishment, or scandal. The public discourse on drugs tends to dwell not on care or recovery of those involved, but rather on control, condemnation, and punishment. So when Imee Marcos raised her voice, she forces a confrontation with the uncomfortable overlap between drug policy, privilege, and power.

A legacy of punitive drug discourse

To understand the weight of Imee’s accusation, we must first understand how the Philippines’ drug discourse has been shaped in history.

The framework of “drug menace,” as critics have pointed out, dates back to the early years of the Marcos Sr. (Bongbong and Imee’s father) dictatorship. In Drugs and the Marcos Dictatorship: The Beginnings of the Philippines’ Punitive Drug Regime (1970–1975), scholars Gideon Lasco and Vincen Gregory Yu argue that the elder Marcos regime deliberately constructed a narrative of drug users as "enemies of the state." Drug use and addiction was intertwined with crime, communist insurgency, and social decay. This allowed the administration to justify heavy-handed policies with authoritarian rule.

This punitive model did not disappear after the fall of Marcos Sr. It has since affected following administrations, and even evolved into something more violent ⸺ Rodrigo Duterte's violent "war on drugs" that left thousands of people dead and/or detained. It was mostly the marginalised and the urban poor who bore the brunt of law enforcement's worst excesses. This approach to substance use led to human rights violations, and Rodrigo Duterte is currently on trial with the International Criminal Court for his sanctioned killings and nationwide crackdown.

With the Marcos Sr. and the Duterte administrations contributing to the history and perception of illegal drug policies the Philippines has today, it is shocking that Bongbong Marcos is now associated with drug use himself. The irony is stark. The same family that ⸺ in its past iterations of power⸺ championed and capitalised on a punitive drug narrative is now being confronted with allegations from within.