There's a lot more to the UN than the General Assembly and Security Council -- more than a hundred Agencies, Offices, Funds, Organizations, Task Forces, Development Groups, Partnerships, Commissions, Conventions, Institutes, Services, Centers, Unions, Courts, Tribunals, Associations, Corporations, Bureaus, Offices…and so forth. Many of these are the result of separate treaties, usually ratified by a majority of member nations but not necessarily every single one. Since the overall administrative scope of the UN -- including the activities of those hundred-plus sub-entities -- is the result of political forces operating among the various member nations, how well do these sub-entities serve the interests of humanity at large?
Lets take the case of international efforts to control "illicit drugs". The first UN sponsored treaty focusing on this was Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, which consolidated the proscriptions of earlier treaties against opium, coca and their derivatives while also adding marijuana and a few synthetics. This treaty also established administrative structures to make additions or revisions to the UN's schedule of controlled drugs and set up a UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to do the day-to-day work. The addition of marijuana to the international list was this treaty's major innovation, inspired by the US Narcotic Control Act of 1956 and it's predecessors, the Boggs Act of 1951 which had made possession of marijuana a federal crime, and the Marihuana (sic) Tax Act of 1937 that had attempted to tax the weed out of existence (but without success).
Synthetic drugs flooded onto the scene in the '60s, prompting the US Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, whose objectives were characterized by President Nixon as a "war on drugs." The UN followed suite with the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, adding a long list of amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and psychedelics. Subsequently, it gradually became evident that prohibiting international trade in these profitable substances had somehow lured criminals into the business of distributing them. So, the next step was to ratchet up enforcement with the UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. In line with the evolution of the UNODC as junior sibling of the US Office of Drug Control Policy, this UN "Convention" mandates measures to seek out and seize illicit drug-business records and assets. Countries subscribing to the convention must subordinate bank secrecy laws to such efforts, as well as any laws protecting citizens from seizures or extraditions. Since the line between "legitimate pharmaceuticals" and illicit drugs is vague and often overlapping, the Convention adds rules to sharpen up those rather abstract boundaries.
Then, in 2011, fifty years after the Single Convention was adopted, a Global Commission on Drug Policy issued a report on the fifty years of globally coordinated effort against illicit international drug traffic. This Commission was composed of: Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General; George Shultz, former US Secretary of State; Paul Volker, former chair of the US Federal Reserve; former heads of state of Brazil, Colombia, Greece, Mexico, and Switzerland; Richard Branson, founder of Virgin airlines; and eight others -- including prominent educators, judges, and journalists. Their conclusions are expressed in these excerpts from the official executive summary:
[General Conclusions:] "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world… Arresting and incarcerating tens of millions of these people in recent decades has filled prisons and destroyed lives and families without reducing the availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organizations. There appears to be almost no limit to the number of people willing to engage in such activities to better their lives, provide for their families, or otherwise escape poverty."
[Policy Recommendations:] "End the criminalization, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others… Encourage experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens… Offer health and treatment services to those in need… Implement syringe access and other harm reduction measures that have proven effective in reducing transmission of HIV and other blood-borne infections as well as fatal overdoses. Respect the human rights of people who use drugs… Apply much the same principles and policies stated above to people involved in the lower ends of illegal drug markets, such as farmers, couriers and petty sellers. Many are themselves victims of violence and intimidation…"
[Organizational Recommendations:] "Review the scheduling of drugs that has resulted in obvious anomalies like the flawed categorization of cannabis, coca leaf and MDMA. Ensure that the international conventions are interpreted and/or revised to accommodate robust experimentation with harm reduction, decriminalization and legal regulatory policies. Break the taboo on debate and reform. The time for action is now."
These conclusions and recommendations represent a repudiation of 50 years of UN policy and effort ratified and implemented by 182 out of the 192 UN member states. Half a dozen European countries that have already come to similar conclusions are legally trapped in the failed criminalization approach by their reluctance to back away from their treaty commitments. The result is that they either don't enforce their treaty mandated drugs laws, or they have enacted new laws that give small amounts of various illicit drugs some kind of legal status without actually changing the illegal status of the same substances in larger quantity. Considering these contradictions, one has to wonder how the UN managed to embroil itself in such an ill-conceived approach in the first place, and why did 182 countries sign on? This early paragraphs of this article suggest the answer: kowtowing to the US.
Whereas the US adopted Alcohol prohibition in 1920 as the result of a well intentioned mass movement, we got into the "war on drugs" pursuant to the efforts of a few bureaucrats and politicians, supported by lobbying from several industries with business interests antithetical to unregulated drugs. It is interesting to note that --consistent with early 20th century temperance movement talking points-- alcohol was recently rated the "most harmful" to the user and society of all recreational drugs (with a rating of 72 out of 100 compared to heroin with a 55, in 2nd place) by the recent UK Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs. Having failed with the most harmful, why did our Boggs Act pick on one well down the "harm" list (marijuana, a.k.a "cannabis," which scored less harmful than tobacco)? And why did the UN pick up the cudgel and then follow the US step by step as we expanded the scope of the vendetta? The answer, simply, is the international politics of financial, military and economic clout.
Clearly, this "case study" provides an example of how the UN can go horribly wrong, and in fact… how international treaties can ignore the lessons of the past (i.e.- Prohibition) and contradict evidence-based science (i.e.- the findings of the UK Independent Scientific Committee). This is not merely another case of how money influences politics, although it is that; nor simply of how power corrupts, although it is that too. This is a clear warning to everyone interested in global solutions that if we want to advocate international treaties to regulate trade, or regulatory arbitrage, or financial speculation, or anything else, we would be well advised to add scientific evidence-based monitoring to the regulatory systems we propose, and recommend that all such regulations --and the organizational structures that implement them-- be subjected to thorough periodic re-evaluation.
