Talk:United Nations drug control conventions

Issues with attribution and verifiability
Copied from a message left on the user talk page of

Hi, can you please explain why you created a new page and filled it with citation needed tags? Since you are the creator of the page, you should be able to provide a source for your statements. Remember that per WP:BURDEN, The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material. Broc (talk) 08:50, 22 May 2024 (UTC)


 * || can you please explain why you created a new page and filled it with tags?
 * I created the page as a stub, not as a fully-formed new article, in the hope that editors who saw the positioning of this article in the overall war on drugs/international drug control/UN treaties context would contribute to it. To give it a bit of framework, I included the three treaties in question, and adapted some content from each of those articles .I added the "citation needed" tags for the convenience of any reader who might be tempted to make a relatively minor improvement, and with the intention of correcting those deficiencies myself shortly.
 * This is a stub: if there's nothing that seems urgently problematic, maybe give it a day or two to see what the creator of a new page, or others, might continue on with?
 * WP:BURDEN does say: "Whether and how quickly material should be initially removed for not having an inline citation to a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article. In some cases, editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references. Consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step." -- Tsavage (talk) 17:37, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Tsavage Please note that, at the time I wrote the first message, there was no evidence of active improvement of the page nor the page was tagged with WIP. While I agree that new pages are undergoing significant changes in the first few days, I do not fully understand the reasoning behind adding "citation needed" tags yourself (WP:BURDEN refers to other editors adding such tags, not the author) given that the sources are available to you at the time of writing; it is much easier to add them directly instead of adding tags. No need to discuss this any further from my side, as it's after all just a matter of opinion.
 * Thank you for correctly providing attribution in your latest edit summaries. Broc (talk) 17:45, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I do not fully understand the reasoning behind adding "citation needed" tags yourself (WP:BURDEN refers to other editors adding such tags, not the author) given that the sources are available to you at the time of writing;
 * As you pointed out, some text was sourced from other WP articles, where there were no citations or "citation needed" tags. As a side note, it's my understanding that citations are not required in order to post text. At times, I might add some copy that summarizes material, when I don't have the sources right at hand, with the intention of adding citations later. In such a case, I'd usually add "citation needed" tags, even though I'd be soon adding the sources.
 * I think it's worth being clear, as most of WP comes down to matters of opinion. -- Tsavage (talk) 17:57, 22 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I also noticed you copied most of the content from other Wikipedia pages without attribution. This is a violation of Wikipedia's licensing requirements. Please provide attribution as explained in Copying within Wikipedia. Broc (talk) 08:53, 22 May 2024 (UTC)


 * See above. It was temporary and more adapting some fairly generic sentences than wholesale copying, though I take your point about including a "copied from" in the edit comment to be thorough. I remedied that in subsequent edits... -- Tsavage (talk) 17:41, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Is this article worth keeping? Duplicata of existing content
Hello! So, first thing, the title is incorrect. Two of the treaties referred to are not "United Nations treaties" as such, only the third is. This is perhaps a nuance for many but has some relevance w.r.t States non member of the UN. So the title ought to be "International drug control conventions" not "UN drug control conventions".

Secondly, it seems that this article covers content already existing in this article: Drug policy and also present in each article for each of the 3 Conventions, which are extensive. I wonder why the need of this one? I'd rather have it as a redirection to Drug policy.

All the best Teluobir (talk) 10:20, 28 May 2024 (UTC)


 * @Teluobir what about a merge? Broc (talk) 11:20, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Broc I don't think a merge is a good idea or appropriate. Please see my reasoning directly below. -Tsavage (talk) 02:30, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Teluobir Considered together, the three UN drug control conventions are the current international regime. There are significant aspects that deal with the regime as whole, rather than the individual conventions, that would seem to qualify this as an article-level topic. Two that I currently have in mind are:
 * Interpretation and non-compliance: For example, the situations in Bolivia, Canada, Netherlands, Portugal, United States, and Uruguay are all significant.
 * Policy change: The current tension between the supply-side "war on drugs" approach (and the labeling of it as a failure) and a demand-side public health and human rights approach, suggests a strong call for reform of the basic prohibitionist approach of the conventions. The road to such change seems fraught. For example, UNGASS 2016, where countries were roughly divided over any significant retreat from strict prohibition.
 * This article seems like the proper place to cover such issues, not as a subsection of another article.
 * Drug policy#International drug control doesn't seem like the most logical place for the above. The framing of the Drug policy article is rather vague. The (unsourced) definition in the lead seems arbitrary, focusing mainly on legislation, while mentioning that drug policy is relevant in a variety of situations. The issue of "drug policy" does have other important contexts. For example, corporate drug policy and drug testing have huge societal impacts but aren't considered in that article. The body of the article addresses only national and international law. The Drug policy section is uneven, in places out of date, and incomplete as far as significant compliance and interpretation issues with regard to the UN conventions. The "by country" format also seems unlikely to be regularly updated unless certain editors are specifically keeping on top of it. The table of "Former and current international drug control treaties" would seem better located in the Single Convention article, as that treaty consolidated and replaced all previous; going forward the next two conventions are under the UN system and don't have anything directly to do with the pre-Single Convention treaties, but are complementary and supplementary to the Single Convention.
 * Overall, the "Drug policy" article seems not well framed or focused, with the potential to sprawl if other significant aspects of drug policy were to be introduced. In any case, the UN conventions are not the main focus of that article. This article is clearly focused on the UN-administrated current international drug control regime, which consists of three conventions.
 * the title is incorrect. Two of the treaties referred to are not "United Nations treaties" as such, only the third is.
 * My understanding is that all three are UN treaties, and the inclusion of "United Nations" only in the title of the third treaty is a naming convention matter. From a UN source: "Three drug control conventions were adopted under the auspices of the United Nations." There are redirects to here from "UN drug control conventions" and "International drug control conventions"; all three ways are what I've seen used in sources. It's not a proper name, only a common reference; I haven't found an official title for the three conventions together and don't believe one exists.
 * That's my view. Please correct me if I'm wrong in any of the above. --Tsavage (talk) 01:13, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for these arguments. I think a merge could be a way forwards but, again, not sure anybody has the time and energyu to do that merge, without losing information in the process. Hopefully someone does.
 * @Tsavage to address your points:
 * "Considered together, …":
 * Treaties are stand alone pieces of law, international law has specificities that we can't just ignore for the purpose of simplicity. The fact that these three treaties create the current body of law is an information, but TMHO far less important that the fact that these treaties have different status of ratification, different applications, reservations, and in practice represent a fairly different set of rules for each and every country. Rules that are used to craft national drug policies. Here we get back to "drug policy"/subsection on treaties. However, the existence of a page for the concept grouping the three conventions is not absurd, but it should certainly not be so extensive and should only be here to point out at an expression used to refer to the three treaties altogether. The bulk of the information has to be on the page of each of these treaties. A good comparison is the concept of "International bill of human rights" and I invite you to compare this article with each of the respective 3 pieces of IL that are referenced by this name.
 * Also, depending on what & where we are discussing, international drug law is not only framed by these 3 Conventions, there are also the UN Charter, international human rights law, as well as other treaties some of which are listed here: Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
 * "Interpretation and non-compliance" –– This is only relevant in the case of interpretation of provisions related to cannabis and/opr other drugs used for recreational/adult use/non-medical use. There is already a page (which I think may also not deserve to exist stand alone, but it's bee there for a while) dealing just with that: Cannabis and international law. Taking this page, each treaty's page, and the drug policy page, I don't think this new additional article adds much to the discussion.
 * "Policy change" yes but that doesn't justify an article. There are already articles, namely this, this, and this, addressing these issues. There are also specific articles addressing specific policy changes, like Removal of cannabis and cannabis resin from Schedule IV of the Single Convention on narcotic drugs, 1961. I really don't see the interest of this additional article serving just to criticise the treaties. Additionally, these criticisms of the treaties are very close to criticism of national war on drug policies, and intertwinned. In this respect it seems to me much more relevant to address both these treaties and their criticism within the Drug Policy page and as a discussion which would be more honest by encompassing both approaches ––the classical destructive prohibition approach and its criticisms.
 * On Drug Policy not being the right place for these contents. Your points are correct: the article is uneven, in places out of date, and incomplete". But these words to me sound like a call to improve the article "Drug Policy" (including by merging probably this new page onto the subsection on treaties) rather than depleting it and abandoning it for its weak points. Not only is "Drug Policy" the actual topic we are discussing, the topic these treaties relate to, and a topic whose existence in real life entirely depends from these treaties… but there is also an entire wikipedia architecture built around the "Drug Policy" name, page, and concept, There are declinations by country, etc etc. For me it makes much more sense to address the poor quality of that Drug Policy page and make it a better vehicle for the important information that is spreading around. This Drug Policy article will remain the first go-to article for basic people researching the internet. It'd be worth our interest in updating and improving it (which I tried to do by bits some years ago already).
 * Name–– The name that should be used to refer to these four treaties (three conventions and the amendment of the Single Convention) together with their final acts, is "International drug control conventions" (or IDCC). The official edition of the conventions has this title, and this is the expression used in UNGA and CND resolutions systematically, as well as by other United Nations entities responsible under these treaties, and by non-United Nations treaty bodies as the INCB is. The IDCC is a body of law which has been negotiated hardly and has titles which are extremely significant. As the VCLT invites, we should not attempt to divert from the language agreed by drafters. Drafters decided that the 1961 would be "Single" that the 1971 would just be a Convention (translated as "Covenant" though in Spanish whereas the 1961 is Convention) and they decided the 1988 one would be a "United Nations Convention". These are all significant in international law. I understand that these may seem as useless details to many (and perhaps they are) but detail matters in international law, and these treaties, I believe, should not be referred to as United nations treaties". A United Nations treaty is different from a treaty "adopted under the auspices of the United Nations."
 * In 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit two treaties were open for signature: the UNFCCC and the CBD. The choice to have some treaties be "United Nation ones" and not other should not be just disregarded as it does carry meaning (whereas for instance the choice of "treaty", "convention", "agreement", etc carries less importance)
 * On another topic–– the desire to make a short article about complex topics leads to some strange formulations, such as "The three treaties are intended to be complementary and mutually supportive". This is not true. The treaties are today seen, and implemented, as such. However, how could the 1961 be "intended" to complement or support the 1988 Convention which did not yet exist at the time. To the contrary, the 1961 Convention was a "Single" one intended to supersede and replace all other drug control treaties. So these sort of short statements are, in my opinion, misleading and confusing.
 * In my opinion the best option would be by far:
 * Work collectively to merge this article onto Drug Policy (the references and additional information not already present in Drug Policy or respective treaty pages),
 * Improve Drug Policy,
 * Rename the current article as "International Drug Control Conventions" and make it extremely short (one paragraph or two),
 * Ideally, it would be great to look at some of the other articles I mentioned in this answer, that are also redundant, often outdated and extremely biased, and have a better structure for the overall international & national drug policy discussion, which are intertwined and inextricable besides their specificities.
 * Teluobir (talk) 12:51, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Don't want to be annoying, but the UN source that you cited @Tsavage mentioned that what was adopted under the auspices of the UN were… "the international drug control treaties" Teluobir (talk) 12:55, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The reference is lowercase, indicating to me that it is only a description. If there's a source that definitively establishes that the UN has explicitly named the set of three UN drug conventions, we should of course use that name. I haven't found such a source, or any reference that indicates such a thing exists. -Tsavage (talk) 16:55, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Teluobir Thanks for your reply! I'll respond by referring to each of your top level bullet points:
 * "Considered together, …": Treaties are stand alone pieces of law ... international drug law is not only framed by these 3 Conventions. Also, depending on what & where we are discussing, international drug law is not only framed by these 3 Conventions
 * This article as it stands now provides a brief, single-paragraph summary of each convention, and points to the individual convention pages -- it relies on the detailed, in-depth coverage of the main articles. Yes, other UN conventions may be relevant or related, still, just as the drug conventions are individually standalone, they are together standalone as wll, with topics that relate to them as a set. For example, when Uruguay legalized cannabis, the INCB specifically mentioned breach of the Single Convention, while reports mentioned that it was also a breach of the Convention Against Illicit Traffic. An article treating the three as a working collection of treaties seems best able to make plain to the average reader the actual workings of the conventions, including the political aspects evidenced in official statements, enforcement and non-enforcement, and so forth. In simplest terms, this is about the framework of international laws that control drugs.
 * "Interpretation and non-compliance" –– This is only relevant in the case of interpretation of provisions related to cannabis and/opr other drugs used for recreational/adult use/non-medical use. ... Cannabis and international law
 * Not clear on the problem here: wouldn't any state-level interpretation of or non-compliance with the framework as whole fit, including, for example, messing with the controls on licit drugs? Also, the longstanding case of Portugal decriminalizing recreational drugs, and the more recent broad decriminalization in the US state of Oregon (which by US law and the conventions, the federal government should attempt to squash) fall well outside of cannabis only.
 * "Policy change" yes but that doesn't justify an article. ... Legality of cannabis, War on drugs, Drug prohibition, etc
 * Those articles are not specifically about the UN drug conventions. This article is. Use case: A reader hears that the UN treaties somehow control the global drug war. They find high-level info on that by looking up and reading the "War on drugs" article, and they want to know a little more (this article is linked there). Not immediately to read in detail about each convention, or about the world of drug policy, simply to know more about the overall UN drug control framework, how it works. This article satisfies that reasonable scenario (one that I arrived here through myself). It also allows convenient drilling down further through, for example, the main article links for each convention.
 * On Drug Policy not being the right place for these contents. ... "Drug Policy" the actual topic we are discussing, the topic these treaties relate to, and a topic whose existence in real life entirely depends from these treaties… but there is also an entire wikipedia architecture built around the "Drug Policy" name, page, and concept,
 * "Drug policy" is a reasonable description of what this article is about, but "the actual topic" is the UN drug control conventions. Drug policy encompasses a lot more than that, on the subject level and detail level. As to the Wikipedia architecture, I imagine that could be built, or at least explicitly scaffolded, by creating some sort of article linking structure connecting, for example, the many articles you mention. "UN/international drug control treaties" fits as one of those, a standalone topic that can be summarized there. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime is clear on this, on its Treaties page grouping the three drug conventions under the heading, "Drug-related treaties"
 * Name–– The name that should be used to refer to these four treaties (three conventions and the amendment of the Single Convention) together with their final acts, is "International drug control conventions" (or IDCC). The official edition of the conventions has this title, and this is the expression used in UNGA and CND resolutions systematically, as well as by other United Nations entities responsible under these treaties, and by non-United Nations treaty bodies as the INCB is.
 * None of these sources formally names the conventions the International Drug Control Conventions. Even in the so-titled document you mention, it is all lowercase, simply a descriptive phrase. There is also usage like, for example, "The UN Drug Control Conventions: A Primer". The use of "United Nations" in the main title seems to serve clarity; both informal names are in the intro, and there is a redirect. If there are sources indicating otherwise, then of course we must use them.
 * The choice to have some treaties be "United Nation ones" and not other should not be just disregarded
 * Proper naming is not being disregarded. The title of this article, as far as has been established, is not a formal name, and the common informal references have been accounted for. The names of the individual conventions are faithfully reproduced.
 * Ideally, it would be great to look at some of the other articles I mentioned in this answer
 * I have. For the most part, I'd already read them, from working on War on drugs. International bill of human rights in particular is a specific bill, so I don't see the comparison. [Sorry, I was rushing in my earlier reply and misspoken.] I agree is comparable to the set-up here, it addresses shared aspects, in this case, a brief account of how they were arrived, of other related documents as does this article. "Drug policy" is a broad topic, with numerous subtopics or related topics that will necessarily have some redundant information, yet are distinct. I don't think it is the foundational topic, though, not the place to develop lengthy subtopics, it would seem to be best suited to the brief definitional style you're suggesting for this article. Criminal law has an architecture where Sumptuary law and Drug prohibition are listed at the top level. It would seem that much of what's in the drug policy article fits in that structure; as areas such as demand-side approaches, and drug policy in the private sector aren't currently covered.
 * This article addresses specific subject matter that doesn't fit, without wholesale redundancy, in the individual convention articles: "Philosophy, origins, architects", "Administrative structure", "Obligations", "Non-compliance", and "Modification and reform" cover the three conventions collectively. The information is specific to the topic, not generic details common to all UN treaties, and they are generally not specific to the individual drug conventions, instead apply to all of them.
 * My take on a general Wikipedia approach to subsections is to develop them until they are broad enough to stand alone, not take standalone articles that have significant content and scope, and fit them into existing articles as subsections. Already, this article presents more general information on the topic than Drug policy, the latter being mostly annotated listings of treaties and dates, repeated in text and table formats. Other than the listings, there seems to be a single paragraph providing information specifically on the three UN drug conventions.
 * For these reasons, I'm not clear on why you want to merge this article. I don't think it's warranted or useful for the reader, is it would make the information harder to find, and less likely to be specifically updated by passing editors. -Tsavage (talk) 18:29, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Teluobir And I overlooked replying to this, from your last reply:
 * On another topic–– the desire to make a short article about complex topics leads to some strange formulations, such as "The three treaties are intended to be complementary and mutually supportive". This is not true. The treaties are today seen, and implemented, as such. However, how could the 1961 be "intended" to complement or support the 1988 Convention which did not yet exist at the time
 * The cited source, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, says exactly that: "The three major international drug control treaties are mutually supportive and complementary." I'll change "intended" to "are" for clarity; if the copy patrol copyright bot throws a warning on that, it can be rewritten. (I don't read "intended" the way you do. The second convention was intended to complement the first, the third intended to complement the first and second; intended applies to the set of three in relation to each other, not to the first one when it was the only one.) -Tsavage (talk) 00:38, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Also, Portugal is not violating IL in any way, there are clear provisions carving out personal activities from drug control, at length explained in the respective Commentaries and by INCB in countless of its reports and communications. Oregon's the same but the hypothetical fact that it "should" be something possibly mustn't justify anything to us. In addition, both Portugal and Oregon have extensive dedicated drug policy/decrim pages which will much better address the issue and to which any other page should point to. Are we just here to create duplicata of content? For everything we're discussing there is already an existing, established, well-cross-referenced article. I just do not understand under what concept we want to maintain an article which is obviously adding nothing but confusion and duplicata content.
 * I am not a wiki enthusiast, I am particularly skeptical of so many things on this platform. And this is a new one to me. As a researcher, I am used to consult books, including encyclopaedias, on a daily basis. This can perhaps help us here. Just think of how would any such book handle this issue. I am deeply convinced any encyclopaedia would either have "Drug Control Conventions – see 1961 Single Convention; see 1971 Convention; see 1988 Convention" or under each entry a reference to a central article on the three Conventions, e.g. "1961 Single Convention – see Drug Control Conventions".
 * First lesson is that probably neither "UN" nor "International" would be present in the heading, which would likely be "Drug Control Conventions/treaties". Maybe that's a lesson for us here.
 * Now, on the structuration of contents: if we were to start from scratch, I would certainly agree to put most information within the article on the 3 treaties, as they are indeed today implemented jointly (although it was not in their intent). The most logical to me would be to have the entries for the 3 specific treaties to all refer to that main article on the drug control IL, insofar this is not a specialised encyclopaedia of law.
 * However… we're not starting from scratch. We're starting from a situation exactly opposite. To act consequentially and with some logic, if we are to create an article for the 3 treaties together, the ideal would be to move most if not all contents from each treaty's article into this new article.
 * In my opinion, refusing to enter into the contents to just create additional articles where we have the two situations simultaneously is bad practice and confusing. I just call for some solution other than cosmetic. Or reverting to the previous situation. Teluobir (talk) 09:45, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Teluobir I missed reading this earlier. Thanks for the detailed comments, they are appreciated!
 * I am not a wiki enthusiast, I am particularly skeptical of so many things on this platform. And this is a new one to me.
 * I'm primarily a user of Wikipedia, and tend to edit articles when I can't find something that I think "should" be there. I come here mainly for summaries and then check the sources, first a spot check to see if they seem reasonable, and at times delving into them. I also usually visit some of the wikilinked pages. It's similar to the recent Perplexity "AI search engine", that does real-time web searches to answer questions, and presents a lightly synthesized version of its search results, with citations. So, Wikipedia as a kind of advanced source-aggregating search engine, rather than a specific source that one has to implicitly establish a trust level for, like a particular book or conventional encyclopedia.
 * On Wikipedia there is a natural tendency for subjects to sprawl, and once done, it's hard/impossible to comprehensively restructure over multiple articles. This article is intended as a tiny step in the direction of improving that situation, initially in my case coming from War on drugs. In editing that article, I began to learn about the UN treaties, which did not at first figure in my understanding of the topic. Now, I read a general encyclopedia article like Britannica's "War on Drugs", that covers strictly the US domestic situation, and it seems terribly incomplete in not even suggesting the influence and effects of the US approach on the rest of the world. Not even a single sentence, something like, "The US also pursued its punitive approach to illicit drugs internationally, with foreign anti-drug involvement and through international drug treaties." To my mind, that "international drug treaties" would link to a page like this.
 * Anyhow, I believe I understand your view. I differ in an optimistic way by not being skeptical because of the endlessly hierarchical nature of wikis. There are always was to interlink to create structures. For example, I linked to this article from the intros to each of the drug treaty articles. Someone reading one of them might be daunted by the length and detail of the articles, and go upwards to an overview, then in turn be more interested to return to the detailed coverage. That's exactly how it would work for me. For other, who knows?! :) -Tsavage (talk) 19:41, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Teluobir I was rushed earlier, so I've made a couple of edits for clarity, and a correction (clearly marked), to my last reply.
 * Regarding Drug policy, I could see it more as covering the high-level concerns and mechanics of drug policy creation: approaches, methods, tools, issues, that sort of thing, rather than dealing only with implementations, as it does now. Like Public policy, Health policy, Social policy, Agricultural policy? -Tsavage (talk) 00:16, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Your answers are bad faith so won't fight against that. It is clear that EVERY source refers to IDCC and none to UN treaties, but because the IDCC mentions sre "not capitalised" you dismiss them and refer to a title that, capitalised or not, is simply never mentioned anywhere. This is bad faith and I regret it Teluobir (talk) 08:12, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Teluobir I don't understand in what way you see my replies as being in bad faith (ie: a form of deception). Regarding the article's title, I attempted to present you with my reasoning for the choice. Maybe I didn't present my argument clearly enough. I will try again.
 * As I understand it, you say the title must be "International Drug Control Conventions (IDCC)", the formal name, as that is the phrase used in UN documents, including as the title of UN publications of the text of the conventions.
 * I agree that the UN uses "international drug control conventions" in a number of documents that I've seen; this can be verified with an exact-phrase search.
 * I say that it appears to be an informal title, not an official UN naming of the set of three drug conventions: all in-text instances in UN docs I've found are lowercase, including in the so-titled UN publication you mentioned, where the convention names are capitalized: "The present publication contains the texts of the three main international drug control conventions: the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 and the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988."
 * I've found "UN drug control conventions" (or UN drug conventions) is used in a number of reliable sources while reading on the topic. An exact-phrase search for our discussion turned up more instances. For example:
 * "The fundamental goal of the UN drug control conventions..." from a statement by the INCB president to the the CNB board.
 * "The UN Drug Control Conventions: A Primer", title of a publication from a Dutch think tank.
 * "Guidance on Drug Policy: Interpreting the UN Drug Conventions", the title of a paper presented by an advocacy group of UK parliament members at UNGASS2016.
 * "The United Nations Drug Conventions: Evidence on Effects and Impact", a chapter title from a textbook on addiction treatment.
 * "Towards revision of the UN drug control conventions: Harnessing like-mindedness", the title of a paper published in a peer-reviewed drug policy medical journal.
 * These examples indicate that "UN drug control conventions" (and "UN drug conventions") is used as a name for the UN's three UN drug control treaties.
 * Based on the above points, I named the article "United Nations drug control conventions" (expanding "UN") in the interests of clarity and descriptiveness, and at the same time created redirects for "international drug control conventions" and "UN drug control conventions", ensuring that any of the labels can be easily found.
 * When required, Wikipedia editors provide naming for a distinct topic that doesn't have a formal name under an academic discipline or official source. I followed the early naming arguments for the article on the US Jan. 6 Capitol riot (or however else media sources described it), which has apparently been settled on as January 6 United States Capitol attack. In the same way, I looked at the various sources and chose what seemed like the most descriptive for the three drug conventions.
 * I understand your argument, and agree that UN documents often refer to the "international drug control conventions", but even there, it is not standardized. For example, "Drug-related Treaties" is the heading of the drug conventions section on the UNODC "Treaties" page, and the brief intro refers to them as the "three major international drug control treaties", not conventions.
 * Your position that this page must be moved to "International Drug Control Conventions" as the formal title I don't see as supported by sources. As it is now, I think that it presents the most descriptive commonly used version of an informal title, and redirects handle other forms. I'm sorry that you feel this discussion has been in bad faith on my part; I assure you that deception was not my intention. -Tsavage (talk) 16:09, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Good day again.
 * I agree with you on Drug Policy but that still involved collective work in good faith to make sense of the network of articles that already exist and improve their contents and interconnexion. I continue to think your answers are bad faith and non-conclusive, and unfortunately I just have so many time in the year to dedicate to this. My arguments above still hold IMHO.
 * Intention is intention, it comes from the drafters, not a posteriori, this is extremely well settled and has been discussed at length by the ILC. The interpretation of intent in treaty law is a subfield in and of itself. Funny that we try to redefine core concepts of IL just for the purpose of defending to keep this article as such.
 * There are so many important work to do on the highly biased other articles I mentioned earlier, which remain the most visited ones, that I find it a sad discussion overall, especially if we don't try to reach collectively conclusions to work with constructively.
 * On another note, received an email today about the official treaty-mandated update of the Schedules controlling drugs. Just for the title. https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/v24/035/65/pdf/v2403565.pdf?token=vPSamq2m92iAj1e0Mj&fe=true Again, all official documentation refer to IDCC. i work in this field and I just have never heard of "UN drug control treaties/conventions" except in poor-quaity mainstream media pieces.
 * All the best, Teluobir (talk) 09:32, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry, correct link:
 * ST/CND/1/ADD.2/REV.10
 * Released on : 7 Jun 2024 11:55 PM EDT
 * REVISED SCHEDULES OF THE SCHEDULES OF THE CONVENTION ON PSYCHOTROPIC SUBSTANCES OF 1971
 * https://undocs.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=58646d5e4b0dd0323e8ce567b&id=60e4bdc89f&e=800d614c1d Teluobir (talk) 09:48, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * If it doesn't work try https://undocs.org/ST/CND/1/ADD.2/REV.10 Teluobir (talk) 09:48, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Teluobir Your impression that I've been arguing in bad faith seems to rest on a couple of specific points, both of which I've already addressed, and fail to discuss my other replies, except for a couple of partial agreements with specific points.
 * 1. I've again, in my comment just above, addressed at length your position that the article must be named "International Drug Control Conventions (IDCC) (I capitalized it where you did not because it seems you are claiming that that is the official UN name.
 * 2. I already explained and changed "intended to" to "are". To make plain, the reason I used "intended" was in the interests of paraphrasing, to put that sentence in Wikipedia's voice and not to be in copyright violation. As you pointed out, it was not the ideal choice of what I meant only as alternative wording, not addition of nuance.
 * You originally proposed doing away with this article by merging it, and another editor immediately seemed open to entertaining that idea. I disagreed, and therefore presented as complete an well-reasoned counter position as I could. No bad faith intended.
 * I appreciate that you work in this field; I don't. I edit articles in one of the common Wikipedia ways, of piecing things together from openly available online sources that appear to be reliable for purpose. This certainly isn't the academic way, and sounds kind of shaky, but it has also proven to work, with oversight from other editors. In my case, I try to be diligent and expand my own understanding while editing. You don't find the existence of this article "absurd", which is something; my intention is absolutely not to add to a messy sprawl of related topics or duplicate information. I think this article provides a useful gateway into the three conventions. Hopefully you can assist, at least by checking it and calling out details like "intended". I created it because I would have liked to have found it in my own reading. Sorry that you found this saddening... -Tsavage (talk) 16:26, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Please read the link I sent, it is an official document edited yearly since more than 40 yeats and its official capitalized title is IDCC. Period, All think tanks or oral statements will never beat the fact that this is what is used in ALL UN documents and "UN drug control treaties" used in NONE official UN documents, this is extremely deceiving that you refuse to read the actual references provided by an expert and go grab any google search from absolutely unreliable, non official sources to argue in favour of something that is so obviously incorrect. This is totally absurd.
 * I thought and ended up recomending that the article be titled "Drug Control Conventions" I see that you don't discuss this anywhere. I understand that you did not read my answers or clicked on the links. Hence I'll adopt the same strategy :)
 * I'll stop this discussion as obviously you won't admit any argument or even take the time to read them, and honestly, this discussion has take WAY too many time for me,. I dont have that time. It's pathetic that you are so insistent on this article while refusing to work on improving the other, clearly biassed articles. Adding more bias and personal views to the existing abyss of it on this topic. Congrats and thank you SO so much. Also fascinated that you admit not being an expert on the topic while pushing so hard for maintining mistakes and false elements.
 * THESE ARE NOT UN TREATIES, period, this is just so absurd like someone trying to day the Council of the EU and the European Council are the same thing. It's like we could debate this empty topic for hours when it's quite simple. It's ultra simple. There is two proposals, one is never used by the UN officially, the other is ALWAYS used officially. I proposed a third waywhich gets rif of the confusing term and keeps the essentials: "Drug Control Conventions". You have 3 proposals on the table and you'll spend all efforts to argue for the most absurd of them all. You pay so close attention to elements that have absolutely no relevance, like capitalisation, yet you ignore entirely essential elelemts like toe repeated practice over years of UN institutions, besides the fact that is subsequent practice is ESSENTIAL in international law. Just… If you discuss with someone knowledgeable on a topic don't try to teach him/her?
 * You taught me to deactivate notifications :-) Enjoy over-simplification and proactive confusion of readership, have a good time leaving abandoned bits of false information everywhere on wikipedia. Without me! I'll go to the park :) Teluobir (talk) 08:38, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I have tried to fix errors, but there are WAY TOO MUCH. I have to choose:
 * answering you
 * working on contents on this article
 * working on contents on other articles
 * working on research.
 * I have to say I prefer the latter, but I made the efforts to answer you in the past, proposing several options (I suggested two different alternative titles – you dismissed them all). I proposed alternative options in moving forwards for the article (shortening, interlinking, deleting, deleting/shortening others andto put more contents on this one). I note that you have accepted none of the proposed alternative ways forwards and only stick with the "my article, as it stands, as I created it, shall stay" which is a concern to me. The amount of time I spent fixing the increbible amount of errors, and your refusal of any alternative way forwards, suggests that deletion is the best way forwards. Otherwise nobody will fix this and we will have these issues, exposed, remaining online forever. Please, this is impactful on the planet and too many people use wikipedia as a reliable source. This poor quality of information on such an important topics, with life of people on the line, should never fall prisonner of battles of ego. It is great that you created this article with good reasons and a posiive approach. But please, be open to criticism and don't be a monolithic person like that.
 * I have spend a lot of time on the first three things
 * answering you
 * working on contents on this article
 * working on contents on other articles.
 * None of these efforts manage to ghet us back to the status of knowledge we were before, in all these options we remain in a situation wirst than before, with more confusion and more errors, more spread out.
 * Facing that I will move to proposing deletion and, on my end, get back to the one thing I did not do because I was taken by these three other things:
 * working on research.
 * Best Teluobir (talk) 09:56, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Here in an INCB annual report, "international drug control treaties", "United Nations drug control conventions", and "international drug control conventions" are are used as informal names, clearly interchangeably, on the same page. If that's not a from-the-source indication that there is no formal name, I don't know what is. --Tsavage (talk) 23:09, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Here in an INCB annual report, "international drug control treaties", "United Nations drug control conventions", and "international drug control conventions" are are used as informal names, clearly interchangeably, on the same page. If that's not a from-the-source indication that there is no formal name, I don't know what is. --Tsavage (talk) 23:09, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Review of block of reverted edits (June 2024)
This is a list of recently reverted edits, made in less than an hour by an editor who immediately followed them by nominating the article for deletion (AfD)2. I've continued to edit the article, including trying to address each of the listed edits. Here are the results:

05:21, 15 June 2024‎ ‎''Interpretation and non-compliance: Lots of approximations and over-simplification, this is hard to read and this article is REALLY superfluous and trying to reinvent the wheel from the perspective of scratching the surface. Quite sad to have this new article bringing so much new poor quality content when the wikipedia already has so much poor quality content to fix.''


 * Main changes here were moving and deleting citations; the only text edit adds "any piece of", that sentence has been edited (see comment below 05:17).

05:17, 15 June 2024‎ 23 ''‎Interpretation and non-compliance: "Interpretation of international law is "an art not a science"." …………. this is really out of place here, this is what the ILC says about interpretation generally. For ALL TREATIES, always, This is like repeating here thatthe sky is blue and paper is white… Yes, but what's the point? This is not a page about ILC or treaty interpretation so not sure we need to recall the bases…''


 * changed sentence to: "As in other areas of international concern, interpretation of the drug conventions is "an art not a science". "international concern" conforms with source;

05:15, 15 June 2024‎ ''I have moved the status of ratification of each convention in the first paragraph so it's easier to track. I don't see the point having this detail on this page. Better on each convention's page. Also, the status is false for C61, there are parties to both amended and unamended versions and this is not reflected here. I favour deleting this part wholly.''


 * Listing a bunch of numbers seems overly detailed for the intro, which reads: "The majority of the 193 UN member states are parties to each of the treaties." Number of parties to each convention is included in the body text.


 * as of 2023, one state, Chad, is party to the original version; as long as it's clear that 186 members are party to the amended Single Convention, seems sufficient for this article's high-level overview (and it's the way it's presented in the INCB annual report: "As at 1 November 2023, the 1961 Convention as amended had been ratified or acceded to by 186 States." Chad is noted separately.)

05:13, 15 June 2024 ‎''United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances: "States currently party to it" without putting the date… also sonething that noe we have to edit 3 times of wikipedia if there's a new party: here, on the Convention's page, and on Drug Policy Page, Thanks for having us work more for nothing! Loving it.''


 * left "currently" rather than inserting an as-of date; the number doesn't change frequently, and the citation indicates the date

05:10, 15 June 2024 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 (and its 1972 amendment): other fixes and incorrect statements re-balanced


 * restored edited version on exceptions and exemptions under "Interpretation and deviation"

05:03, 15 June 2024‎ Corrections


 * Section head "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs" was changed to "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 (and its 1972 amendment)"; the simpler form seems more readable; the proper name and the 1972 amendment are referred to in the section tex.

04:53, 15 June 2024‎ ''‎Administrative structure: More wrong information corrected,. Also, I replaced the sources cited 20 times (which really raises my attention… is this a commercial articles for the 2 think tanks cited overwhelmingly?) and replaced it by the CND's own presentation page, which seem to me somehow more interesting that re-citing again (without any page number or what) the same, generalist source from a think tank…''


 * The main change here was adding that the CND is "a subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)." Restored this with its additional citation. Left all the original citations as they appear to be reliable sources.

04:51, 15 June 2024‎ ''Obligations: The VCLT has nothing to do to legal bindingness. First, the VCLT doesnt applies to the 1961 and 19071 Conventions BECAUSE IT ENTERED INTO FORCE AFTER THEY WERE PASSED!!! And second, the bindingness of a treaty is defined in each treaty + covered by customary international law. VCLT has nothing to do here even though it reaches the same conclusions, but legally, irrelevant.''


 * restored reference to VCLT, added citation from INCB 2008 annual report "According to article 26 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 'every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith.'" Originally citation source, a committee of the New York City Bar Association report, "The International Drug Control Treaties: How Important Are They to U.S. Drug Reform?", said: "The Conventions are legally binding under the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties: a country “may not circumscribe its obligations under the treaties by enacting a conflicting domestic law.”"


 * My understanding is that the VCLT is in practice applicable to all the drug conventions. While the VCLT is not retroactive, "When questions of treaty law arise during negotiations or litigation, whether concerning a new treaty or one concluded before the entry into force of the VCLT, the rules set forth in the VCLT are invariably relied upon by the States concerned, or the international or national court or tribunal, even when the States concerned are not parties to the VCLT. In treaty negotiations non-parties will refer to specific articles of the VCLT. The justification for invoking the VCLT is rarely made clear, though the unspoken assumption is that the VCLT represents customary international law."

04:49, 15 June 2024‎ ''Administrative structure: False information saying that CND is responsible of treaty amendments… it's not… Just not. Unsourced idea that I read for the first time''


 * removed "treaty amendments" (was probably poorly written in source to indicate "policy guidance"); replaced with better (UN primary) source

04:49, 15 June 2024‎ Philosophy, origins, architects: I am devastated to realise how biased this article is, entirely based on the Canadian Senate report (I deleted 3 times this reference and it's still used more than 7 times on this article. Is this article plagiarism of that (poor quality) report? Horrible


 * The Canadian Senate report, "Canada’s International Obligations Under the Leading International Conventions On the Control of Narcotic Drugs" (1998) is cited a number of times because it covers the entire history of international drug treaties. It was produced by Canada's Library of Parliament research service, comparable to the US Congressional Research Service, as a high-quality, non-partisan source. "Canadian and American legislators ... for assistance may call upon non partisan research staff attached to the Congressional Research Service or the Library of Parliament."

04:46, 15 June 2024‎ ‎''Philosophy, origins, architects: False information taken from one biased source, the Senate report which itself contains a lot of mistakes, and was a vehicle for Canada legalization –not an actual academic impartial work. The statement said that the US had influenced the 1961 Single Convention. Quite terrible to read when we know history, well described by McAllister in his book (1999). The US left the negotiating rooms (anslinger physically left the room and didnt come back). US is not an''


 * See above re Library of Parliament as high-quality source. Do you have sources criticizing the report, or is that your personal opinion? Regarding US influence on the Single Convention, I understand Anslinger walked out because it wasn't prohibitive enough; does that mean that US influence on it to that point had no impact? Wasn't the US shaping the Single Convention since the establishment of the CND in the late 1940s?

04:44, 15 June 2024‎ ''Philosophy, origins, architects: There is a GROSS, extremely false statement here: "The three UN conventions establish prohibition and criminalization as the means to control illicit drug activity." this is entirely untrue and there is not even the mention of "prohibition" in the Single Convention. This is one particular interpretive exercise of the Conventions that is certainly not the actual letter of the treaties and in no way ought to be placed here as a general true without context''


 * Added "default" > "...as the default means to control..." (see next bullet point) I think the argument is that calling/criticizing the drug conventions as punitive/prohibitive/criminalizing is only an interpretation that has become a popular characterization, while in fact the conventions are open to a great deal of flexibility through interpretation. The article is on its way to making that idea plain (eg: "Interpretation and deviation" section), deleting the entire sentence at this point seems extreme.


 * UPDATE: Sentence is now: "The UN drug conventions provide a degree of flexibility of interpretation within a framework of prohibition and criminalization." Elsewhere in the article it's also stated: "The drug conventions do not explicitly prohibit, they establish control over a set of drugs. The use of drugs – personal consumption – is not outlawed, although possession is. And penalties are not specified, they are at the discretion of member countries, and can be milder or harsher than what is broadly indicated in the treaties." -Tsavage (talk) 16:34, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

04:42, 15 June 2024‎ ''Deleted strange, unrelated reference: ""About Us". United Nations." What does this have to do here? Nothing. The parties are followed by Sec-Gen and INCB on specific websites. The other ref is good.''


 * "About us" states the number of UN members. The quote to that effect is now included in the citation: "The UN's Membership has grown from the original 51 Member States in 1945 to the current 193 Member States."

04:41, 15 June 2024‎ Errors fixed and false information deleted


 * This change added to the lead that there are 4 conventions. No sources I've seen so far, UN or otherwise, describes 4 current conventions. The amended Single Convention is party to by all but one country, and is the one new parties are required to join. The unamended Single Convention remains in force for one country (Chad). The INCB covers this in its annual report as: "As at 1 November 2023, the 1961 Convention as amended had been ratified or acceded to by 186 States. ... Chad has ratified the 1961 Convention in its unamended form." Added footnote in "Single Convention..." section: "One state, Chad, remains party to the unamended convention."

This is a comprehensive, if somewhat painful, way of addressing a large number of changes done at once. Despite the volume of negative accusations contained in the edit comments, the information in the article conforms to reliable sources. I understand there are complicated nuances in international law, but this is a general encyclopedia, and I don't think the gross errors claimed are real or render this summary view incorrect or somehow tainted. Smaller points can be worked out as usual, with collaborative incremental editing (as has been done above). Detailed coverage of the individual conventions is clearly pointed to with wikilinks and "main article" hatnotes. -Tsavage (talk) 17:51, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Removal of "duplicates the scope of other articles" tag
Removed the "Duplication" article tag: "duplicates the scope of other articles". At the recent AfD for this article, the following pages were cited as having duplicate content:


 * Drug policy
 * Drug liberalization
 * Drug prohibition
 * Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
 * Convention on Psychotropic Substances
 * United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

While there is some overlap in content, as is to be expected between related articles (particularly per Summary style), this article in no way duplicates the scope or content of any of these other pages. This is a narrowly-scoped topic (the UN international drug control framework, comprised of three treaties), unlike the broader framings of "drug policy", "drug liberalization" and "drug prohibition". This article relies on the three drug conventions as main articles, and is linked to from those related articles. -Tsavage (talk) 16:51, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Article title concern
In the recent AfD discussion for deletion of this article, one of the arguments was that the title, "United Nations drug control conventions", is categorically wrong. The AfD OP stated:

''the title is a gross mistake that is not acceptable in international law, these treaties are explicitely and very clearly defined, and they are not United Nations treaties as such, except the 1988 one. They are international treaties, which differes from "United Nations treaties"''

Among those working in this policy area of international law, "international drug control conventions" may be the customary name, but that usage does not seem to be universal, nor a proper name.

As far as I can tell from a number of UN and reliable secondary sources, "international drug control conventions" and "United Nations drug control conventions" are both commonly used. I've found no indication that "international drug control conventions" is the official name given by the UN to the three drug treaties taken as a set. It appears to be an informal title: all in-text instances in UN docs I've found are lowercase, whereas the convention names are capitalized: For example: "The present publication contains the texts of the three main international drug control conventions: the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 and the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988."

"UN drug control conventions" (or "UN drug control conventions") is used in a number of reliable sources. For example:


 * "The fundamental goal of the UN drug control conventions..." from a statement by the INCB president to the the CNB board.
 * "The UN Drug Control Conventions: A Primer", title of a publication from a Dutch think tank.
 * "Guidance on Drug Policy: Interpreting the UN Drug Conventions", the title of a paper presented by an advocacy group of UK parliament members at UNGASS2016.
 * "The United Nations Drug Conventions: Evidence on Effects and Impact", a chapter title from a textbook on addiction treatment.
 * "Towards revision of the UN drug control conventions: Harnessing like-mindedness", the title of a paper published in a peer-reviewed drug policy medical journal.

Searches in Google Scholar for "UN drug control conventions" and "United Nations drug control conventions" yield numerous results.

In addition, from an official International Narcotics Control Board annual report, an instance where "international drug control treaties", "United Nations drug control conventions", and "international drug control conventions" are used as informal names, clearly interchangeably, on the same page.

Also, a UN editorial style manual, under "Capitalization in English" seems to adhere to common English capitalization conventions, indicating that if a collection of treaties had a formal name, then that proper name would be capitalized.

It seems that "UN drug control conventions" (and "UN drug conventions") is a common way to refer to the three UN drug control treaties, interchangeably with "international drug control conventions" and other variations.

Based on the above, I named the article "United Nations drug control conventions" in the interests of clarity and descriptiveness, and at the same time created redirects for "international drug control conventions" and "UN drug control conventions", ensuring that any of the labels can be easily found. Unless sources are found indicating an official proper name for the three treaties, this title seems to be appropriate. --Tsavage (talk) 16:16, 27 June 2024 (UTC)