The counterplan invites an avalanche of political fights.
Martin Jelsma 18, Director of the Drugs and Democracy Programme, Transnational Institute, Senior Research Associate at the Global Drug Policy Observatory (GDPO) at Swansea University; Neil Boister, Professor of International Law at the University of Canterbury; David Bewley-Taylor, Professor of International Relations and Public Policy, Director of the GDPO; Malgosia Fitzmaurice, Professor of Public International Law at Queen Mary University of London; John Walsh, Director for Drug Policy and the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America, March 2018, “Balancing Treaty Stability and Change: Inter se modification of the UN drug control conventions to facilitate cannabis regulation,” WOLA, Policy Report 7, https://www.wola.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/FINAL_Updated.pdf, kav
A difficult dilemma has thus entered the international drug policy arena. There is no doubt that recent policy developments regarding cannabis regulation have moved beyond the legal latitude of the treaties. Initiating a formal procedure to review or amend the current treaty framework, however, would not only immediately trigger an avalanche of political frictions with some of the most powerful countries in the world, but could even lead to unintended negative outcomes. Indeed, even as many governments continue to tout the supposed global consensus on drug policy, officials are quite aware of the significant and growing policy differences among parties to the drug treaties; to the extent that a truly global consensus ever existed, it is now fractured, and there is no new consensus to take its place.
Under such conditions, it is not difficult to understand why many countries would prefer to avoid or delay confronting the treaty questions raised by cannabis regulation. Indeed, such concerns go far in explaining the attraction of the legally fallacious—but politically potent—stance that the drug treaties as they stand are flexible enough to accommodate the regulation of adult use cannabis. But the costs of adhering to such a legal fiction are likely to grow over time, at the expense of the reputations of the states that cling to it, and to the detriment of compliance with the drug control treaties themselves as well as international law more broadly.