Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 (Single Convention, 1961 Convention, or C61) is a United Nations treaty that controls activities (cultivation, production, supply, trade, transport) of specific narcotic drugs and lays down a system of regulations (licenses, measures for treatment, research, etc.) for their medical and scientific uses; it also establishes the International Narcotics Control Board.
Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, as amended by the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961
30 March 1961
8 August 1972 (amendment)
40 ratifications
186[3] (as of 2022)
Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish
The Single Convention was adopted in 1961[1] and amended in 1972.[2] As of 2022, the Single Convention as amended has been ratified by 186 countries.[3] The convention has since been supplemented by the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, which controls LSD, MDMA, and other psychoactive pharmaceuticals, and the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances; the three conventions establish the legal framework for international drug control and the war on drugs.
Ratification[edit]
The Single Convention as amended in 1972 had been ratified or acceded to by 186 states.[3] Only Chad remained party to the original 1961 Convention in its unamended form.[3] The Cook Islands, Equatorial Guinea, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, South Sudan, Timor-Leste, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu are not parties.[3]
Since the Single Convention is not self-executing, parties must enact legislation to carry out its provisions, and the UNODC works with countries' legislatures to ensure compliance.
The League of Nations adopted several drug control treaties prior to World War II, such as the International Opium Convention, and International Convention relating to Dangerous Drugs (1925)[4] specifying uniform controls on addictive drugs such as cocaine and opium, and its derivatives. However, the lists of controlled substances were fixed in the treaties' text. Consequently, it was necessary to periodically amend or supersede the conventions with the introduction of new treaties to keep up with advances in chemistry. According to a 1954 interview with United States Commissioner of Narcotics Harry J. Anslinger, the cumbersome process of conference and state-by-state ratification could take many decades.[5]
A Senate of Canada committee reported: "The work of consolidating the existing international drug control treaties into one instrument began in 1948, but it was 1961 before an acceptable third draft was ready."[6] That year, the UN Economic and Social Council convened a plenipotentiary conference of 73 nations for the adoption of a single convention on narcotic drugs. That meeting was known as the United Nations Conference on Narcotic Drugs. The participating states organized themselves into five distinct caucuses:[6]
These competing interests, after more than eight weeks of negotiations, finally produced a compromise treaty. Several controls were weakened; for instance, the proposed mandatory embargoes on nations failing to comply with the treaty became recommendations. The 1953 New York Opium Protocol, which had not yet entered into force, limited opium production to seven countries; the Single Convention lifted that restriction, but instituted other regulations and put the International Narcotics Control Board in charge of monitoring their enforcement. A compromise was also struck that allowed heroin and some other drugs classified as particularly dangerous to escape absolute prohibition.[7]
The Single Convention created four Schedules of controlled substances and a process for adding new substances to the Schedules without amending the treaty. The Schedules were designed to have significantly stricter regulations than the two drug "Groups" established by predecessor treaties. For the first time, cannabis was added to the list of internationally controlled drugs. In fact, regulations on the cannabis plant – as well as the opium poppy, the coca bush, poppy straw and cannabis tops – were embedded in the text of the treaty, making it impossible to deregulate them through the normal Scheduling process. A 1962 issue of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs' Bulletin on Narcotics proudly announced that "after a definite transitional period, all non-medical use of narcotic drugs, such as opium smoking, opium eating, consumption of cannabis (hashish, marijuana) and chewing of coca leaves, will be outlawed everywhere. This is a goal which workers in international narcotics control all over the world have striven to achieve for half a century."[7]
A 3 August 1962, Economic and Social Council resolution ordered the publication of the Commentary on the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.[8] The legal commentary was written by the United Nations Secretary-General staff member Adolf Lande, the former Secretary of the Permanent Central Narcotics Board and Drug Supervisory Body, operating under a mandate to give "an interpretation of the provisions of the Convention in the light of the relevant conference proceedings and other material."[9] The Commentary contains the Single Convention's legislative history and is an invaluable aid to interpreting the treaty.
