Drug Control Without United Nations Drug Treaties?

Special Section: Health, Rights, and the Future of Global Drug Control

Damon Barrett and Julie Hannah

Introduction

In this contribution, we question the assumption that global drug control requires dedicated multilateral treaties. The newly created mandate of the independent review panel for the United Nations (UN) drug control system is to make recommendations for “enhancing the implementation of the obligations” under the UN drug conventions.[1] We suggest, however, that any credible review cannot consider “enhancing” implementation before asking fundamental questions about the origin and nature of the obligations in question, as well as the systems and processes they have created. Breaking from 100 years of path dependence in drug control requires asking which functions, if any, require binding UN drug treaties. With a view to thinking about design rather than reform, we offer an alternative structure of international drug control without drug treaties, focusing on the functions it would need to perform and how these might be organized.

Drug treaty reform

Drugs have been the subject of multilateral treaty-making since the 1912 International Opium Convention. Premised on a concern for the “health and welfare of mankind,” the treaty regime that has taken shape over time requires states to tightly control the supply of controlled substances and limit their use and possession “exclusively to medical and scientific purposes.”[2] The aim, from the earliest years, was to create a universal, “gapless” international system to control the market and thereby protect people from addiction.[3] Today, there are three UN drug conventions in force, each with near universal ratification or accession: the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.[4] These conventions are seen by many as structuring a system that produces health and human rights harms while not significantly reducing production, supply, or use.

Over the years, various options have been set out to adjust state obligations under the drug conventions or to reform the conventions themselves.[5] Denunciation allows a state to unilaterally withdraw from one or more of the drug conventions. Bolivia denounced the Single Convention, later reacceding with reservations on the coca leaf. Rescheduling works within the existing system by moving substances between schedules according to risk and therapeutic value.[6] This could have major implications without altering the structure of the regime itself. Some authors have adopted interpretive approaches to address specific problems. Rick Lines, for example, has argued for a dynamic interpretation of the drug conventions to alleviate tensions with human rights law.[7] Others have sought to stretch the meaning of “medical and scientific purposes” to accommodate cannabis legalization, although this plainly runs counter to the object and purpose of the treaties.[8] There are, moreover, two types of proposals to fragment the regime. One is to remove certain substances into a parallel system—for example, through a new Framework Convention on Cannabis Control, modeled on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.[9] The other is for states to break off into a partial parallel system via inter se agreements. This could include, for example, states that have legalized cannabis entering into agreements to trade with one another despite restrictions under the drug conventions.[10] Finally, some have proposed additional protocols to fill gaps or address weaknesses, building on the historical additive pattern through which the system has developed, while others have called for replacing the existing treaties with an entirely new treaty in order to widen national flexibility.[11]

These approaches differ in aims, ambition, and feasibility. Some are rooted in the system as it currently stands. All envisage binding multilateral drug treaties. Some combination of these measures may well prove to be a viable pathway forward in regulating a clearly fragmented approach among states. In proposing a line-by-line amended Single Convention, however, Robin Room and Sarah MacKay appropriately begin by asking which aspects of drug control require international coordination.[12] Unpacking what multilateral treaties are doing in this field is essential for any credible review process focused on “enhancing” the implementation of legal obligations. The question we pose is whether drug control requires sui generis UN drug treaties at all.

Prescription and path dependence

The three drug conventions create a tight system of control, from production to transit, sales, and use. While some flexibilities and caveats are built in, the treaties create a highly prescriptive suppression model. In addition to establishing the general prohibitionist norms of the regime, the treaties include import-export certifications that impose strict limitations on international trade, a detailed system of estimates and statistical returns, and a system of “schedules” to harmonize controls based on public health risk and therapeutic application. Importantly, beyond harmonization, they reach far into domestic issues, including criminal law, and require the prohibition of certain behaviors. However, the consensus that made this system possible no longer exists.[13] Harm reduction, for example, has emerged as an alternative paradigm, gaining traction in national policy while fighting for recognition under the international regime. Cannabis legalization has placed many states in breach of the drug conventions. Some Latin American states have challenged the regime’s inclusion of the coca leaf as a historical injustice that needs repair.[14] This leaves an increasing number of states caught between pacta sunt servanda and adherence to outdated instruments they now consider to be unpopular, ineffective, or harmful.

