The United Nations’s (UN) drug control body is reiterating that it considers legalizing marijuana for non-medical or scientific purposes a violation of international treaties, though it also said it appreciates that Germany’s government scaled back its cannabis plan ahead of a recent vote. The global narcotics agency is also taking note of the psychedelics policy reform movement in U.S. states.
This is mostly par for the course for the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which has routinely criticized countries for allowing the enactment of cannabis legalization due to their obligations under various Single Convention treaties going back to 1961. But as Germany entered the fold, and the U.S. has continued to move toward marijuana and psychedelics reform, the body is again making its disappointment known.
INCB’s 2023 annual report, which was published on Tuesday, “underscores” that member nations are required to “take such legislative and administrative measures as may be necessary” to criminalize “the production, manufacture, export, import, distribution of, trade in, use and possession of drugs” such as marijuana under decades-old treaty agreements.
“The Board continues to reiterate its concern regarding the legalization of the use of cannabis for non-medical and non-scientific purposes in several jurisdictions, with other jurisdictions considering similar action,” it said.
To that point, INCB also included a recommendation in the latest report to recall an analysis from its 2022 report that, at one point, suggested that the U.S. is out of compliance with drug treaty obligations because the federal government is passively allowing states within the country to legalize marijuana.
“The apparent tension between these provisions and the trend towards legalization must be addressed by the signatories to the three drug control conventions,” it said.
Hellbound and Down 