Short answer. Section 72 addresses this directly. If your confidential rehabilitation records are used for an unlawful purpose such as blackmail of you or your family, the penalty for breaching their confidentiality applies on top of whatever other crime the blackmailer is convicted of. The two penalties stack rather than merge.
What the law says
Should the records be used for unlawful purposes, such as blackmail of the drug dependent or the members of his/her family, the penalty imposed for the crime of violation of confidentiality shall be in addition to whatever crime he/she may be convicted of
RA 9165, Section 72 — Breach Of Record Confidentiality. Read the full provision →
The blackmail provision
Section 72 anticipates exactly this misuse. It provides that should the records be used for unlawful purposes, such as blackmail of the drug dependent or the members of his/her family, the penalty imposed for the crime of violation of confidentiality shall be in addition to whatever crime he/she may be convicted of. Blackmail of the dependent or their family is the example the statute itself gives. The effect is that the confidentiality penalty is not swallowed by the extortion charge — both are imposed. Taking sealed records and using them as a threat is treated as a wrong distinct from the threat itself.
It builds on the underlying confidentiality offence
Section 72 first makes it a crime to reveal the confidential records of a drug dependent under the voluntary submission program at all. The blackmail clause is an aggravation layered on that base offence: a person who leaks the records and then uses them to pressure the dependent faces liability both for the breach of confidentiality and for whatever the extortion amounts to as a separate crime. So a blackmailer in this position is exposed on two fronts at once, and a conviction on one does not discharge the other — they are cumulative by the section's own terms.
Who is exposed
The section reaches anyone who had official custody of or access to the records, and equally anyone who gained possession of them, whether lawfully or not. A person who never had any right to the records but obtained them and turned them into a threat is squarely within it. And if the offender is a government official or employee, the maximum penalty for the confidentiality offence applies, with absolute perpetual disqualification from public office added on. The breadth is deliberate — it does not matter how the blackmailer came by the file, only that they disclosed and misused it.
What to do, and next steps
Because two offences are in play, preserving evidence of both the leak and the threats matters — messages, documents, anything showing the records were disclosed and then used to pressure you or your family. This is a situation to bring to counsel promptly rather than handle alone, both to stop the misuse and because a complaint for the confidentiality breach can proceed together with any charge for the extortion. Engaging the demand on your own tends to make matters worse; the stronger course is to secure the evidence and get advice on how to act on it.