The age of the regime matters because the history of global drug control is one of treaty-based path dependence, where policy choices are constrained by past decisions and an institutional status quo.[15] The current bedrock treaty, the Single Convention, is 65 years old. It is based on treaties that are decades older. With every new treaty to address some gap or new challenge, the underlying assumptions and strategies of the previous agreements were carried forward. The same institutions and systems were applied. Theories and institutions of drug control from the early part of the twentieth century are still reflected in today’s binding international agreements. People making policy 100 years ago could have no understanding of today’s world. We, on the other hand, now have abundant evidence and policy hindsight in relation to market dynamics, patterns of production and use, and how substances came to be controlled in the first place.[16]

The drug conventions offer limited scope for adaptation and remain in force unless they are terminated or otherwise fall into disuse. There is no Conference of the Parties for the drug conventions to periodically revisit commitments. Inflexible treaties hold us to the past, while limiting the very policy agility needed in this area. The reform options outlined above are therefore key to consider. But in terms of the design of the regime, it is important to ask just how specific and prescriptive binding international agreements should be when addressing complex health and social problems such as drugs. Moreover, how long should a treaty remain in force, without a “sunset clause” or a formal process for periodic review by the parties, when drug markets and patterns of drug use change so rapidly? The Paris Agreement on climate change, for example, provides for stocktaking and review every five years. The drug treaty design, on the other hand, has been to create new treaties to fill perceived gaps. This has rendered the regime more prescriptive but unable to respond to blind spots the drafters could not even know they had, or to the negative consequences of the system they had designed. Whether such prescriptive obligations are an appropriate use of treaty law in the drugs field should be an open question.

Tensions, conflicts, and redundancy

Drug control is not a self-contained regime. There are two main implications of the growth and consequent fragmentation of international law since the latter half of the twentieth century. The first is that tensions and conflicts with other areas of international law have arisen. Human rights law is the most prominent example. Put simply, the punitive suppression model of the conventions is risky from a human rights perspective because it involves prohibiting behaviors, coercively eradicating crops, and deploying the criminal justice system to address a health concern. Human rights figured only marginally in the drafting of the drug conventions, partly because human rights law was immature when the Single Convention was being adopted and partly because later treaty negotiations prioritized other concerns.[17] Thus, the treaties were developed without attention to relevant values that we should care a great deal about.

In some cases, there is no way to conform to human rights and drug control obligations at the same time, as reflected in constitutional court rulings in some countries declaring certain prohibitions unconstitutional.[18] The ban on traditional uses of plants under the drug conventions can no longer be reconciled with contemporary understandings of Indigenous rights to traditional practices and flora. A similar tension arises between newer environmental and biodiversity legal regimes and older drug treaty obligations related to crop eradication. While the former are designed to protect biodiversity, the latter have damaged it in pursuit of other goals. Law may create path dependence, but new law can also break it by disrupting the status quo.[19] Human rights law has already played a role in this regard, nuancing and challenging the interpretation and implementation of the drug conventions.[20]

Duplication and redundancy are also possible outcomes of fragmentation, as some drug treaty obligations could arguably be covered by other areas of international law. These overlaps require further research, but they are many. For example, much of the international criminal justice cooperation framework established by the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances is provided for more generally under the 2000 UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), which includes provisions on money laundering, asset confiscation, extradition, mutual legal assistance, and law enforcement cooperation. Bilateral mutual legal assistance treaties provide additional mechanisms for cross-border investigations and prosecutions, further reducing the need for a dedicated drug trafficking treaty. Drug trafficking by air, sea, and post can likewise be addressed through a combination of UNTOC and the treaties relevant to those fields.

The drug conventions have presided over a global crisis in access to essential medicines such as morphine. The right to health under multiple international treaties already covers an obligation of access to essential medicines, linked to the Model Lists of Essential Medicines published by the World Health Organization (WHO). A new administrative system need not find its home in binding drug control treaties but could nonetheless be rooted in binding human rights norms, including the right to health.

