International Narcotics Control Board

International Narcotics Control Board
Type	Treaty body of the United Nations drug control conventions
Website	incb.org
Founded	1968
Base	Vienna, Austria
Scope	International
Focus	Monitoring the parties' compliance with the 1961, 1971 and 1988 drug control conventions, including the control of cannabis

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) is an independent treaty body that monitors how states carry out the three United Nations drug control conventions. It was provided for by the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 and took up its work on 2 March 1968, when it replaced the Permanent Central Board set up under the International Opium Convention of 1925.^: 1 The Board calls itself an "independent and quasi-judicial monitoring body". The Economic and Social Council of the United Nations elects its thirteen members, and its secretariat sits in Vienna.

Cannabis is one of the drugs the Board oversees. A state that allows cannabis to be grown for medical use must give the Board an estimate of the quantity it will need each year.^{: chap. I, paras. 7–8} In statements and annual reports since the 1990s the Board has objected to national policies that tolerate or legalise the non-medical use of cannabis, and has held that legalisation is inconsistent with the 1961 Convention.^{: 11: chap. I, para. 112}

Origins

The Board took over the work of two organs of the older drug treaties. The Permanent Central Board had been constituted under chapter VI of the 1925 Convention and functioned from 15 January 1929 to 1 March 1968. It called itself first the Permanent Central Opium Board and, from 1965, the Permanent Central Narcotics Board. The Drug Supervisory Body had been created by the Convention of 1931 for limiting the manufacture and regulating the distribution of narcotic drugs.^{: 1, 132}

Under article 5 of the Single Convention the parties entrusted their international functions to two organs: the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of the Economic and Social Council and the International Narcotics Control Board.^{: art. 5} The Council's resolution 1106 (XL) put the Board in place of the Permanent Central Board from 2 March 1968.^: 1 Its functions were later extended by the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 and the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988.

Membership and secretariat

Under the original text of 1961 the Board had eleven members: three with medical, pharmacological or pharmaceutical experience, chosen from a list of at least five persons nominated by the World Health Organization (WHO), and eight chosen from a list nominated by governments. The Commentary explains the WHO seats by the Board's taking over the work of the Drug Supervisory Body, two of whose four members the WHO had appointed.^: 132–133 The conference of 1961 cut the members' term from the five years of the draft to three, in order, the Commentary says, to make it easier to elect nationals of newly independent states.^: 143 The Protocol of 1972 raised the membership from eleven to thirteen.^{: 1972 Protocol, art. 20(3)}

Under the amended text the Economic and Social Council elects three members from the WHO list and ten from a list of persons nominated by members of the United Nations and by parties that are not members. Members must be persons who "by their competence, impartiality and disinterestedness, will command general confidence", and the Council is to give "due regard to the principle of equitable geographic representation". Members serve for five years and may be re-elected.^{: arts. 9(1)–(3), 10(1)} They serve in their personal capacity and do not represent governments. The Board elects its own President, meets at least twice a year and has a quorum of eight.^{: art. 11}

The Convention leaves the Board's secretariat to the UN Secretary-General, who appoints its Secretary in consultation with the Board.^{: art. 16} The secretariat is an administrative entity of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime but, according to the Board, reports only to the Board on matters of substance. It is housed at the Vienna International Centre.

Functions

Article 9 gives the Board the task of trying, in co-operation with governments, to limit the cultivation, production, manufacture and use of drugs to the amount needed for medical and scientific purposes, to ensure that they are available for those purposes, and to prevent illicit cultivation, production, manufacture, trafficking and use.^{: art. 9(4)}

The main instrument is the estimates system. Each party sends the Board yearly estimates of the drugs it will consume, use in manufacture and hold in stock, on forms the Board prescribes. The Board examines and confirms them, and may amend them with the government's consent. If the two disagree, the Board may establish, communicate and publish its own estimates. Where a state sends none, the Board fixes them itself where it can.^{: arts. 12, 19} Parties also send statistical returns, which the Board examines to see whether a state has complied with the Convention.^{: art. 13}

