Single Convention On Narcotic Drugs - Limitation of Scope

Limitation of Scope

The Single Convention allows only drugs with morphine-like, cocaine-like, and cannabis-like effects to be added to the Schedules. The strength of the drug is not relevant; only the similarity of its effects to the substances already controlled. For instance, etorphine and acetorphine were considered sufficiently morphine-like to fall under the treaty's scope, although they are many times more potent than morphine. However, according to the Commentary:

The Office of Legal Affairs of the United Nations ruled, in an opinion given to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs at its twenty-third session, that barbiturates, tranquillizers and amphetamines were outside the scope of the Single Convention. It pointed out that there was an understanding at all stages of the drafting of the Single Convention, in particular at the Plenipotentiary Conference of 1961 which adopted that treaty, that the Convention was not applicable to these three types of substances, although the effects of amphetamines have some degree of similarity to cocaine, and those of barbiturates and tranquillizers to morphine.

Since cannabis is a hallucinogen (although some dispute this), the Commentary speculates that mescaline, psilocybin, tetrahydrocannabinol, and LSD could have been considered sufficiently cannabis-like to be regulated under the Single Convention; however, it opines, "It appears that the fact that the potent hallucinogenics whose abuse has spread in recent years have not been brought under international narcotics control does not result from legal reasons, but rather from the view of Governments that a regime different from that offered by the Single Convention would be more adequate." That different regime was instituted by the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. The Convention on Psychotropic Drugs' scope can include any drug not already under international control if the World Health Organization finds that:

• The substance has the capacity to produce " state of dependence" AND "entral nervous system stimulation or depression, resulting in hallucinations or disturbances in motor function or thinking or behaviour or perception or mood"; or
• The substance has the capacity to produce similar abuse and similar ill effects as LSD or one of the other controlled substances enumerated in Convention; or
• There is sufficient evidence that the substance is being or is likely to be abused so as to constitute a public health and social problem warranting the placing of the substance under international control.

The reason for sharply limiting the scope of Single Convention to a few types of drugs while letting the Convention on Psychotropic Drugs cover the rest was concern for the interests of industry. Professor Cindy Fazey's The Mechanics and Dynamics of the UN System for International Drug Control explains, "concerted efforts by drug manufacturing nations and the pharmaceutical industry ensured that the controls on psychotropics in the 1971 treaty were considerably looser than those applied to organic drugs in the Single Convention."

A failed 24 March 2003 European Parliament committee report noted the disparity in how drugs are regulated under the two treaties:

The 1971 Convention, which closely resembles the Single Convention, establishes an international control which is clearly less rigorous for the so-called 'psychotropic' substances, generally produced by the pharmaceutical industry. . . The parallel existence of the Single Convention and the 1971 Convention have led to certain illogical effects such as the fact that a plant (cannabis) containing at most 3% of a principal element is dealt with more severely than the pure substance at 100% (tetrahydrocannabinol or THC).

For this reason, the European Parliament, Transnational Radical Party, and other organizations have proposed removing cannabis and other drugs from the Single Convention and scheduling them under the Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

Furthermore, the provisions of the Single Convention regarding the national supply and demand of opium to make morphine contribute to the global shortage of essential poppy-based pain relief medicines. According to the Convention, governments can only request raw poppy materials according to the amount of poppy-based medicines used in the two preceding years. Consequently, in countries where underprescription is chronic due to the high prices of morphine and lack of availability and medical training in the prescription of poppy-based drugs, it is impossible to demand enough raw poppy materials from the INCB, as the Convention's regulating body, to meet the country's pain relief needs. As such, 77% of the world's poppy-based medicine supplies are used by only six countries (See: Fischer, B J. Rehm, and T Culbert, “Opium based medicines: a mapping of global supply, demand and needs” in Spivack D. (ed.) Feasibility Study on Opium Licensing in Afghanistan, Kabul, 2005. p. 85–86.). Many critics of the Convention cite this as one of its primary limitations and the World Health Organisation is currently attempting to increase prescription of poppy-based drugs and to help governments of emerging countries in particular alter their internal regulations to be able to demand poppy-based medicines according to the Convention's provisions (see the WHO "Assuring Availability of Opioid Analgesics for Palliative Care"). The Senlis Council, a European drug policy thinktank, proposes creating a second-tier supply system that would complement the existing system without altering the balance of its relatively closed supply and demand system. The Council, who support licensing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan to create Afghan morphine, believe the opium supply in this country could go a long way to easing the pain relief needs of sufferers in emerging countries by producing a cheap poppy-based medicine solution (see : "Poppy for Medicine."