Background Guide World Drug Problem

IITK-MUN 2012 STUDY GUIDE General Assembly
Message From the Executive Board: Dear Delegates, We welcome you to the UN General Assembly. The General Assembly is a platform where international policy and decision making take place. The agenda set is "International Cooperation against the World Drug Problem". We will be following a fair set of rules and procedures wherein first time participants need not worry about procedural finesse and experienced campaigners need only worry about substantive content rather than exploiting procedures. Delegates are requested to adhere to their foreign policies and if at all they do intend to deviate, they ought to reason their stance as soon as maybe. Leadership qualities, diplomacy and content will the main parameters employed to judge delegates. We wish you the very best. A Brief Introduction/Guide Regarding the Agenda It is a well-known fact that Drug abuse is ubiquitous throughout the world. The use of drugs, both legal and illegal is widespread. In 2005, the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime estimates that approximately 200 million people (or 5% of the worlds population aged 15 to 64) had used illegal drugs at least once in the past 12 months and suggested that the retail value of illicit drugs in the world was around $321 billion. It is pertinent to note that in many countries including the United States, the most noteworthy response to the alleged illegal drug problem has been the incarceration of massive numbers of people. In fact there are more number of people imprisoned for the commission of drug offences in the United States (around 500,000)- than are incarcerated in England, France, Germany and Japan for all crimes combined. These paradoxes require us to consider the distinctions between legal and illegal drugs and, more directly, to examine how certain drugs have been demonized in order to justify their illegal status. It appears that people need to ingest an increasingly diverse array of substances in order to alter their consciousness. But this need for psychoactive substances extends to other constituencies, including the government, the criminal justice system officials and the popular media. Government officials need drugs in order to create heroes and villains and, in many cases, to divert attention from policies that lead to drug use in first place. Criminal justice system officials need psychoactive substances in order to justify increases in financial and other resources devoted to their organizations, and the media need drugs in order to create moral panic and sell newspaper and advertising time. Illegal drugs have also been demonized throughout the century by claims that primarily members of minority groups consume them and that substances are frequently distributed by evil foreign traffickers. The projection of blame on foreign nations for domestic evils harmonized with the ascription of drug use to ethnic minorities.
The system of global drug control is regulated by three international conventions: The 1961 Single Convention of Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic substances; these represent the consolidation of 9 international drug control treaties negotiated between 1912 and 1913. These conventions serve as major barriers to the introduction of progressive and pragmatic drug control policies in individual countries, and they tend to promote unrealistic goals, including the eradication of an illegal drug use in the world. For example, one of the stated objectives of the 1961 United Nations Convention on Narcotic Drugs was to eliminate the chewing of coca leaf and the use of cannabis for other than scientific and medical purposes within 25 years and non-medical use of opium within 15 years. Needless to say, none of these objectives were achieved. Poor counties cannot and should not be expected to bear the brunt of the rich countries internal social failures. A growing number of poor countries are being politically destabilized and being destroyed as crime takes over, due to the impossible Western Market that both demands drugs and outlaws them. International bodies have also suppressed the publication of reports on drugs that are not consistent with stringent prohibitionist policies. For example, in 1995 the World Health Organization and the United Nations Interregional Institute completed one of the most extensive studies of cocaine use ever undertaken. However, the publication of the study was prevented by the World Health Assembly due to the fact that it failed to reinforce proven drug control approaches and had recommended investigation of the therapeutic benefits of the coca leaf While the international conventions are important to consider in context of policies on illegal drugs in individual countries, it is important to realize that there are no provisions in any of the conventions requiring countries to reinforce their drug control legislation, and the International Narcotics Control Board, the administrative body responsible for overseeing these conventions, has no power to issue sanctions against countries for non-compliance with the conventions. As a result, signatory nations have a certain amount of freedom with respect to their drug policies; this is why there is considerable variation in policies across countries, including the de facto legalization of marijuana possession in a number of countries.

Background Guide World Drug Problem

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IITK-MUN 2012 STUDY GUIDE General Assembly

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