Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 February 27

= February 27 =

Countries withdrawing from or breaching drug conventions
I absolutely despise my country's participation in both the Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. just to set the background to my questions.

1. Is the Netherlands in breach of the convention by allowing prescription heroin for addicts? I believe the UK also has a form of heroin available on prescription for painkilling. Does this breach either treaty, or any other drug-control convention or treaty? I thought one of the treaties specified that heroin was not to be used in a regular medical context, merely a research one? Am I wrong?

2. If a country decided to withdraw from either of these conventions (however unlikely this may be), does either convention have a specified withdrawal process? Or would it simply be a matter of official formal notification to the World Health Organization and / or the International Narcotics Control Board of the decision to cease participation in the convention? Eliyohub (talk) 16:28, 27 February 2016 (UTC)


 * A country can certainly denounce the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. Article 46 reads: "After the expiry of two years from the date of the coming into force of this Convention (article 41, paragraph 1) any Party may, on its own behalf or on behalf of a territory for which it has international responsibility, and which has withdrawn its consent given in accordance with article 42, denounce this Convention by an instrument in writing deposited with the Secretary-General. " There is a similar clause in the Convention on Psychotropic Substances (article 29) . Similarly, INCB reports are available online. See the 2014 one here, including a section on the Netherlands which begins with paragraph 54. . You can easily search for reports from other years. As you guess, the INCB isn't entirely happy with the Netherlands' drug policies. --Xuxl (talk) 17:31, 27 February 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm surprised to see denounce used in this sense, rather than renounce. —Tamfang (talk) 04:29, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
 * As seen in clausula rebus sic stantibus the most used verb for this is "denounce". As for relevance of this article to the question at hand, I lack opinion. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:53, 28 February 2016 (UTC)


 * As will be seen in our article heroin, the Netherlands are not alone in prescribing it to addicts. As will be seen from our article Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, there is no prohibition on heroin being used medically, but as a Schedule IV drug individual parties may at their discretion limit its use to research. DuncanHill (talk) 13:30, 1 March 2016 (UTC)