This primer is a tool to better understand the role of the UN drug conventions, the scope and limits of their flexibility, the mandates they established for the CND, the INCB and the WHO, and the various options for treaty reform.
The Transnational Institute explores the 1990 and 1998 UNGASS events and discusses the increasing tensions and cracks in the "Vienna consensus," as well as systemic challenges and recent treaty breaches.
Too little attention has been given in the debate so far to the potential consequences for future scheduling decisions, as this would set a precedent to add substances to the treaty schedules bypassing WHO's expert advice.
The WHO has strongly and repeatedly recommended against international control, warning it would constitute a public health crisis in countries where no alternatives are available.
With a greater number of casualties than the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns combined, and very meager results, the US is starting to reconsider the "War on Drugs", waged since the 1970s.
With cannabis regulation movements on its territory, the US faces a predicament; a treaty breach it does not wish to admit within a system it wishes to protect.
