5/5 UNGASS 2016 member states - Stretching the limit of the U.N. conventions

Although most examples below come from the American continents, most notably the Latin American region, the latter are not the only one to arguably breaching the letter and spirit of the drug control convention, as the example of Iran will show. We would argue here that because of the intransigency of the proponents of the current IDCR, most notably the INCB and representatives at the CND, these countries have been forced to breach international agreements in order to remedy a half a decade long problematic situation, notably in regard to cannabis regulation. It is argued here that policies in relation to the plans aiming at regulating a market of a scheduled substance for non-medical or scientific purposes, actively fall outside of the provisions of the U.N. drug control conventions, which had been put in place in order to prevent these very cases. However, we will see here, that despite domestic specific situations, official debates towards treaty reform will still probably be completely absent from the Special Session.

Canada

Although the North American country has not been advocating for treaty reform, the recent election of Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister has given weight to advocates leading the calls for change of the international conventions regimenting drug control. The new Liberal government has promised to act quickly (1) to regulate the Canadian cannabis market for general use “which would make Canada the first Group of 20 country to end cannabis prohibition on a national level.” (Washington Post, 2015a) A briefing memo sent to the Canadian Prime Minister, obtained by The Canadian Press, implies that the country may want to present a plan in which this legislative project shows that it does not contravene with international law (2) (High Times, 2016). While it could be argued that disregarding international law is a potential option, the new government will most likely intend to demonstrate compliance over the country’s international obligations. Additionally, it should be noted that Canada’s move is highly related to the recent development occurring in the U.S. neighboring states and should have an important impact during the upcoming Special Session. Ultimately, the recent “Notes for an Address by Hilary Geller during the General Debate on the Special Session of the UN General Assembly on the World Drug Problem at the 59th Session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs” (Canada, 2016) reaffirms the commitment of the country for harm reduction practices, as-well intends to present its future cannabis regulation scheme as-being possible within the conventions framework, which remains arguably rather precarious and ultimately hardly sustainable.

Jamaica:

The Caribbean island is the first nation of the region in 2015 to officially decriminalize the recreational use (up to two ounces) and regulate its cannabis market for scientific, medical and religious purposes. In regard to the latter, the domestic legislation notably “acknowledged the constitutional rights of the Rastafari community, which uses cannabis as a sacrament.” (Malinowska-Sempruch, 2015a) The new law has even been put forward to protect growers of innovative varieties of cannabis with intellectual property rights.

In February 2016, Jamaica Industry Minister Anthony Hylton signaled to prospective entrepreneurs that interim regulations (3) will be made public in March 2016. Final regulations, which intend to regulate the market from “seed to sale” (Graham, 2016), should cover “cultivation, transporting, retail (…), manufacturing and processing, and research, as well as export licensing.” (Ibid.) The government has already set up a regulating organism, the Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA) which will be in charge of “developing and administering the framework that will govern a legitimate” (Ibid.) cannabis industry. The first Caribbean nation to engage in such policies, the move cannot, once again, be disconnected from the recent changes occurring domestically by the U.S.

Latin America:

On the Latin American continent, “domestic social concerns and increasing annoyance with U.S. interference in local politics has led some countries to reform their punitive drug laws, or at least to attempt such reform, while at the same time often retaining harsh laws for drug trafficking.” (King County Bar Association, 2005) In relation to such contexts, several countries are pushing the boundaries of the U.N. drug conventions and while some are still currently within the limits, such as Argentina or Mexico. One example, is the Chilean Chamber of Deputies which has recently approved a bill allowing the personal growth of cannabis (up to six plant) for spiritual, recreational and medical uses, and the complete removal of the substance for the national “hard drug list” (4). The bill must still be approved by the Senate, “but it marks a major departure from the country’s severe treatment of drug possession in the past.” (Malinowska-Sempruch, 2015a). However, some others have intended, are currently in the process or have achieved significant breach of the system, such as Uruguay, Colombia or Ecuador.

Uruguay

During the 2013 11th National Conference on Drug Policy taking place in the Argentinian Senate, “over 400 participants from all over the country and foreign guests came together” (Intercambios, 2013) to debate drug control policy in the region. Julio Calzada, General Secretary of the National Drug Board of Uruguay presented the government-run model for cannabis regulation and “affirmed that neighboring countries, including Argentina, expressed their respect to the initiative.” (Ibid.) We will further examine the Uruguayan example in a specific article as it represents an powerful case of transformative action.

