Drug abuse: Tendencies and ways to overcome it

feature about the Convention was that it not only proclaimed the need for cooperation among countries in establishing control over the use of narcotics but also outlined what needed to be accomplished. One of these accomplishments was the duty of countries to exchange, via the Dutch government, texts of legal acts and statistics on drugs.

The 1912 Hague Convention, however, failed to bring practical results, largely because of World War I, which began soon after the passing of the Convention. It was put into force only with the signing of the Versailles and other peace treaties which specified that their ratification was tantamount to the ratification of the 1912 Hague Convention on drugs.

International documents approved following the Hague Convention just filled in the gaps and developed its provisions. The need for such documents was prompted by the continuous expansion of drug addiction, and of the illegal trade and smuggling of various narcotics. These documents are kept within the demands of the present problems that had been approved at the international level. They had defined more precisely and expanded the range of questions pertaining to the regulation of the issue on the basis of international law. They also involved more and more countries concerned about combating narcotics.

The growing threat from narcotics was evident from a series of international acts on drugs. Apart from that, however, the passing of these acts marked an important stage in international relations. They affirmed the principle that international law was bound to help organize and ensure control over drugs. The case in point was the Agreement banning the production, domestic trade and use of refined opium. It was signed on February 11th 1925 at the Geneva Opium conference.

Following the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty and the founding of the League of Nations this conference was the first to discuss the issue of narcotics.

Its official program envisaged the development of measures to implement the decisions of the 1912 Hague Convention to limit and eliminate the production, domestic trade and use of smoke opium. But according to juridical literature, the Conference in reality expressed the latent interests of the colonial powers- the signatories of the above mentioned Agreement.

The Geneva Conference of 1925 Agreement of February 11th, 1925:

The Agreement provided for the establishment of monopoly associations on the territories and domains controlled by these powers to deal with the opium turnover, for handing over the production of smoke opium to the state monopoly, as well as conducting anti-opium propaganda.

The general control over the implementation of the Agreement's provisions concerning the trade in opium was placed upon the League of Nations- an international body set up in accordance with the Versailles peace treaty.

One of the provisions of this Agreement stipulated the need to study the state of control over smoke opium in the Far East. This study was carried out, practically for the first time in world practice, by a Special Commission appointed by the League of Nations Assembly in 1928.

The results of the study were examined in Bangkok and paved the way for the signing of the Bangkok Agreement of November 27th 1931, which banned opium smoking. The Agreement entered into force only in April 1937.

The Bangkok Agreement of 1931:

The Bangkok Agreement added some new provisions to the Geneva Agreement of 11th February 1925. These new provisions made retail trade in opium possible only by government institutions; established criminal offence for persons under 21 years of age who visited opium dens; legally regulated the sale of smoke opium for cash and so on and so forth.

However, prior to the Bangkok Agreement, in view of the deterioration of the drug situation in the world in the postwar period, the second Geneva Opium Conference passed an Opium Convention that was signed in Geneva on 19th February 1925 and entered into force in September 1928.

The Opium Convention of 1925:

It underlined that there was no way to end drug abuse and drug smuggling unless the production of those drugs was reduced considerably and a more stringent control over their international trade was introduced than the one stipulated by the 1912 Hague convention.

For this end, the 1925 Convention stipulated some legal and organizational measures against drug abuse both at the international and domestic levels.

This Convention confirmed the principles of the 1912 Hague Convention and, what is more, it firmly established that drugs could be produced only for the legal purposes of states, having defined what these legal purposes were. Of principal importance was the decision to put several more kinds of raw materials which drugs could be produced from (coca leaves, raw cocaine, and cannabis) on the list of the controlled substances (in addition to the ones named by the 1912 Hague Convention). Moreover, the Convention was applicable to any substance, which, in accordance with the conclusion drawn by an authorized body, could cause the same harmful consequences as the substances listed in the Convention.

To exercise domestic control over narcotic substances the parties to the Convention agreed to the following pledges: to pass national laws that would ensure the control over the production, dissemination and exportation of raw opium and to systematically revise and toughen those to the extent that the articles of the Convention would require; to limit the use, production, importation, sale, distribution, export, and application of narcotics exclusively to medical and scientific purposes; to exercise control over the activities of persons who were allowed to produce, import, export, sell, distribute and use drugs and also to exercise control over premises where these persons work with drugs or traded in them; to curtail the number of ports, cities and other populated centers where the importation and exportation of narcotics would be permitted and to pass through and adopt domestic legislation that would envisage punitive measures for the violations of the Convention's provisions.

To exercise international control over narcotic substances the Convention stipulated adoption of the following measures: to introduce a system of evaluation and estimation of a country's domestic need in narcotics for medical, scientific and other purposes in the up-coming year; to hand in statistics connected with drugs (in a special form and at definite periods of time); to establish control over international trade in drugs and to also establish firm rules for the importation and exportation of drugs (to import and export narcotics only if there is a special written permission, as outlined by the Convention; to regulate the order of transit shipments and the storage of drugs at stores of third countries to prevent their possible leakage from the legal circulation during their shipments and storage); to establish control over the compliance with all commitments taken by the countries- parties to the Convention; to place the exercise of that control on a newly organized international body called the Permanent Central Committee (later its official name changed several times, although most of the time, it was known as "The Permanent Central Committee on Narcotic Substances").

The Convention also stressed the need for cooperation between countries in preventing the use of narcotic substances for purposes other than designated. It stipulated that the exchange of information about laws and decisions on the implementation of the proclaimed principles (using the services of Secretary General) would be a concrete form of this cooperation.

To put it in a nutshell, the Convention defined the content and forms of realization of international control over narcotics. It introduced a system of licensing and recording foreign trade operations of drugs and obliged the member countries to submit detailed statistics about such operations.

The convention on the limitation of production and the regulation of the distribution of narcotic substances signed on July 13th 1931 in Geneva proved to be another link in the international control system.

The Convention of 1931:

That Convention meant to introduce amendments to the two already existing conventions in force, those of 1912 and of 1925. It contained the following additions: uniform definition of notions, through the control over drugs. Alternative versions of such notions as "production", "refining", "processing", "storage reserves", "state storage reserves", "import-export" and others were removed. For the first time, a list of medicines containing drugs was established and production, processing, use, exportation and importation of them would now be controlled. The system of evaluating and estimating the overall demand for drugs in all countries regardless of their membership in the given Convention was perfected. Accountability for the commitments of member governments was enhanced. A special agency, the Control Commission, was set up to study data from governments about the quantity of narcotics and accounts about their receipt and use. In case the Commission found any deviations or the demand for drugs was too large in its judgment, the Commission had the right to question the examined figures and carry out its own calculations. The extradition of criminals was envisaged (under certain conditions) for committing crimes linked to drugs. The convention stipulated that member-countries had to have norms in their national legislation concerning the criminal punishment of persons who encouraged