law, including the international duty of all countries to maintain peace
and promote security of all nations, as well as to hold persons guilty of
committing crimes against the peace and security of mankind and other
crimes of international character accountable for their actions.
All international legal acts against drug abuse can be divided into
general and specific. General acts regulate various types of international
relations, particularly, those formed in connection with actions against
international crimes and crimes of international character, including the
dissemination of and trade with drugs. Specific acts of international law
bear direct relation to actions against drug abuse and its most dangerous
aspect- narco-crime.
General Acts of International Law:
General acts of international law lay the legal foundation for cooperation
among nations, in actions against international crimes and crimes of
international character, the dissemination of narcotics among others. One
of these acts is the UN Charter. Its Preamble urges all UN members to join
in a common effort to maintain international peace and security. The UN
Charter stresses the need to use international machinery for promoting the
nations' economic and social progress and sets the goal "to practice
international cooperation in resolving international problems of economic,
social, cultural and humanitarian nature and in encouraging and promoting
respect for human rights and basic freedoms for all regardless of race,
sex, language and religion"
The UN Charter (part 2 art. 2) also calls on nations to strictly and
unswervingly observe international commitments that they have taken upon
themselves voluntarily and among them, as the Preamble points out, to the
commitments stemming from treaties, agreements and other sources of
international law.
One of the major historically evolved principles of international law
states that international agreements must be observed. Stemming from this
principle is a member nation's duty to cooperate in combating crime,
international crimes and crimes of international character, including the
dissemination of and trade with narcotics.
These crimes have certain particularities. This has a bearing on the
question of accountability if such crimes are committed. According to I.I.
Karpets, there is a need to single out crimes covered by conventions or
other signed and ratified international agreements, especially, if national
legislation have been brought in accord with them. The existence of both is
a good reason for making those guilty of committing these crimes to be held
accountable. A failure to do so must be qualified as a violation of both
international law and national legislation.
In case there are no coordinated norms of accountability, the involved
countries should proceed from the general principles that had developed
among nations and resolve questions of cooperation against crime on that
basis. Specifically, they may determine the forms of this cooperation, its
confines, the need to institute criminal proceedings in view of the
committed crimes of international character, etc.
Special Acts of International Law:
Special norms of international law dealing with measures to combat drug
abuse have been taking shape gradually. The history of their development is
uneven- from establishing international control over the lawful
distribution and use of drugs to introducing control over illegal drug
trafficking.
It is not accidental that crimes bearing on drug abuse are qualified as
crimes of international character. This can be attributed to a number of
circumstances.
As an age-old phenomenon, drug addiction has spread over large
territories. As it kept crossing national borders, whole areas appeared
that specialized in growing and processing drug-bearing plants,
manufacturing and distributing narcotics. Recently, areas where drug money
can be laundered at a profit have emerged. In short, drug addiction has
become widespread practically on all the continents. Drug abuse has
acquired a transnational nature. At the turn of last century it had already
been clear that drug addiction endangered not only the lives of individuals
and social groups but also the economic advancement of many countries, as
it is bound to inflict considerable damage on agriculture and trade and
undermine whole industries. (chemical, pharmaceutical or pharmacological).
Measures that various governments tried to employ within their
countries in the hope to "curb" drug addiction, so to speak, and ban, say,
in Turkey or China, the non-medicinal use of drugs, failed to bring any
positive results.
On top of that, programs against drug addiction required additional
financial resources for treatment and social rehabilitation of addicts,
medical personnel, curative medicines, and preventive measures by law
enforcement agencies. Many countries lacked such financial resources. So,
actions against drug abuse began crossing national boundaries. The
awareness of a possible proliferation of drugs raised concern of the world
public opinion and governments of many countries began pressing for the
intensification of the rule of law on the international scene.
Consequently, an objective need arose to work out and put into practice
joint inter-governmental agreements, adopt effective legal norms that would
regulate international cooperation, enable countries to employ coordinated
measures against drugs as a whole and its specific manifestations and to
establish, as a result, both a domestic and international control over the
use of narcotics and their consumption.
The first experiment of international control over narcotics and of
measures against drug addiction at the international level dates back to
the Shanghai Opium Commission held between February 5th and 26th 1909 in
the city of Shanghai.
Shanghai Opium Commission of 1909:
This commission consisted of the representatives from 13 countries:
Russia, the USA, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Britain, France, China, Italy,
Japan, Netherlands, Persia, Portugal and Siam.
The commission attempted to work out measures that would block the
illegal flow of drugs from the regions of Asia to European countries and
the United States. It also discussed questions related to opium smoking and
to international trade in opium derivatives.
In the long run, however, no constructive measures were produced.
Documents issued by the commission contained no specific bans even on opium
smoking. Members of the commission thought it was sufficient to only speak
about its regulation and gradual restriction.
Nevertheless, the work of the Shanghai opium commission of 1909 played
a significant role. Officially it marked the beginning of actions against
drug addiction at the international level and to the launching of a system
of international control over the spread of drugs. It also mapped out
directions for the future international legislation in resolving problems
reviewed in Shanghai.
A further advancement in combating drugs was made in the Hague at the
International Opium Conference held from December 1st 1911 to January 23d
1912. Representatives of 12 countries took part in it (the same as in
Shanghai excluding Austria-Hungary). The conference prepared and adopted
the first convention on drugs (known as the Hague Convention). As a follow
up to the Shanghai Commission, in terms of ideas, the conference proclaimed
the timeliness of actions against narcotics as a whole and its specific
trends.
The Hague Convention of 1912:
The Hague convention of 1912 was the first to define the specific types of
drugs, which were put under international control. They were raw opium,
smoke opium, medicinal opium, morphine, cocaine and a few others. The
contracting parties took pledges of both domestic and international nature
upon themselves to adopt national laws establishing control over the
production and distribution of raw opium, and at barring its illegal
imports and exports without permits granted by specially authorized
persons; to take steps towards gradually halting the production, domestic
trade and use of smoke opium and introducing a ban on its imports and
exports; to use narcotic substances (medicinal opium, morphine and cocaine)
only for medicinal and "other reasonable purposes"; to ensure a legal
regulation of the production of morphine, cocaine, medicinal opium, heroin
and their derivatives and also of trade in these narcotic substances; to
adopt appropriate laws (if they are not adopted yet) or change existing
laws concerning the responsibility and punishment of persons guilty of acts
involving the illegal possession of drugs.
The provision concerning the legal regulation of the production of
morphine and its derivatives and trade in them (cocaine, medicinal opium
and heroin) was an important step. It was an attempt to use preventive
measures such as foreseeing the establishment of international control over
narcotic substances, which could appear in the future without their prior
concrete mentioning in the Convention's text.
The significant 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
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