INCB at the 59th CND

The INCB at the 59th Commission on Narcotic Drugs

The INCB engaged in a busy schedule of activities at the 59th CND. The Board's German President Mr Werner Sipp was one of those iving a keynote speech on the opening day of the Special Segment on UNGASS Preparations. As usual, the INCB's contributions were ambivalent, with a number of promising new developments – such as the call for the abolition of the death penalty for drug offences – contrasting with the insistence that the international drug control conventions require no reform. Mr Sipp's first intervention was along these lines, declaring that ‘we do not really need new approaches to drugs’.

The maintenance of the conventions as the ‘cornerstone’ of the drug control system was a recurring theme of the Board's discourse at the CND, as was its 'concern' regarding cannabis and some countries' measures to establish a legally regulated market for the drug; the availability of controlled medicines; the proportionality of responses to minor drugs offences, and the growing challenge of Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS).

Many of these issues were raised in the informal civil society dialogue with the INCB, in which the INCB President engages representatives from civil society each year at the CND. The Board was represented by Mr Sipp, who began by thanking the Vienna NGO Committee for facilitating the dialogue, and civil society more broadly for its participation.

In this discussion, Katherine Pettus of the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care asked Mr Sipp what specific measures the Board will be taking to improve access to controlled medicines. He answered that its Annual Reports had identified the imbalance in global availability, and that the major impediment is now the lack of training and awareness of the problem in the healthcare field. The INCB is calling on governments to modify its health and legal systems in order to enable increased access to controlled medicines.

Ross Bell of the New Zealand Drug Foundation then inquired in what circumstances is the INCB recommending alternatives to prison. Mr Sipp explained that the INCB's views stem not from itself but from the drug control conventions, which do not require UN member states to punish those guilty of a minor drug offence – and here he made it clear that he was referring not just to imprisonment, but to lesser measures such as administrative sanctions. The conventions do not demand these punishments. Serious offenders, on the other hand, do require punishment: this derives from the proportionality implicit in the conventions, which gives discretion to governments. In the view of the Board, he said, these provisions for flexibility are not being sufficiently utilised at present.

The topic of regulated markets in cannabis was then raised from the floor, a topic that causes the INCB 'great concern', said Mr Sipp. This, by contrast to the situation of the individual offender mentioned above, is one in which no flexibility does not exist. The fundamental objective of the conventions is to restrict the use of controlled drugs to medical and scientific purposes. They do not permit states to allow their citizens to use controlled drugs for non-medical reasons such as pleasure. The question of regulated cannabis markets led on to the question of the changing of the conventions. This, stated the INCB President, is 'none of our business'. Rather, 'it is the task and the responsibility of the states'.

However, in the lead-up to the UNGASS, the INCB's task is to elaborate what is and what is not possible within the framework of the conventions.

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