Article 14 sets out what the Board can do when it has "objective reasons to believe" that a party's failure to apply the Convention is seriously endangering its aims. It may ask the government for explanations or propose consultations, which it keeps confidential, and may call on the government to take remedial measures. If these fail, it may bring the matter to the attention of the parties, the Economic and Social Council and the Commission, and finally recommend that parties stop importing drugs from the country, exporting drugs to it, or both. Such decisions need a two-thirds majority of the whole Board.^{: art. 14}

The Board publishes an annual report on its work, which goes to the Economic and Social Council through the Commission.^{: art. 15} Technical reports on narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances give each country's estimated requirements and the figures for licit production, manufacture, trade and consumption.

Cannabis

Medical use and the estimates

Article 28 of the Single Convention requires a party that permits the cannabis plant to be grown for the production of cannabis or cannabis resin to apply the system of controls that article 23 lays down for the opium poppy. Cultivation solely for fibre, seed or horticultural purposes is outside the Convention.^{: art. 28}

The Board set out what this means for medical cannabis in the thematic chapter of its report for 2018. A government that allows medical use must set up a national cannabis agency. The agency licenses producers, buys and takes possession of the crop, holds a monopoly of wholesale trade and stocks, and gives the Board yearly estimates of the quantity to be used for medical purposes and of the number of patients to be treated.^{: chap. I, para. 8} The chapter repeats the Board's view that personal cultivation of cannabis for medical use is inconsistent with the Convention, because it heightens the risk of diversion and leaves the government unable to exercise the supervision the Convention requires, including the estimates and statistical returns.^{: chap. I, para. 12}

Tolerance and legalisation

According to a briefing paper of the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), the Board in its report for 1997 called the Dutch coffee-shop system "an activity that might be described as indirect incitement". Its report for 2001 had a section on the control of cannabis, which noted "some shifting towards a more liberal cannabis policy in several developed countries". In 2003 the Board criticised the United Kingdom's reclassification of cannabis from Class B to Class C. The Dutch government maintained that its policy was within the conventions.^: 11 Bewley-Taylor, Blickman and Jelsma (2014) write that the 2001 report prompted a reaction at the Commission's session of 2002. On its first day the Board's President, Hamid Ghodse, said it seemed "an appropriate time for the Commission to consider this issue in some detail".^: 26

When Uruguay's Congress approved a law on 10 December 2013 to legalise the production, sale and consumption of cannabis for non-medical purposes, the Board said the next day that the law contravened the Single Convention. Its President, Raymond Yans, said he was "surprised" that the legislature and government had "knowingly decided to break" the treaty's provisions. When Canada's Bill C-45 came into force on 17 October 2018, the Board called the legalisation "a violation of fundamental provisions" of the Convention and said Canada had "contributed to weakening the international legal drug control framework".

The first chapter of the report for 2022 is given to the trend. It concludes that legalising non-medical use is inconsistent with the obligation in article 4(c) to limit drugs exclusively to medical and scientific purposes, and that the flexibility of the conventions "does not provide for exceptions" to it. It urges governments to use that flexibility instead, through prevention, treatment and alternatives to conviction and punishment. In the Board's assessment, the jurisdictions that had legalised had not reached the goals they set themselves.^{: chap. I, paras. 112–116}

Reception

The IDPC paper of 2008 argues that the Board in several areas acts beyond the limits the treaties place on it, which it calls "mission creep", while showing "selective reticence" in others, and that its work is marked by a "culture of secrecy". On cannabis it writes that the Board has long kept to a narrow reading of the conventions and objected to decriminalising possession for personal use, lowering enforcement priorities and reclassification.^{: 1, 11} In 2003 the British minister Bob Ainsworth told a House of Commons committee that UN bodies "ought to base their pronouncements on evidence, fact and legal basis".^: 11

See also

• Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
• Commission on Narcotic Drugs