Colombia

Colombia’s Supreme Court legally decriminalized possession of illicit substances in 1994 (Guzmán & Yepes, 2010) but the decision has been subject to more recent “ongoing legal and constitutional argument between the government” (Pachico, 2011) and the Constitutional Court (5). The course has accelerated in 2015 when the Supreme Court further ruled that growing up to 20 plants of cannabis is no longer an offense. While, the Congress is currently debating the legalization of cannabis for medical use, in 2015, the Santos government preceded it and proposed a plan “to legalize the cultivation and sale of marijuana for medicinal and scientific purposes.” (Goodman, 2015) The legislation will seek to regulate everything from licensing for growers, to the eventual export of products made from the plant. However, the country “may even legalize the drug entirely after a leading senator announced to propose an adaption of the bill on the medicinal use.” (6) (Alsema, 2015)

Mexico

Regarding Mexico, the situation of the country is quite particular as “the mutually beneficial relationship between smugglers of contraband and the political and economic elites goes right back to the beginning of the twentieth century.” (Busch, 2012) The agreements are still very much present today and have taken a solid political turn with the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) reign of power between 1929 and 2000 (and which have returned to power since 2012 with the election of Enrique Peña Nieto). The PRI years were considered as “Pax Mafiosa” which “was due in large part to the fact the many criminal organisations were essentially tacit employees of the political system.” (Busch, 2012). As such, direct violence was still present but was nowhere near the levels that the country had been experiencing between 2006 and 2012 as President Calderon strengthened the institutional militarization of the conflict. The rise in power of the conservative political party PAN (Partido Acción Nacional) led to the disruption of the “business as usual” drug trade by forcing narco-traffickers to change their political interlocutors, especially at the state and municipal levels. Coupled with U.S. leading the counter-drug operations that led the Colombian Cartels to gradually transfer their operational activities, their money and power, to the Mexican Cartels; the country was indeed being set up for “a perfect storm.” (Busch, 2012) Between 2007 and 2014, the U.S. led Merida Initiative and the successive Mexican governments were arguably only able to worsen the political situation of the country, de facto plunged it in an all-out civil war that have made according to unofficial estimates more than 164,000 victims in the whole decade (Breslow, 2015).

Additionally, Mexico decriminalized the possession of small amounts of narcotics in 2009, “replacing criminal sanctions with treatment recommendations, and mandatory treatment for repeat offenders.” (New York Times, 2009) However, as noted by Hernández Tinajero & Zamudio Angles (2009), the quantity thresholds has been “criticised as being too low and ambiguous, leaving implementation vulnerable to police corruption.” On the international stage, several ex-officials, including former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, have called for transformative actions, namely state regulation (Global Commission on Drug Policy, 2014) of currently illicit substances. It should be noted that as most of the members of the Commission, when in office, the calls from these personalities were much more timid, or simply inexistent, as officials had to take into account the company and interest of their powerful neighbor, as-well as the powerful ramifications of institutional drug-related corruption. Today the economic power and ramification of the Cartels cannot be dissociated from the so-called ‘regular’ national economy and many powerful actors would arguably remain satisfied with the status quo, to the dismay of the majority of the population which has for a decade lived through de facto civil wars.

Iran

Currently, Iranians can face severe sentencing including the death penalty for mere possession of illegal substances (in 2014, more than half of the 753 publicly hanged citizen were accused of drug-related charges (Amnesty International, 2015), and the country further recently executed “the entire adult male population of a village in southern Iran (…) for drug offences.” (The Guardian, 2016c) The country’s widely critiqued repressive official policy is still supported by UNODC, and its programs principally funded by European states (The Guardian, 2015e). For these reasons and others, intrinsically linked to the disruptive non-liberal conservative religious regime, the country is often portrayed as one of the leading proponents of the current IDCR. In its 2015 Drug Control Report, the Islamic Republic acknowledged that in 2014 nearly 3% of its population was believed to be suffering from what is considered as an “addiction” (7) (Iran, 2015). Roughly this represent between 2 and 3 million people, but other estimates indicate a higher number, between 5 and 6 million people (Khalaj, 2015). According to the authorities these figures can be partly attributed to the proximity with poppy production sites - most notably in Afghanistan -,coupled with major transit roads and, therefore allowing fairly low domestic prices for the opioids. But after years of repressive policies, Iranian authorities may be ready to tackle the issue in a different manner.