From reform to design: Drug control without drug treaties?

The reform options discussed above largely aim at weakening or amending specific problematic aspects of the current system. Here, we ask whether a system of global drug control is possible without multilateral drug treaties at all. To contribute to existing reform debates, we first sketch a model of global drug control without treaties and then consider the problems and questions that such a model would raise.

The starting point is to identify which functions of global drug control require international coordination. Our sketch rests on three main institutional pillars: a normative pillar grounded in the UN Charter and human rights; a technical pillar centered on a nonbinding standards body; and a transnational criminal law pillar focused on countering illicit traffic.

Under this model, the current UN drug conventions would no longer exist, nor would any of the institutions or mandates they have created, although certain functions would be retained through other institutional means. States would have no dedicated treaty obligations requiring them to enact any specific type of domestic drug law or policy. They could retain blanket prohibitions or establish legally regulated markets. These domestic drug policy decisions would thus be removed from the realm of international treaty law.

Normative framework: The UN Charter and human rights

Rather than the provisions of the drug conventions, the core values of the wider UN system would underpin global drug policy. The UN Charter establishes peace and security, development, and respect for human rights as foundational purposes.[21] These would provide the basic framework, with success and failure measured by contributions to these objectives.

States would no longer have specific domestic drug policy obligations under dedicated drug treaties but would retain their binding human rights obligations. The right to health, including access to essential medicines and services, and protections against discrimination, arbitrary detention, and other abuses would continue to apply, regardless of national regulatory choices around drugs. Drug policies would therefore remain subject to important international legal standards affecting domestic measures.

Institutionally, political deliberations on drugs could move from the Commission on Narcotic Drugs to the UN General Assembly, while existing human rights mechanisms, including the Universal Periodic Review and treaty bodies, would provide important thematic oversight and accountability. A dedicated UN working group on human rights and drug policy could also be established.

Much of this normative and institutional architecture is already in place. Indeed, removing dedicated drug treaties would help resolve the tension between the UN’s foundational values and a drug control system that treats supply and demand reduction as ends in themselves.[22]

Standards and guidance: A nonbinding expert commission

The political negotiations in Vienna would no longer be necessary, nor would the treaty monitoring role of the International Narcotics Control Board. The scheduling process, and the treaty-based controls that process engages, would be replaced by nonbinding technical standards issued by a new expert commission. Some institutional functions would nonetheless remain necessary, including gathering data on patterns of use and drug-related harms, sharing evidence and best practices, monitoring access to controlled medicines, and issuing technical implementation guidance.

These and other functions could be transferred to a new WHO/UN joint commission inspired by the Codex Alimentarius Commission. The Codex Alimentarius (“food code”) is an international collection of nonbinding standards and guidance for global food safety. Developed through a joint process of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and WHO, Codex standards harmonize national policy and facilitate trade. The standards are developed through specialized committees, informed by scientific risk assessments conducted by independent FAO/WHO expert bodies, and adopted by the commission.[23] Their authority derives from this scientific and intergovernmental process but is also reinforced by their recognition under the World Trade Organization Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, which uses Codex standards as international benchmarks for food safety measures. While remaining formally nonbinding, Codex standards acquire considerable normative and practical significance in international trade. Unlike the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which has a rotating membership of 53 member states, the Codex Alimentarius Commission is open to all WHO and FAO members and associate members. A similar commission for psychoactive substances, without binding treaties, could offer a more technical and potentially more democratic forum for global deliberation.

Without the strictures of drug treaties, this new technical body would develop evidence-based standards and guidance across core areas of drug policy. These could include risk profiles of substances, therapeutic applications, harmonized packaging and labeling, estimates of need for essential medicines, and early warning systems regarding new substances and market developments. Some form of categorization of substances may well remain useful. Unlike the current scheduling system, however, categorization would not engage binding legal obligations based on “schedules.” The new technical body’s role would instead be informational and advisory. Yet where trade in substances is happening between states (e.g., those that have legalized cannabis), guidance could inform shared standards and assist in trade and customs harmonization, thus retaining an existing harmonization aim of the current treaties. As with Codex standards, such guidance could acquire greater authority through incorporation into national regulatory frameworks or future trade agreements, without requiring binding global drug control obligations.

