Towards a Fit-for-Purpose International Drug Control System

The Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) is the United Nations commission with primary responsibility for the application of the three drug conventions. At its 68^th session in 2025, it adopted Resolution 68/6 on the establishment of an independent expert panel to review the implementation of those three conventions, along with other international drug policy commitments. The aim: to provide governments with a set of recommendations on enhancing the effectiveness of the international drug policy regime. This panel was put forward by a resolution tabled by Colombia, approved by 30 countries, with 18 abstentions and 3 against (out of 53 CND members in total). It brings forward extensive expectations of governments, other UN entities, and civil society, all concerned with the shortcomings of the international drug control regime to date. According to the latest 2024 reported data, 331 million people worldwide used drugs, an increase of 34% in a decade. People with problematic drug use reached 63 million people. 118 new psychoactive substances were identified in a year, and seizures of amphetamine-type stimulants jumped by 53%. The implementation is constantly drifting from the political objectives of the control regime to “eliminate or significantly reduce” drug production, trafficking and use.

The international drug control regime is one of the oldest international law instruments, originating from the nine resolutions of the 1909 Shanghai Opium Commission, through four different conventions operated under the League of Nations between 1912 and 1936, to the three contemporary drug treaties. These are the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the 1988 UN Convention against Illicit Traffic. They are the contemporary legal framework governing the production, distribution, trafficking, medical and scientific use, trade, and consumption of controlled substances. These treaties established a system of scheduling substances based on their medical value and potential for abuse and diversion, influencing both national policies and international enforcement mechanisms.

The conventions are also the international regulatory instruments for access to essential controlled medicines, prescribed for pain relief, anaesthesia, mental health, and palliative care, among others. Their schedules define the rules under which these substances are to be available for medical use in national contexts, as well as production, import, and export, and the provisions countries put in place to avoid their diversion to the illegal market. As such, scheduling of these substances in the tables of the conventions is one of the main functions of the drug control regime. This scheduling also represents the most complex balance to achieve between availability for medical use and prohibition of non-medical use, which sits at the heart of the achievement of the right to health.

While designed to streamline drug control measures and curb illegal markets, and being amongst the most ratified globally (with 192 parties for the 1988 convention for example), the conventions’ implementation resulted in a series of “unintended consequences.” These were identified in a 2008 UN Report, and include the displacement of policy priorities, the militarization of enforcement, the global redistribution of drug production and violence, and the marginalization of drug consumers. But the negative consequences go beyond this. Public health crises of HIV and hepatitis transmission among people who inject drugs have only worsened with time. A prison epidemic is acute for people accused of drug offences, with drugs being the highest purveyor of people incarcerated globally, making up 20% of the prison population. Synthetic drugs and new modes of trafficking, including the dark web and social media, are emerging and slowly taking over the illegal market, rendering traditional responses to plant-based drugs and drug dealing moot.  

For decades, human rights bodies paid little attention to drug control. Over the past fifteen years, however, they have become increasingly active in scrutinizing global drug policy. A significant milestone occurred in March 2015 when the Human Rights Council (HRC) adopted its first resolution addressing drug policy, intended as a contribution to the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the world drug problem. Building on this development, a coalition of states introduced a second resolution in 2018 to secure the HRC’s continued role in supporting implementation of the UNGASS Outcome Document. In 2023, the HRC adopted a third resolution requesting an updated report from the High Commissioner. In the resulting report, the High Commissioner urged governments to reassess the effectiveness and desirability of legally regulating all drugs. This marked an unprecedented challenge by a UN mandate holder to the principles of prohibition embedded within the international drug control conventions. Throughout this period, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has consistently emphasized that people who use drugs remain entitled to the full range of human rights protections. Its interventions have stressed that drug use does not diminish an individual’s rights to health, life, liberty, protection from arbitrary detention, or freedom from torture and other forms of ill-treatment.

