roadmaps to reforming the un drug conventions - Beckley Foundation

It would be left to the Parties to determine what constituted a ‘small quantity’ ofparticular drugs or psychotropic substances for the purposes of their domesticlegislation. The aim in this and the ‘non-commercial purpose’ provisos would be toensure that Parties were still obligated to prohibit the supply of large quantities ofdrugs, even where supply was for a non-commercial purpose, for example, free supplyof drugs to a large number of people at parties.The exemptions of Article 30(2)(b) from the new Article 3 bis of the 1961 Convention,and Article 9 from the new Article 2 bis of the 1971 Convention, would ensure that therequirements for supply or dispensation of drugs to individuals by medical prescriptionin those articles would continue to apply in relation to non-commercial supply ordispensation of small quantities of drugs for medical use. (This is discussed below insection 4.14 in relation to Article 30(2)(b) of the 1961 Convention and in section 5.4 inrelation to Article 9 of the 1971 Convention.) Similarly, the exemption of Article 7 fromthe new Article 2 bis of the 1971 Convention would be needed to ensure that the controlmeasures in that provision applying to Schedule I psychotropic substances wouldcontinue to apply to medical and scientific use of the substances and related actions,irrespective of the quantity of substances involved or the commerciality of the actions.This is discussed below in relation to Article 7.Parties’ obligations under the 1988 Convention are defined by reference to the 1961Convention, 97 the 1961 Convention as amended and the 1971 Convention. Therefore,removing small-scale, non-commercial actions from the scope of the 1961 Convention asamended and the 1971 Convention would have the same substantive effect on Parties’obligations under the 1988 Convention, without any need for a similar generalrestriction of the scope of that Convention. (This is discussed further below in section6.1.)Some specific amendments to the text of provisions of the Conventions are alsoproposed. The aim of these amendments would be to avoid uncertainty in provisionsapplying to personal use that would be made redundant (entirely or partly) by the newprovisions, or that would be inconsistent with the purposes of Option 1.The main advantage of this proposed approach to amending the Conventions for Option1 is that it would be straightforward, and would minimise the number and extent oftextual amendments needed. The effect of the proposed approach would be that noncommercialactions with respect to small quantities of narcotic drugs and psychotropicsubstances would sit outside the Conventions. Parties could still elect to prohibit theseactions but would not be obligated to do so under the Conventions. The approachwould limit Parties’ obligations under the Conventions concerning drug control to97As noted above, only only Afghanistan and Chad had not acceded to the 1972 Protocol to the 1961Convention by November 2009. Parties’ obligations to the 1988 Convention must be interpreted byreference to the 1961 Convention, the 1961 Convention as amended, and the 1971 Convention,whether or not a Party to the 1988 Convention is a Party to the earlier conventions (see furtherdiscussion of this point below).75