Us Calls For Major Reform In International Drug Laws

[Guest elmanito]

For the first time since the beginning of the war on drugs, the US appears ready to allow other countries to relax their approaches to illicit substances.

 

In a little-noticed October 9 press conference, Assistant Secretary of State for Drugs and Law Enforcement Bill Brownfield acknowledged that the UN Drug Control Conventions, the pillar of international drug laws, should be reintrpreted to allow more policy flexibility. "The first of them was drafted and enacted in 1961," he said. "Things have changed since 1961."

Brownfield specified that the treaties should "tolerate different national drug policies, to accept the fact that some countries will have very strict drug approaches; other countries will legalize entire categories of drugs."

 

Brownfield spent a lot of time specifically discussing marijuana legalization in Colorado, Washington state, and Uruguay. "How could I," he said, "a representative of the Government of the United States of America, be intolerant of a government that permits any experimentation with legalization of marijuana if two of the 50 states of the United States of America have chosen to walk down that road?"

 

The statements come as the US and other countries prepare for the next General Assembly Special Session on drugs in 2016. Drug policy reformers have long seen the 2016 session as their next major opportunity to change international drug laws that have largely required participants — from the US to Uruguay to the Netherlands — to treat drugs as a law enforcement, rather than public health, issue.

Update: A spokesperson for the State Department clarified that Brownfield's remarks didn't intend to call for changing the UN Drug Conventions. The remarks instead advocated for a reinterpretation of the treaties. This article was updated to reflect that.

 

How much of the war on drugs is tied to international treaties?

If lawmakers decided to stop the war on drugs tomorrow, a major hurdle could be international agreements that require restrictions and regulations on certain drugs.

There are three major treaties: the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, the Convention on Psychotropic Drugs of 1971, and the UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. Combined, the treaties require participants to limit and even criminalize the possession, use, trade, and distribution of drugs outside of medical and scientific purposes, and work together to stop international drug trafficking.

 

There is a lot of disagreement among drug policy experts, enforcers, and reformers about the stringency of the treaties. Several sections of the conventions allow countries some flexibility so they don't violate their own constitutional protections. The US, for example, hasnever enforced penalties on inciting illicit drug use on the basis that it would violate rights to freedom of speech.

Many argue that any move toward legalization of use, possession, and sales is in violation of international treaties. Under this argument, Colorado, Washington, and Uruguay are technically in violation of the treaties because they legalized marijuana for personal possession and sales.

Others say that countries have a lot of flexibility due to the constitutional exemptions in the conventions. Countries could claim, for instance, that their protections for right to privacy and health allow them to legalize drugs despite the conventions. When it comes to individual states in the US, the federal government can also argue that America's federalist system allows states some flexibility as long as the federal government keeps drugs illegal.

"It's pretty clear that the war on drugs was waged for political reasons and some countries have used the treaties as an excuse to pursue draconian policies," said Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, director of the Open Society Global Drug Policy Program. "Nevertheless, we've seen a number of countries drop criminal penalties for minor possession of all drugs. We've seen others put drugs into a pharmaceutical model, including the prescription of heroin to people with serious addictions. This seems completely possible within the treaties."

 

Even if a country decided to dismantle prohibition and violate the treaties, it's unclear how the international community would respond. If the US, for example, ended prohibition, there's little other countries could do to interfere; there's no international drug court, and sanctions would be very unlikely for a country as powerful as America.

 

Still, Martin Jelsma, an international drug policy expert at the Transnational Institute, argued that ignoring or pulling out of the international drug conventions could seriously damage America's standing around the world. "Pacta sunt servanda ('agreements must be kept') is the most fundamental principle of international law and it would be very undermining if countries start to take an 'a-la-carte' approach to treaties they have signed; they cannot simply comply with some provisions and ignore others without losing the moral authority to ask other countries to oblige to other treaties," Jelsma wrote in an email. "So our preference is to acknowledge legal tensions with the treaties and try to resolve them."

 

To resolve such issues, many critics of the war on drugs hope to reform international drug laws in 2016 during the next General Assembly Special Session on drugs.

"There is tension with the tax-and-regulate approach to marijuana in some jurisdictions," Malinowska-Sempruch said. "But it's all part of a process and that's why we hope the UN debate in 2016 is as open as possible, so that we can settle some of these questions and, if necessary, modernize the system."

 

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