roadmaps to reforming the un drug conventions - Beckley Foundation

Chapter 8. ConclusionIN THE LAST half-century, a number of countries have moved in the direction ofdecriminalising personal use and possession of drugs, but, as noted in Chapter 2, manyof these moves have been compromised by attempts to stay within the presentconventions. The compromises often involve retaining some lesser penalties or givingwide discretion to police, and often result in “net-widening” rather than a truedecriminalisation. Operating under a changed set of international conventions wouldeliminate these problems.There are no precedents in the last half-century for a fully regulated and legally suppliednonmedical market for the controlled substances. To reach this aim, it is clear that theConventions must be changed either incrementally or more radically. A morethoroughgoing approach, which requires action by a group of countries, would be toadopt revisions to the Conventions, most likely by adopting new conventions intendedto supersede the existing ones for countries adopting the new convention(s). The draftrevisions in Chapter 5 above offer concrete language for incremental change in theConventions, either by amendment or by pre-emption by a new convention. Chapter 7extends these reforms by putting the drugs covered by the 1961 and the 1971 treatiesunder the same degree of international control. Chapter 6 lays out a more incrementalapproach which can be taken either by a country acting individually, or by like-mindedcountries acting in parallel. Its more incremental approach of “reform by subtraction”involves denouncing one or more of the treaties, and re-acceding with reservations.A more far-reaching step would be to adopt a new Single Convention on PsychoactiveSubstances that would bring alcohol and tobacco within the global drug regime’s scope,and replace the present international treaties. Chapter 4 makes a beginning on the taskof specifying what the aims and content of such a new Convention should be. Thoseundertaking such a new convention would have a more manageable task if there weredetailed prior discussions of a variety of issues which such an enterprise would raise.Few would argue that the system as we know it is succeeding in terms of its substantiveaims; it is accordingly time for the concrete consideration of what an alternativeinternational system would be. The aim of this book, at a minimum, has been toenvisage concrete alternatives to the present system. More ambitiously, the aim has beento offer guideposts for plausible paths of change in moving beyond the currentinternational system of drug control.68