Access to medicines would be a core mandate of the new body, rooted explicitly in the right to health and WHO standards on essential medicines. WHO-led assessment of therapeutic value, including in relation to psychedelic medicines, could develop from the existing Expert Committee on Drug Dependence. A dedicated fund for access to essential controlled medicines could support procurement, training, and technical assistance in low- and middle-income countries.

The new technical body would not address the development or environmental aspects of drug control. These issues would sit within the wider UN system and the legal frameworks already governing those areas.

Addressing illicit traffic: Transnational criminal law

The third aspect of our sketch is transnational crime, which would not be addressed by the aforementioned standards body. Those issues would instead move fully into the realm of transnational criminal law and the institutions already tasked with addressing it. Here is where the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime may continue to play a technical role, but with the focus on transnational crime rather than drugs and drug use per se (a UN Office on Transnational Crime, perhaps). Drug trafficking would be addressed alongside other transnational crimes under UNTOC, supported by mutual legal assistance agreements between states. Discussions around the illicit drug trade would move to the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, also based in Vienna.

Problems, and more questions than answers

The rational design of any system comes with costs and benefits, and requires careful calculations regarding scope, membership, flexibility, and more.[24] There are, we know, many challenges with the sketch above. For example, the UN drug conventions are explicitly named in national laws and in other treaties (e.g., the Convention on the Rights of the Child). If the conventions ceased to exist, the implications for these laws and agreements would need to be mapped and addressed. There is also the enduring question of drug exceptionalism and whether the social and health risks associated with controlled substances necessitate a distinct approach to global regulation.[25] Corporate influence is another significant concern—as it is across many other international institutions—and would need to be addressed to safeguard against conflicts of interest. Within a new technical body, this could be mitigated, for example, through membership rules.

Moreover, the current UN drug conventions are problematic but not useless. Not all of the norms they have formalized are wrong. Even if there were no global prohibition on trade, trafficking in substances contrary to the laws of many states (or outside the regulatory systems established by states that do permit trade) would not disappear. Thus, cooperation against trafficking would remain necessary, as is currently required by the 1988 trafficking convention. Clearly, there is value in using a treaty to harmonize what counts as illicit trade. With different national controls—rather than global prohibition—in place, it would need to be clear which states permit imports of which substances. This is no different from customs procedures in relation to other commodities. That states should not export a substance to a state where import is not permitted was first recognized in 1909 at the Shanghai Opium Conference and remains an important norm.

We understand that our argument raises more questions than it answers. That is our intention, as these kinds of questions are at the center of the operation of the global drug control system. What values should underpin global drug control? What are the drug conventions for, and are binding treaties necessary to cover all of this normative territory? Are the current institutions fit for purpose, and which purposes (or functions) at that? These are critical questions for the current regime, but also design questions for the future. The drug control regime needs to be rebuilt around policy diversity, rather than “gapless” uniformity. Indeed, this would make it reflect the current reality evidenced by wildly diverging approaches to cannabis, the most commonly used illicit substance. Some of our ideas may be unworkable in practice, and in the space available we cannot address the complexities of such a change. A combination of the existing proposals outlined above may well be the more realistic path forward to alleviate observed tensions. But path dependence should be a concern of the review panel, and the drug conventions are central to it. Our goal here has been to problematize the assumption that drug treaties are required and to demonstrate that designing a regime without prescriptive treaties is at least imaginable.

Damon Barrett is a senior lecturer in human rights at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and co-director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, Colchester, UK.

Julie Hannah is a lecturer in law at the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, and co-Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, Colchester, UK.

Please address correspondence to Damon Barrett. Email: damon.barrett@gu.se.

Competing interests: None declared.

Copyright © 2026 Barrett and Hannah. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

References

[1] Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Resolution 68/6: Strengthening the International Drug Control System; A Path to Effective Implementation (2025).

[2] Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (as amended by the 1972 Protocol), 520 UNTS 151 (1961), art. 4c.

[3] Q. Wright, “The Opium Question,” American Journal of International Law 18/2 (1924).

[4] Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (see note 2); Convention on Psychotropic Substances, 1019 UNTS 14956 (1971); Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1582 UNTS 95 (1988).

[5] D. Bewley-Taylor, M. Jelsma, S. Rolles, and J. Walsh, Cannabis Regulation and the UN Drug Treaties: Strategies for Reform (Washington Office on Latin America, Transnational Institute, Transform, et al., 2016).

[6] C. Hallam, D. Bewley-Taylor, and M. Jelsma, “Scheduling in the International Drug Control System,” Transnational Institute Series on Legislative Reform of Drug Policies No. 25 (2014).

[7] R. Lines, Drug Control and Human Rights in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

[8] R. Lines and D. Barrett, “Cannabis Reform, ‘Medical and Scientific Purposes’ and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties,” International Community Law Review 20/5 (2018).

[9] R. Room, B. Fischer, W. Hall, et al., Cannabis Policy: Moving Beyond Stalemate (Oxford University Press, 2010).

[10] N. Boister and M. Jelsma, “Inter Se Modification of the UN Drug Control Conventions: An Exploration of Its Applicability to Legitimise the Legal Regulation of Cannabis Markets,” International Community Law Review 20 (2018).

[11] D. Spivack, A Fourth International Convention for Drug Policy: Promoting Public Health Policies (Senlis Council, 2004); R. Room and S. MacKay, Roadmaps to Reforming the UN Drug Conventions (Beckley Foundation, 2012).

[12] Room and MacKay (see note 11).

[13] D. Bewley-Taylor, International Drug Control: Consensus Fractured (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

[14] See M. Jelsma, “The World Health Organization Coca Review: A Post Mortem” in this special section.

[15] J. Buxton and L. Burger, “International Drug Policy in Context,” in J. Buxton, G. Margo, and L. Burger (eds), The Impact of Global Drug Policy on Women: Shifting the Needle (Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021).

[16] M. Bergkvist, D. Barrett, J. Edman, and B. Johnson, “Fear and Loathing in the United Nations: The Establishment of International Control of Psychedelics Through the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances,” Contemporary Drug Problems (2026); P. Metaal and M. Jelsma, “WHO Critical Review of Coca: A Comprehensive Overview,” Transnational Institute (June 18, 2025), https://www.tni.org/en/dossier/who-critical-review-of-coca-leaf.

[17] See Lines (see note 7).

[18] Constitutional Court (South Africa), Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development and Others v. Prince, National Director of Public Prosecutions and Others v. Rubin, National Director of Public Prosecutions and Others v. Acton and Others [2018] ZACC 30; Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación (Mexico), Declaratoria General de Inconstitucionalidad 1/2018, judgment of June 28, 2021.

[19] T. Etty, J. van Zeben, H. van Asselt, et al., “Breaking Path Dependencies Through Transnational Environmental Law,” Transnational Environmental Law 14/1 (2025).

[20] See International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, United Nations Development Programme, World Health Organization, et al., International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy (2019).

[21] Charter of the United Nations (1945), arts. 1, 55.

[22] D. Bewley-Taylor, “Emerging Policy Contradictions Between the United Nations Drug Control System and the Core Values of the United Nations,” International Journal of Drug Policy 16/6 (2005); D. Barrett, “Security, Development and Human Rights: Normative, Legal and Policy Challenges for the International Drug Control System,” International Journal of Drug Policy 21/2 (2010).

[23] Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization, Codex Alimentarius Commission Procedural Manual, 28th edition (2023).

[24] B. Koremenos, C. Lipson, and D. Snidal, “The Rational Design of International Institutions,” International Organization 55/4 (2001).

[25] D. Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Making Sense of Legal and Illegal Drugs, 2nd edition (UIT Cambridge Ltd., 2020).