Short answer. Yes. A person convicted under the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act is disqualified from exercising parental authority or guardianship as an accessory penalty, and the disqualification is not held back while an appeal is pending — the statute suspends those rights during the appeal as well.
What the law says
A person convicted under this Act shall be disqualified to exercise his/her civil rights such as but not limited to, the rights of parental authority or guardianship, either as to the person or property of any ward
RA 9165, Section 35 — Loss Of Civil And Political Rights. Read the full provision →
What the law says
Such rights shall also be suspended during the pendency of an appeal from such conviction.
RA 9165, Section 35 — Loss Of Civil And Political Rights. Read the full provision →
It rides on the conviction itself
A person convicted under this Act shall be disqualified to exercise his/her civil rights such as but not limited to, the rights of parental authority or guardianship, either as to the person or property of any ward. This is an accessory penalty, which means nobody has to ask for it. There is no separate custody case, no petition by the other parent, no finding that this particular parent is unfit. The disqualification attaches by operation of the judgment, and it reaches both sides of the role — authority over the child's person and control of the child's property — along with the power to dispose of a ward's property and political rights such as voting.
The words the reader usually misses
Two phrases decide most real cases. such as but not limited to means the enumeration is illustrative: the disqualification is from civil rights generally, and the named ones are examples rather than the whole. And the penalty follows a conviction under this Act — a drug-related conviction under some other statute is not what this provision speaks to, so the charge sheet and the judgment matter more than the label anyone puts on the case in conversation. What was actually convicted, under which law, is the first document to read.
An appeal does not hold it back
Most people assume that a judgment under appeal changes nothing until the appeal is over. Here the statute says the opposite in terms: Such rights shall also be suspended during the pendency of an appeal from such conviction. So the interval between conviction and a final ruling is not a period in which parental authority quietly continues. It is a period in which it is suspended, with the same practical effect on the child's day-to-day care, and the family has to arrange for that reality rather than wait it out. If the conviction is later reversed, the footing on which the rights were suspended disappears with it.
What it does not settle
Losing the right to exercise parental authority is not the same as deciding who exercises it instead. Section 35 disqualifies; it does not name a substitute, allocate custody, or extinguish the child's right to support from the convicted parent. Those questions are answered by family law, and where the other parent is available they will usually be answered in that parent's favour without a contest — a conviction against one parent says nothing about the other. Where no parent is left standing, someone has to raise substitute parental authority or guardianship formally, and the sooner that is filed the fewer gaps the child lives through.