Cannabis & UNGASS 2016:The Elephant in the Room

Martin Jelsma – TNI

mjelsma@tni.org

Cannabis Science and Policy Summit

New York – 17 April 2016

UNGASS outcome document

SUPPLY REDUCTION:“enhance measures to prevent and significantly and measurably reduce or eliminate the illicit cultivation of opium poppy, coca bush and cannabis plant used for the production of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, including through eradication, within the framework of sustainable crop control strategies and measures”

PREAMBLE:“We recognize that there are persistent, new and evolving challenges that should be addressed in conformity with the three international drug control conventions, which allow for sufficient flexibility for States parties to design and implement national drug policies according to their priorities and needs, consistent with the principle of common and shared responsibility and applicable international law”

Traditional and medicinal uses

1961 Single Convention

• Incorporates key features of the 1925 and 1931 conventions

• Introduces obligations to impose penal sanctions similar to 1936

• Extends controls to cannabis cultivation • Requires the abolition of ‘quasi-

medical’, traditional and religious uses

• Decides to place cannabis in schedules I and IV

WHO recommendation?

• 1952 WHO Expert Committee concluded without a review report: “no justification for medical use”

• Pablo Osvaldo Wolff, secretary of the WHO Expert Committee, presents a working paper "The Physical and Mental Effects of Cannabis” (1955): “not only is marihuana smoking per se a danger but […] its use eventually leads the smoker to turn to intravenous heroin injections”

• After 1961 scheduling decision, WHO only once discussed it again in 1965 repeating the position taken in 1952

• WHO Expert Committee never undertook a proper review of cannabis or made any recommendation for its scheduling

• June 2014 ECDD meeting Geneva: discussion paper

Post-1961 traditional use

• India, Nepal, Pakistan: transitional reservation

• “use of cannabis, cannabis resin, extracts and tinctures of cannabis for non-medical purposes” as well as the production and trade for that purpose until December 1989, 25 years after the Single Convention came into force

• Cultivation, plants and precursors left out of the 1971 Convention; traditional and religious use accepted in 1971

1961 exception: cannabis leaves

Quasi-medical use?

Soft defections

Cannabis regulation in UruguayARGUMENTS:

• in line with the original aim of drug treaties: health and welfare of humankind

• appealing to the precedence of human rights principles over drug control obligations

• “we need the leadership and courage to discuss if a revision and modernization is required of the international instruments adopted over the last fifty years” (CND 2013)

“Someone has to be first...”

Cannabis regulation in US

“As a starting point, it is essential that Member States use the UNGASS to reaffirm support for the three UN drug-control conventions” (U.S. non-paper for UNGASS, June 2015)

ARGUMENTS:• Maintains that the US federal government as State party to

the Conventions is not in breach• Flexible interpretation allowing for national differentiation• Discretion regarding treaty implementation based on

Constitutional principles

Treaty reform options

I. Treaty reform that applies to all signatory states, requiring consensus approval;

II. Treaty reform that applies to all signatory states, requiring majority approval;

III. Treaty reform that applies to a selective group of states; and

IV. Treaty reform that applies to an individual state

Treaty reform options

• WHO review: descheduling cannabis?

• Denunciation and re-adherence with new reservation (as Bolivia did for coca)

• Modifications inter se?

• Like-minded group designing joint strategy

• UNGASS 2016: expert advisory committee or high-level panel to prepare 2019?