Similarly, from 2010 to 2024, the HRC’s Special Procedures emerged as some of the strongest critics of contemporary drug control approaches, repeatedly drawing attention to conflicts between international human rights obligations and drug enforcement practices. The Special Rapporteurs on Torture warned that governments were increasingly weakening the absolute prohibition of torture, often invoking exceptional security concerns, with drug-related offenses frequently used to justify such departures. The Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health challenged the international drug control system for failing to reflect the realities of drug dependence and substance use, arguing that these shortcomings have contributed to negative public health outcomes. The mandate holder also highlighted persistent obstacles to the availability of essential medicines, including pain management treatments and opioid substitution therapies. The Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women documented extensive rights violations experienced by women in the context of drug policies. These included coercion into drug trafficking activities and imprisonment for drug-related offenses connected to intimate relationships, a pattern commonly referred to as the “girlfriend problem.” The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention advocated decriminalizing drug use and possession, expanding non-custodial responses to minor drug offenses, and reforming arrest and detention practices. The Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent characterized repressive drug control as a mechanism of racialized social control that disproportionately impacts people of African descent and other racial minorities. Meanwhile, the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions denounced alleged extrajudicial killings targeting people who use drugs and suspected drug dealers, particularly in the Philippines. These are but select examples in a large array of interventions by human rights mechanisms attempting to bridge the gap between Geneva and Vienna-based mandates and entities.

It is against the backdrop of these numerous shortcomings and tensions that the multi-disciplinary Expert Panel was established to

prepare a clear, specific and actionable set of recommendations aimed at enhancing the implementation of the obligations of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971, the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988, as well as the obligations of other relevant international instruments, and the achievement of all international drug policy commitments.

While functioning in a highly polarized policy forum, characterised by what are arguably opposed viewpoints between countries pushing for an overhaul of the system and others fiercely defending the status quo, the panel is not a political body. Rather, it is envisaged as a technical mechanism of experts with different backgrounds, including human rights, mandated to formulate recommendations that states can use when they negotiate the next decennial political declaration on drugs due in 2029.

The Expert Panel’s mandate is limiting, as it pertains only to ‘strengthen’ the implementation of the drug control regime, despite that regime itself being outdated, facing the massive wave of synthetic drugs that weakens its core scheduling functions, with some countries continuing to refuse to legalize cannabis or psychedelics domestically. Nevertheless, while not questioning the conventions, the Panel has leeway to look into the governance of the UN drug control regime. Are the drug policy international mechanisms, now over 100 years old and limited in their scope, well-equipped for contemporary challenges? For a regime that concerns public health, crime prevention, agricultural policy, development, education and others, is the current drug policy governance architecture too focused on drugs to be efficient? Are countries getting the full spectrum of technical assistance required for effective drug control that minimizes unintended negative consequences in other policy areas? Those questions are legitimate and warrant clear responses to allow governments to correct the course and build a 21^st-century drug policy architecture that reduces illegal drug markets while preserving public health and fundamental rights.

The Expert Panel, of which we are members from the Eastern European and African Groups, respectively, is a once in a decade opportunity and a responsibility to provide serious, substantive yet bold recommendations on how to address the shortcomings. The expectations of producing and transit countries—those that bear the brunt of the control regime—are high. So are the expectations of civil society and concerned populations and communities, who are caught between the lucrative and oftentimes violent activities of criminal organizations trafficking drugs, and repressive responses by the state. The responsibility of the Panel thus prescribes a full-spectrum analysis of what does not work—but more importantly also an outline of what should change, which other international law instruments hold the key, and what cultural changes are needed to fix the shortcomings of a regime based for over a century on law enforcement. Providing such recommendations will not be easy, but the efforts to establish this panel and the hopes surrounding it give the clear mandate for a solution-oriented innovative outcome. Countries need it to decide on the coming decade’s drug policy—a policy which could finally integrate drug control within sustainable development and align it with other international commitments.

Note: the authors are members of the UN Expert Panel on Strengthening the International Drug Control System. The views expressed in this comment are solely theirs and do not reflect any position of the Panel.