Since the beginning of the 2000’s, Iran was already quite ahead of other countries regarding the implementation of harms reduction programs, such as needle exchange and opioid substitution, including within prisons. These stances have greatly helped curb the spread of HIV, which was particularly rampant due to unsafe practices rather than the “addiction” itself. Article 19 of the 2000 revised Iranian drug law now states that “someone who abuses drugs without suffering from addiction should be punished” allowing “addicts” to subscribe to rather effective programs run by “government-run rehabilitation centers” or to follow “family-centric medical treatment under expert supervision.” (Al-Monitor, 2014) After more than “ten years of harm reduction policies, Iran accounts for more than 6,000 methadone clinics and numerous programmes of support and assistance to drug users.” (Ghiabi, 2015) In this regard, and as pertinently noted by scholar Maziyar Ghiabi (2015), while outside perceptions often portray “the image of Iran as retrograde and inherently conservative, (it however) hardly fits with the reality of a more dynamic domestic political debate within.” Indeed, the drug control policy debate has been producing truly transformative propositions which could seem paradoxical in regard to the religious nature of the regime: complete regulation of specific illegal substances market and trade (8).

The online publication The Conversation has first reported in 2015 the proposal of Safatian Saeed, a leading figure of the regime, part of the Expediency Council and heading a working group tasked with drug reduction. This proposal proposes a new drug control policy which would notably include the governmental regulation of the internal opium and cannabis markets (9). It is worth noting that the Council for the Discernment of the Expediency of the State (also known as the Expediency Council) is a powerful political institution of the Iranian regime. Established in 1987 by then Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, “its main objectives are to identify major political challenges, institutional strategies and long-term policies of the country.” (Ghiabi, 2015) The organ notably serves as an advisory body to the Supreme Leader and has the sole responsibility of regulating drug control legislation when all other laws are passed by the Parliament.

As would in any other country, support for this proposal is far from being unanimous as more conservative Iranian officials maintain that all “drugs” must be strictly prohibited. But in a country where more than 70% of the prison population is incarcerated for drug related cases, the debate could be substantial. Advocates of the transformative proposal highlight the potential economic benefits, including to the agricultural sector; prison decongestion and funds redistribution allocated from the judicial and law enforcement system to health related and prevention programs. With this proposal, the state would now control the entire production chain, from production to consumers in order to ensure the price, origin and quality of the substances. Furthermore, as noted by Maziyar Ghiabi (2015), “given that cannabis and opium are both indigenous plants that have had a historical presence in Iran, they are also a good place to start a new indigenous approach to drug control.” If passed, this measure could represent a tangible alternative model from a country not belonging to the either Global North or to the Latin American hemisphere. Additionally, recent elections have seen ‘progressive’ forces gain momentum against their more ‘conservative’ political adversaries. These recent changes within the Parliament and the Expediency Council could potentially have an impact on the conduct of the regime in the aftermath of the upcoming Special Session.

Much like Iran, Uruguay, Canada and any other countries potentially engaging outside of the legal limit of the current conventions drug regulation schemes, the fate of their international legal obligations remain arguably in their own hands. As central tenets of international law include “the principles of state consent, sovereign equality among states, and non-intervention in the domestic affairs of other states” (Alves, & al., 2016), the U.N. countries signatory to the drug control conventions still have the possibility to amend, declare reservation and withdraw from these treaties, or to simply outright ignore them. Although it will not be an easy task, seeking an amendment to exclude cannabis and THC from the convention is potentially one of the most legally viable options. However, while there is vast precedent for withdrawing from international treaties, as Canada has shown us (10), in light of the minimal consequences faced by Uruguay since the beginning of its reforms on the matter, desirous following countries could also decide simply not to respect their treaty obligations while not denouncing them.

As we have previously seen, UNGASS 2016 is happening at a moment in history that is considerably different than the period in which the previous “reviews” of the international drug control regime took place in 1990 and 1998. At the time, “the United States, the leader of the putative unipolar world, was the uncontested champion of a hardline punitive global counter-narcotics regime” (Felbab-Brown & Trinkunas, 2015) whereas now the official stance of the country on the matter is both evolving internally and internationally. As such, the country will find itself going against different hardliners such as China or Russia, which by and large publicly favor more aggressive policies, but are still domestically facing drastic health-related consequences of the current IDCR. Others, such as Brazil, Nigeria and India have shown little interest in challenging the current course of action, despite their growing regional influences. Additionally, as pointed out by Vanda Felbab-Brown and Harold Trinkunas (2015), “many of the drug policy reforms formulated in Latin America or Western Europe are likely to struggle for support at UNGASS 2016.” Even relatively cost effective policies, staying within the boundaries of the U.N. conventions, such as harm reduction and decriminalization are not likely to easily find support, despite massive evidence of their efficiency. As indicated by both researchers “such measures often find very limited support in Asia, including China, Thailand, and Vietnam; there is strong opposition in Russia, and at best ambivalence in much of Africa.” (Felbab-Brown & Trinkunas, 2015)