The Single Convention entered into force on 13 December 1964, having met Article 41's requirement of 40 ratifications. As of 1 January 2005, 180 states were Parties to the treaty.[10] Others, such as Cambodia, have committed to becoming Parties.[11]
On 21 May 1971, the UN Economic and Social Council called a conference of plenipotentiaries to consider amendments to the Single Convention. The conference met at the United Nations Office at Geneva from 6 to 24 March 1972, producing the 1972 Protocol Amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. The amendments entered into force on 8 August 1975.[10]
On 11 November 1990, mechanisms for enforcing the Single Convention were expanded significantly by the entry into force of the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, which had been signed at Vienna on 20 December 1988. The Preamble to this treaty acknowledges the inadequacy of the Single Convention's controls to stop "steadily increasing inroads into various social groups made by illicit traffic in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances". The new treaty focuses on stopping organized crime by providing for international cooperation in apprehending and convicting gangsters and starving them of funds through forfeiture, asset freezing, and other methods. It also establishes a system for placing precursors to Scheduled drugs under international control. Some non-Parties to the Single Convention, such as Andorra, belong to this treaty and thus are still under the international drug control regime.
The Single Convention gives the UN Economic and Social Council's Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) power to add or delete drugs from the Schedules, in accordance with the World Health Organization's findings and recommendations. Any Party to the treaty may request an amendment to the Schedules, or request a review of the commission's decision. The Economic and Social Council is the only body that has power to confirm, alter, or reverse the CND's scheduling decisions. The United Nations General Assembly can approve or modify any CND decision, except for scheduling decisions.
The CND's annual meeting serves as a forum for nations to debate drug policy. At the 2005 meeting, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and Iran rallied in opposition to the UN's zero-tolerance approach in international drug policy. Their appeal was vetoed by the United States, while the United Kingdom delegation remained reticent.[53] Meanwhile, U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy Director John Walters clashed with United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa on the issue of needle exchange programs. Walters advocated strict prohibition, while Costa opined, "We must not deny these addicts any genuine opportunities to remain HIV-negative."[54]
The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) is mandated by Article 9 of the Single Convention to "endeavour 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 INCB administers the estimate system, which limits each nation's annual production of controlled substances to the estimated amounts needed for medical and scientific purposes.
Article 21 provides that "the total of the quantities of each drug manufactured and imported by any country or territory in any one year shall not exceed the sum of" the quantity:
Article 21 bis, added to the treaty by a 1971 amendment, gives the INCB more enforcement power by allowing it to deduct from a nation's production quota of cannabis, opium, and coca the amounts it determines have been produced within that nation and introduced into the illicit traffic. This could happen as a result of failing to control either illicit production or diversion of licitly produced opium to illicit purposes.[55] In this way, the INCB can essentially punish a narcotics-exporting nation that does not control its illicit traffic by imposing an economic sanction on its medicinal narcotics industry.
The Single Convention exerts power even over those nations that have not ratified it. The International Narcotics Board states:[56]
Article 14 authorizes the INCB to recommend an embargo on imports and exports of drugs from any noncompliant nations. The INCB can also issue reports critical of noncompliant nations, and forward those reports to all Parties. This happened when the United Kingdom reclassified cannabis from Class B to class C, eliminating the threat of arrest for possession.[57] See Cannabis reclassification in the United Kingdom.
The most controversial decisions of the INCB are those in which it assumes the power to interpret the Single Convention. Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Spain continue to experiment with medically supervised injection rooms, despite the INCB's objections that the Single Convention's allowance of "scientific purposes" is limited to clinical trials of pharmaceutical grade drugs and not public health interventions.[58] These European nations have more leverage to disregard the Board's decisions because they are not dependent on licit psychoactive drug exports (which are regulated by the Board). As international lawyer Bill Bush notes, "Because of the Tasmanian opium poppy industry, Australia is more vulnerable to political pressure than, say, Germany."[58]
The INCB is an outspoken opponent of drug legalization. Its 2002 report rejects a common argument for drug reform, stating, "Persons in favour of legalizing illicit drug use argue that drug abusers should not have their basic rights violated; however, it does not seem to have occurred to those persons that drug abusers themselves violate the basic rights of their own family members and society." The report dismisses concerns that drug control conflicts with principles of limited government and self-determination, arguing, "States have a moral and legal responsibility to protect drug abusers from further self-destruction." The report takes a majoritarian view of the situation, declaring, "Governments must respect the view of the majority of lawful citizens; and those citizens are against illicit drug use."[59]
Article 48 designates the International Court of Justice as the arbiter of disputes about the interpretation or application of the Single Convention, if mediation, negotiation, and other forms of alternative dispute resolution fail.