THE Health Committee of the House of Representatives pushed for the creation of a technical working group (TWG) on Thursday to aid in the creation of the bill legalizing medical marijuana.

According to a statement issued by the AAMBIS-Owa Partylist, the TWG would allow medical experts and stakeholders to help legislators in writing a better version of the bill that would be beneficial to the public.

AAMBIS-Owa Rep. Sharon Garin said a provision in the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 could be useful in paving the implementation of the House Bill.

A Vietnam court has given a death sentence to a Filipino man for carrying over 3.4kg of cocaine from Brazil into Vietnam in late 2013.

Forty-year-old Emmanuel Sillo Camacho received the sentence at his trial opened by the Hanoi People’s Court on Tuesday on charges of “illegally transporting drugs” pursuant to Article 194 of the Penal Code.

Camacho was arrested in early December 2013 after being caught with cocaine hidden in his luggage at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi.

Security forces discovered white powder with total weight exceeding 3,408 grams stashed inside eighteen socks.

Camacho told investigators that four months before the arrest, he had met a woman named Jessica who was living in Brazil through Facebook.

THE head of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines scored as “misleading” reports that the Catholic Church supports proposed legislation to legalize the medical use of marijuana.

Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas clarified that the CBCP neither endorses nor objects to the proposal because regulatory schemes and administrative strategies are beyond the competence of the CBCP.

But Villegas stressed three points in the Church’s teaching to summarize the CBCP’s position on the matter.

“Addiction is wrong,” Socrates said. “Those who facilitate addiction by placing habituating drugs within easy reach commit a very serious wrong.”

While allowing the use of marijuana for the terminally ill, Catholic bishops in the Philippines deny supporting a proposed medical marijuana bill

MANILA, Philippines – While debates on the topic rage in Philippine Congress, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) issued a statement to explain why the Catholic Church allows the use of marijuana for terminally-ill patients.

At the same time, CBCP president Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas on Monday, August 17, denied a newspaper report that said the CBCP is backing a proposed medical marijuana law.

Villegas cited Catholic Church documents to explain their position on “the compassionate use of cannabis or marijuana.” 

MANILA, Philippines - The committee on health of the House of Representatives is considering the legalization of cannabis or marijuana for medical purposes.

In the course of a hearing yesterday on Bill 4477, titled “The Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Act,” committee chairman La Union Rep. Eufranio Eriguel said a technical working group (TWG) would be created to draft the panel’s version of the measure.

“The TWG will consider and consolidate all inputs from the authors, resource persons from the medical profession and government agencies and concerned non-government organizations,” he said.

Isabela Rep. Rodolfo Albano III, principal author of Bill 4477, welcomed the committee’s decision.

Note the wide disparity of drug prices across the countries surveyed.

With the recent turn of economic events in Greece and China, it has become ever more apparent that we live in increasingly globalized world in which economies are inextricably linked.

This begged the question; are national drug economies linked in a similar manner?

In this informative video, BuzzFeed shows you how much coffee, cannabis, cigarettes, cocaine, whiskey, and heroin can you buy for $20 U.S. dollars around the world.

The Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Bill is still pending with the House committee on health, more than a year after it was filed in 2014

MANILA, Philippines – Is it time to legalize the medical use of marijuana in the Philippines?

Debaters from the Ateneo de Manila University Law School and the University of Sto Tomas (UST) Law School discussed the issue at "The Law and Policy Debate: An Inter-university Dialogue" held at the House of Representatives on Tuesday, June 9.

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — Should medical marijuana be legalized in the Philippines?

This was the question that several law students from two universities in the country tried to answer on Tuesday (June 9) during a Law and Policy Debate at the House of Representatives.

Ambassador Manuel Teehankee, a medical and law expert, recognized the need for public discussions on the legalization of marijuana.

He noted that debating on a topic is a healthy method of testing ideas and proposal, and "a good way by which the legislative process can be vetted with various ideas being exchanged."

MANILA, Philippines (AP) " The Philippines is imposing a "weed bond" on One Direction.

The Bureau of Immigration has asked Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson to post bonds worth nearly $5,000 each, which will be forfeited if they are caught using or impliedly promoting illegal drugs during a concert in Manila this weekend.

It follows a request by the local Anti-Drugs Advocate group to the bureau to strictly scrutinize the band's concert permit following a video that circulated on the Internet of Malik and Tomlinson purportedly smoking marijuana.

Malik and Tomlinson are required to post 200,000 pesos ($4,470) bond and 20,000 pesos ($447) processing fee each through their producer, bureau spokeswoman Elaine Tan said Thursday.

Medical groups oppose House Bill 4477 which they say is 'contrary to the policy of the state to safeguard the well-being of its citizenry'

MANILA, Philippines – Philippine medical groups on Thursday, October 16, expressed their opposition to a House bill seeking to legalize and regulate the medical use of marijuana in the country.

"We oppose [House Bill] 4477. We cannot risk endangering the health and safety of the Filipino,” read the statement released by the following organizations: