Politics and Finite Flexibilities: The UN Drug Control Conventions and their Future Development

Abstract

Domestic policy choices concerning the non-medical use of cannabis are generating increased interest in what has been usefully called the global drug prohibition regime. Commentators are questioning whether the UN-based treaty system can accommodate national policy approaches that deviate from the regime's prohibitive ethos. As tension around cannabis “legalization” builds it becomes ever more urgent to relieve systemic pressure, a process to which inter se treaty modification may be key.