roadmaps to reforming the un drug conventions - Beckley Foundation

ut considerably less potency than such forms as resin or sinsemilla; samples of ‘herbalcannabis’ seized by police in England in 2005 had a median potency of 2.1% of THC,though one sample had 11.8%. 33 It is under the definition of cannabis in the 1961Convention that retail shops selling bhang, an infusion normatively of cannabis leaves,are licensed in a number of Indian states by the state government, 34 although the treatydefinition appears to be applied quite loosely. 352.3 Collective neutralisation of aspects of existing treaties by adoption of a newtreatyWhen treaties conflict, a traditional rule in international law has been that the morerecent treaty takes precedence. Thus, one option for a group of nations would be toeffectively neutralise provisions of an existing treaty which they disfavoured byadopting a new treaty in the same area.As often in international law, things are not quite that simple. Parties to the new treatywho had not withdrawn from the older one would still be bound by the obligations ofthe older treaty in their relations with states that were party to the old treaty but not thenew one. Beyond this, there are some further complications which are not settled ininternational law, and which might be the subject of litigation, if such a new treaty wasadopted. 36 Despite such caveats, this would be a worthwhile strategy for a group of likemindedstates to pursue. Given the complication that the old treaty would still applywith Parties outside the new treaty, a new drug treaty would be easier to apply andperhaps more readily accepted if it retained the provisions of the present treaties oninternational trade in controlled drugs. Thus the draft Framework Convention on CannabisControl, which has been put forward by a group of scholars as a model for a new treatyon cannabis, keeps in place the international trade provisions of the present drugtreaties, while laying out a set of provisions for domestic markets in cannabis modelledon the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. 37A path towards the options described in Chapter 5 below might be for a group of statesto agree among themselves on a new treaty with the provisions from the current treatiesaltered as specified in one of these Options. Given the difficulties along the path of asimple amendment process noted in 2.2 above, a new treaty among like-minded states33Potter, D.J., Clark, P., Brown, M.B. ‘Potency of Δ 9 -THC and other cannabinoids in England in 2005:Implications for psychoactivity and pharmacology’. Journal of Forensic Sciences 53(1):90−94, 2008.34Room et al., 2010, pp. 99−100.35E.g., Gorman, P. Bhang! Bhang! You’re high! Peter Gorman Archive on web, viewed 25 December,2011. http://petergormanarchive.com/at/tales-from-india/bhang-bhang-youre-high.html (accessed 8July, 2012)36Room et al., 2010, pp. 136–138; Pauwelyn, J., Conflict of Norms in Public International Law: How WTOLaw Relates to Other Rules of International Law, pp. 52−58, 306, 409. Cambridge, etc.: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2003.37Room et al., 2010, pp. 159−91.12