Marijuana

The House of Representatives is in for heated debates over a bill proposing to legalize marijuana for medical uses.

Introduced by Rep. Rodolfo Albano, House Bill 6517 (An Act Providing Filipinos Right of Access to Medical Marijuana) won the support of the 63-member Committee on Health. The Bill, patterned after similar legislation in several US states, is now tabled for plenary discussion.

Buhay party-list Rep. Lito Atienza is staunchly opposing the Bill. In Atienza’s view, legalizing marijuana even for medical purposes, will create a gaping loophole in the Dangerous Drugs Law “guaranteed to be exploited aggressively by criminal drug syndicates.”

By some ironic twist, the plenary debate on the legalization of marijuana for medical uses happens as the country observes Drug Prevention and Control Week. The coincidence is unintended.

Atienza, who served as Manila mayor for three terms, warned the “Congress will in effect be planting the seeds of a new public health emergency as well as a new law enforcement problem.” He believes the law will provide a cover for allowing the hallucinogenic plant to be cultivated on a large scale with a lot of the leaves slipping through for other uses.

He also insists the Bill has no solid scientific basis to stand on. Use of marijuana extracts, especially on children suffering seizures, produced only anecdotal information. This is below scientific standard.

Atienza’s position against legalizing marijuana extract is shared by the influential Philippine Medical Association (PMA). In a statement, the PMA says authorizing Filipino physicians to prescribe medical marijuana “runs counter to the State’s policy to protect the wellbeing of its citizenry.”

Filipino doctors practicing in the US have likewise expressed support for Atienza’s opposition to the bill. Dr. Philip S. Chua, a heart surgeon and president of Filipino United Network-USA, fears that legalizing medical marijuana will likely be abused in the country, reducing us to a nation of “zombies.” He expressed this even if he supports the use of medical marijuana in the US where it is tightly regulated.

Atienza has his own anecdote about treating children suffering from seizures. He adopted two children, one of them blind from birth and both suffering from occasional seizures. Abundant demonstration of affection for them eventually cured them of the seizures. There was no need, he says, to introduce them to marijuana extracts.

At any rate, says Atienza, even if the pro-marijuana congressmen are able to ram through their bill at the House, it will likely suffer legislative death in the Senate. We saw this happen in the case of a House bill seeking to restore the death penalty, for which Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez had to strip his own allies from their post for not voting in the bill’s favor.

Gamed

Electricity consumers should never forget the dark days of November and December 2013 when generation companies “gamed” the system and forced prices at the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM) to spike. It took too many days before power authorities could respond by imposing a cap on power prices.

Two things happened that caused electricity prices to spike beyond P10 per kwh.

First, a extraordinary number of generating plants experienced unscheduled outages, causing demand to outstrip supply and putting upward pressure on prices. The underlying weakness for this is the thin reserve margin caused by the shortage of power plants.

Second, the generation companies failed to comply with the “must-offer” rule set down by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM). Under this rule, the generation companies are required to offer all their available capacity to the WESM when called upon to do so by the market operator.

Faced with runaway prices, the ERC imposed regulated pricing. The generation companies are still judicially contesting this order. A case was filed at the Court of Appeals to declare the ERC’s action illegal and to compensate the generation companies at more than P10 per kwh, the price of trading at the WESM before the ERC stepped in.

Should this case prosper, consumers will be penalized again by paying back more money for generation costs incurred years ago – costs incurred because the generation companies were gaming the system. There was clear market failure in what happened November-December 2013.

Rep. Danilo Suarez is warning that what happened in end-2013 could recur very soon. This is because our power reserves remain thin. This is the reason why “yellow alerts” indicating insufficient reserves have been issued the past few weeks.

Insufficient reserves make consumers vulnerable to corporate greed. Generation companies could exploit the supply and demand dynamic to price their electricity unreasonably higher. They are not penalized under existing regulation for what, in other cases, is called profiteering.

In 2013, the ERC was merely reactive. The agency stepped in only when it became clear that the system was being gamed to produce windfall profits for the generating companies.

Instead, says Suarez, the ERC must take a pro-active stance by removing the supply vulnerabilities. The regulatory body, after all, is to blame for foot-dragging on power plant applications that will boost our generation capacity and widen the reserves.

Some applications have been gathering dust at the ERC for years. Suarez is threatening the regulatory agency that he would cut its budget to zero next year if it continues with its non-performance in the face of shortages.

It works better for the existing generation companies that power supply is thin. There is less competitive pressure to keep their prices down. But this works against the interest of electricity consumers who are defenseless against predatory pricing.