roadmaps to reforming the un drug conventions - Beckley Foundation

would probably be more easily implemented. With respect to the provisions concerningdomestic law which conflict with the 1961, 1971 or 1988 treaty, the new treaty can beargued to take precedence under the ‘last in time’ principle.An alternative path, which would be more radical in effect but might be more easilyaccepted, would be to start again, and to propose a new Single Convention covering allpsychoactive substances, including those not now controlled under the drug treaties.This option is further discussed in Chapter 4 below.3. Actions which can be taken individually by any Party, or byParties acting in parallelThere are a number of actions which can be taken unilaterally by States which areParties to the treaties. These individual actions could also be co-ordinated between likemindedParties. The latter might have advantages both in terms of the signal which theaction conveys, and in terms of diminishing the effects of any opprobrium orcountermeasures from other states that the actions may attract. 383.1 Denunciation of one or more of the treatiesAfter a period of notice, a country can denounce (withdraw from) any of theconventions. For the 1961 and 1971 treaties, the withdrawal takes effect on the nextJanuary 1 which is at least 6 months after the denunciation is received by the UNSecretary-General (Arts. 46 and 19, respectively). 39 For the 1988 treaty, it takes effect oneyear after the Secretary-General receives the denunciation (Art. 30). On 29 June 2011,Bolivia denounced the 1961 Convention, acting then so that the denunciation would takeeffect at the beginning of 2012. This action was taken after it had become clear that itseffort to change the 1961 treaty’s provisions on coca leaves would not succeed. Bolivia38Bewley-Taylor, D. Toward revision of the UN drug control conventions: the logic and dilemmas oflike-minded groups. London: International Drug Policy Consortium, Series on Legislative Reform ofDrug Policies No. 19, March 2012. http://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/files/download/dlr19.pdf(accessed 2 July, 2012).39It is not clear what the effect of a denunciation of the 1961 treaty would have on status as a Party tothe 1972 Protocol. In other such situations, it appears to be assumed that denouncing the treaty alsodenounces the protocol [e.g., Official Commentary on Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventionsof 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts(Protocol II), 8 June 1977, p. 1110, 3846: “A State Party to the Conventions and to the Protocol maydenounce the Protocol without denouncing the Conventions; the converse is not possible”.http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/COM/470-750126, accessed 8 July, 2012]. But if there is a reaccession, theProtocol provides (Art. 19 §a) that any state acceding to the 1961 treaty after August 1975, when theProtocol entered in force, will “be considered as a Party to the Single Convention as amended”. In thiscase, presumably the 1961 treaty’s provisions on reservations would apply also to the amendmentsresulting from the 1972 Protocol, so that reservations could be made on any part of the treaty (butwith scope for objections to the reservation for specified articles). Concerning reservations, see section3.2 below.13