[Dr Rick Lines and Damon Barrett are the Chair and Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, University of Essex]
These are interesting times for drug law reform, which, as it gathers pace, is asking important questions of international law. A
UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs is set for 2016 just as national reforms are challenging international treaties that form the bedrock of a global prohibition regime that has dominated since the turn of the twentieth century. States parties to the three UN drug control conventions must now confront the legal and political dilemmas this creates. This is the situation in which the US now finds itself following cannabis reforms in various states that are at odds with these treaties. The State Department has issued its official position in this regard, one that stretches and boundaries of interpretation and raises other serious questions for international law.
In an October statement Ambassador William Brownfield set out that position in the form of the ‘four pillar’ approach the United States will now follow in matters of international drug control. While the four pillars, set out below, have prompted much discussion and debate among those working on drug policy issues,
attention among international lawyers has been rare. This is something of an important gap given the implications of what the US suggests:
- Respect the integrity of the existing UN drug control conventions.
- Accept flexible interpretation of those conventions.
- Tolerate different national drug policies…[and] accept the fact that some countries will have very strict drug approaches; other countries will legalise entire categories of drugs.
- Combat and resist criminal organisations, rather than punishing individual drug users
Internationally, the four pillars have emerged in the context of efforts,
led primarily by Latin American States, to open discussions on the future of the international drug control regime, and look at alternatives to the current and destructive prohibitionist paradigm. Domestically, it comes in the context of successful
referenda to legally regulate cannabis in several US states.
Both of these are welcome developments. The international drug regime is long overdue for reform, and the cannabis referenda will produce many positive criminal justice, health and social outcomes in those US states adopting them. However, domestic cannabis law reform places the United States in a compromised position within the coming debates on the future shape of the international drug control regime.
