Addiction Medicine Grand Rounds: Cultural and Political Contexts of Substance Use and Drug Policy in the Philippines

The Yale Program in Addiction Medicine is pleased to welcome Gideon Lasco, MD, PhD, as guest speaker for Addiction Medicine Grand Rounds on March 25th, 2025.

Title: Cultural and Political Contexts of Substance Use and Drug Policy in the Philippines

Learning Objectives:

1. Compare medical and popular uses of the terms "addiction", "dependence", "use", and "misuse" in relation to different substances
2. Describe the socio-cultural and historical contexts of substance use in the Philippines
3. Explain how drugs are used as populist tropes by politicians, shaping drug policies and public perceptions on drugs
4. Apply insights from the Philippine case to other drug policy contexts

About Dr. Gideon Lasco

Dr. Lasco is a physician and medical anthropologist specializing in drug issues and contemporary health crises. Based in Manila, he is professorial lecturer at the University of the Philippines Diliman's Department of Anthropology, research fellow at the Ateneo de Manila University's Development Studies Program, and fellow-at-large at Hong Kong University's Centre for Criminology. He obtained his bachelor’s and medical degree from the University of the Philippines Manila (UPM) and subsequently pursued a career in the intersections of medicine, public health, and the social sciences, receiving an MSc in Medical Anthropology from UPM and a PhD from the University of Amsterdam. During his postdoctoral studies, he also earned a master's degree (AM) in History of Science, major in History of Medicine, from Harvard University.

Dr. Lasco's research projects have yielded over 60 journal articles and book chapters in the past six years, as well as four books, including Drugs and Philippines Society (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2021), an edited volume which features critical perspectives on drug use and drug policy in the country. As an applied anthropologist and public health practitioner, Dr. Lasco has also served as consultant for organizations like the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). In 2019, he was selected by the Equity Initiative as an Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity in Southeast Asia. He is a Board Member of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP) and part of the editorial boards of PLOS Global Public Health and Human Organization.

For his scholarly work, he received the Virginia A. Miralao Award for Research Excellence (VAMERA) the inaugural Research Excellence Award from the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy, as well as the Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for Achievement in the Field of Scholarship from the Drug Policy Alliance. He also received a Palanca Award for Essay, among other citations for his creative writing. In 2022, he was named Outstanding Young Scientist (OYS) and one of the Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) in the Philippines; that year, he also received the Philippines' National Book Award for The Philippines Is Not A Small Country, cited by The Guardian as one of the 'books than explain the world'.

Addiction Medicine Rounds are CME accredited. Each session will be assigned 1 AMA PRA Category 1 CreditsTM.