 | NORML News: UN Drugs Conference - A chance for change |
 NORML News Autumn 2003
World leaders are meeting in Vienna to discuss UN drug control treaties. More than two hundred MPs around the world, including Green MPs Nandor Tanczos and Metiria Turei, have signed a declaration to reform the treaties. Jim Anderton will be representing New Zealand in what is shaping up to be crucial opportunity for international law reform. Harry Cording reports.
The upcoming conference of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) will see a challenge laid down to the globally enforced, American inspired prohibition regime.
Prohibitionists are being confronted head-on with a wide-ranging harm reduction and legalisation initiative. The conference, to be held in Vienna on April 8-17, is expected to include delegates from more than 60 countries.
The Transnational Radical Party has organised an online petition, International Appeal for the Reform of the UN Conventions on Drugs, which will be presented to the conference. It is online at www.radicalparty.org and has been signed by over 5000 people from 76 countries, including more than 200 legislators, and has been tabled in several national parliaments.
Among the members of various parliaments who signed the petition are our own Green MPs Nandor Tanczos and Metiria Turei.
New Zealand is sending the Minister of Drug Policy Jim Anderton to UNGASS. Jim has previously opposed cannabis law reform, but at least he is looking around at what is happening in other countries with an open mind.
The European Parliament is due to vote on its policy on April 8. Marco Cappato, member for Italy and coordinator of Parliamentarians for Antiprohibitionist Action, has been urging his fellow members to vote for the Transnational Radical Party’s reform program.
Recently Cappato, who is in his 60s, spent four days in jail in Manchester, Britain, after refusing to pay a fine for possessing a small amount of cannabis as a nonviolent civil disobedience action.
The European Union Strategy on Drugs promotes harm reduction as a legitimate policy. One of its goals is to “reduce substantially over five years the incidence of drug-related health damage and the number of drug-related deaths.”
In contrast, the 1998 UNGASS adopted the target of “eliminating or significantly reducing the illicit cultivation of the coca bush, the cannabis plant and the opium poppy by 2008.”
It is further away from this goal now than it was in 1998.
The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) is the UN agency in charge of international treaties on drugs. It is heavily influenced by the USA, and its latest annual report attacks groups that advocate legalisation or decriminalisation of drugs, as well as groups focusing on harm reduction.
Many countries have recognised the failure of “just say no” style prohibition, and some are calling for a review of the UN’s drug treaties. Among them are the UK and Canada, which have both moved to liberalise their cannabis laws (although not nearly enough). Switzerland, Belgium, Spain and Portugal have all followed Holland’s lead in easing restrictions on cannabis. In Jamaica the National Commission of Ganja has recommended decriminalising cannabis for use by adults and as a sacrament for religious purposes.
In many instances there is a correlation between the drug policies of various countries and their positions on the war in Iraq. Those inclined more to tolerance and harm reduction generally do not support America’s adventure in the oil fields.
For many years the INCB has pressured governments that show any signs of liberalising to get them back in line. In doing so, it has tried to interfere with the sovereignty and autonomy of member states in formulating their drug policies. Instead of putting the INCB in its place, countries have been reluctant to defy it, and keep a low profile if the INCB criticises them.
Such criticism is well beyond its mandate, which is “to limit the cultivation, production, manufacture and use of drugs to an adequate amount required for medical and scientific purposes, to ensure their availability for such purposes and to prevent illicit cultivation, production and manufacture of, and illicit trafficking in and use of, drugs.”
The main role of the INCB is to ensure that the legal supply of controlled drugs matches demand through individual governments estimating their need for these drugs for “scientific and medical” purposes, and authorising countries to cultivate plants to meet the need. Supply is regulated in an effort to prevent over-production of drugs and their diversion onto the illegal market.
The UN Single Convention of 1961 says states are required “to take steps to limit drug use exclusively to medical and scientific purposes.” States are not actually required to prohibit use of these drugs, nor to establish sanctions or punishments for their use.
The Conventions require that drugs under international control must only be used for “medical and scientific purposes”, but do not define these terms. Legitimate medical practice is not defined by international treaties nor agreed upon throughout the medical profession. To take a stand on this issue is to take a political stand.
For example, if a government is convinced of the medical value of cannabis, it has every right under the Conventions to authorise its use for medical and scientific purposes. However, the INCB has opposed every effort to authorise medical use of cannabis, and calls on governments “not to allow its medical use unless conclusive results of research are available indicating its medical usefulness.”
Despite what the INCB may want, the Vienna conference is an opportunity to stop the war on drugs and bring about drug peace.
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For more information about the Vienna meeting, see these websites:
www.antiprohibitionist.org
www.radicalparty.org
www.radicalparty.org
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Photo captions:
Hypocrisy, anyone? At the last UNGASS meeting in 1998, New Zealand was represented by Tuariki Delemere, who accused fellow delegates of hypocrisy for drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes as they discussed criminalising other people who wanted to smoke cannabis. Will Jim Anderton also tell it like it is?
Minister of Drug Policy Jim Anderton will be representing New Zealand.
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