roadmaps to reforming the un drug conventions - Beckley Foundation

Chapter 2. The present system, and directions for reformTHE PRESENT SYSTEM consists of three Conventions:• the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (and a 1972 protocol amending it),primarily covering opium and its derivatives, coca bush derivatives, notably cocaine,and cannabis• The 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, covering a wide range ofmanufactured psychoactive medications used pharmaceutically, includingamphetamines and benzodiazepides, as well as LSD and other psychedelicsubstances• The 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances,primarily aiming to suppress illicit trafficking and including provisions attackingmoney-laundering and controlling precursors to drugs controlled under the 1961and 1971 conventions, and also including a requirement that possession or purchaseof controlled drugs be criminalised. 16As the 1961 Convention’s name spells out, it aimed to consolidate the confused tangle ofconventions, agreements and protocols which had accrued in the intervening halfcenturysince the Opium Convention. But, as Bewley-Taylor and Jelsma havepersuasively argued, 17 the Single Convention was more than just a consolidation: whileprevious treaties had been ‘concerned predominantly with the regulation of the licittrade and the availability for medical purposes of a range of drugs’, the SingleConvention considerably extended the scope of proscription, gaining wide internationalagreement on requirements for national penal provisions for many activities. Thisorientation of the Single Convention served as the frame for further extensions by thetwo later treaties.The resulting system thus goes far beyond the customary concerns of international lawswith regulating trade and other relations between nations – although the regulation oftrade in psychoactive substances is indeed one aspect of the treaties. 18 The treaty system16The treaties, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (as amended by the 1972 Protocol, theConvention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971, and the United Nations Convention against illicitTraffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988, are conveniently collected in: UnitedNations Office on Drugs and Crime, The International Drug Control Conventions, New York: UnitedNations, 2009. http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/treaties/index.html (accessed 2 July, 2012).17Bewley-Taylor, D. & Jelsma, M., Fifty Years of the 1961 Single Conventions on Narcotic Drugs: AReinterpretation, Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, Series on Legislative Reform of Drug Policies,No. 12, March 2011. www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/files/download/dlr12.pdf (accessed 8 July, 2012).18Babor, T., Caulkins, J., Edwards, G., Fischer, B., Foxcroft, D., Humphreys, K., Obot, I., Rehm, J.,Reuter, P., Room, R., Rossow, I. & Strang, J., Drug Policy and the Public Good, p. 212. Oxford, etc.:Oxford University Press, 2010.5