For researchers Juan Carlos Garzón and Luciana Pol (2015), “Latin America undoubtedly plays a vital role in this debate, but it must overcome not only its internal differences, but also face strong resistance from other blocks and countries.” As such, China and Russia probably represent the strongest public opponents to even cosmetic change of the regime. The E.U. “has a cautious and, on occasions, disinterested attitude towards the debate” while the African Group will probably defend the status quo and the need to “fight drugs”. Amidst these blurry lines, the U.S. can be seen as moderating its position “partly due to the prison crisis it is facing and partly because of the legislative reforms various American states have introduced legalising cannabis.” (Ibid.) But this does not mean that the country will be pushing for meaningful reforms of the current global drug control architecture. Moreover, further member states disagreement will probably surface, although it is quite unlikely that direct confrontation would occur. The topic of designing law-enforcement strategies will probably be among the most heated debate as “diehards” “will seek to aggressively pursue drug-production suppression in producing states, coupled with aggressive interdiction in transit countries” whereas “many Latin American countries as well as Asian ones have highly negative experiences with forced eradication.” (Felbab-Brown & Trinkunas, 2015) Ultimately, if reducing the political, social and economic influences of drug traffickers seem to be an agreed goal, there is no common understanding as to which policy should be favored. As such, one of the key, minimal, objectives of the Special Session, should be to assess, under solid empirical evidence, which policies are efficiently working.

However, aside from the most important domestic situations and related drug policy positions of the U.N. member states, the positions of the U.N. agencies remain relevant to the debate as they can further influence member states in their conduct. As such, their increased participation in the debate is not to be overlooked.

(1) See Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Mandate Letter, from Primer Minister Justin Trudeau asking for regulation of the internal cannabis market (Canada, 2015).

(2) "As part of examining legalization of cannabis possession and production, Canada will need to explore how to inform the international community and will have to take the steps needed to adjust its obligations under these conventions,” (Blanchfield, 2016)

(3) The proposed interim regime will span six categories of licences: cultivator - which will cover nursery operations and allows the licensee to purchase seedlings, cultivate, harvest and dry ganja if granted a purchase contract; processor/manufacturer - for handling, storage, processing and manufacture of ganja and ganja products or extracts; transport - for transport between two licence holders; retail - which in the interim will cover therapeutic centres and tea houses; R&D; and import.

(4) In December 2015, Chile President Michelle Bachelet “signed a decree removing marijuana from the list of dangerous drugs in an effort to decriminalize medical use, taking the country one step closer to legalization for recreational use.” (Malinowska-Sempruch, 2015a)

(5) Despite these tensions, de-facto decriminalization continues and was institutionally sanctioned by a 2012 government-led decriminalization proposal presented by the Santos administration (Pacheco, 2012).

(6) By legalizing cannabis all together, the Colombian Senator “hopes to remove this important revenue stream from local drug gangs as a first step to tackle Colombia’s long-standing problems with drug production and trafficking that has long fueled political violence in the country.” (Alsema, 2015)

(7) It is worth noting that such a term, although present more than 126 times (non-including “addict,” with 87 more references), is never defined throughout the report. As we will discuss in the dedicated article, the concept of addiction is far from being easily define, nor is it done so in the same way by everyone. As such, what may be the crucial in this current national debate, but which is also fundamental at the UNGASS level, may be “the opportunity for the political class and the public to address the phenomenon of drug use beyond the all-embracing stereotype of addiction and the addict” notably in order to achieve “a nuanced policy in which recreational use – which is regardless of prohibition, rampant – is not criminalised and punished.” (Ghiabi, 2015)

(8) “The current regime already envisages the prescription of opium tincture to drug abusers registered at state addiction centres, therefore the ground for selective legalisation is in part paved.” (Ghiabi, 2015)

(9) “Legalisation of cannabis and opium use under specific circumstances outlined by ad hoc laws, for instance, only in private places and for opium, (…) only for people above a certain age. The latter, in particular, is reminiscent of pre-1979 revolution drug laws where opium vouchers were distributed to all registered opium users above the age of 50.” (Ghiabi, 2015)

(10) In 2011, despite international condemnation, Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol on the justification that it would be unable to satisfy the carbon emission reduction targets and would be faced with a $1.4-billion bill for carbon emissions permits from other Kyoto Protocol countries. Canada also withdrew from the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in 2013 and the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling in 1981.

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