The UN Charter (part 2 art. 2) also calls on nations to strictly and unswervingly observe international commitments that they have taken upon themselves voluntarily and among them, as the Preamble points out, to the commitments stemming from treaties, agreements and other sources of international law.
One of the major historically evolved principles of international law states that international agreements must be observed. Stemming from this principle is a member nation's duty to cooperate in combating crime, international crimes and crimes of international character, including the dissemination of and trade with narcotics.
These crimes have certain particularities. This has a bearing on the question of accountability if such crimes are committed. According to I.I. Karpets, there is a need to single out crimes covered by conventions or other signed and ratified international agreements, especially, if national legislation have been brought in accord with them. The existence of both is a good reason for making those guilty of committing these crimes to be held accountable. A failure to do so must be qualified as a violation of both international law and national legislation.
In case there are no coordinated norms of accountability, the involved countries should proceed from the general principles that had developed among nations and resolve questions of cooperation against crime on that basis. Specifically, they may determine the forms of this cooperation, its confines, the need to institute criminal proceedings in view of the committed crimes of international character, etc.
Special Acts of International Law:
Special norms of international law dealing with measures to combat drug abuse have been taking shape gradually. The history of their development is uneven- from establishing international control over the lawful distribution and use of drugs to introducing control over illegal drug trafficking.
It is not accidental that crimes bearing on drug abuse are qualified as crimes of international character. This can be attributed to a number of circumstances.
As an age-old phenomenon, drug addiction has spread over large territories. As it kept crossing national borders, whole areas appeared that specialized in growing and processing drug-bearing plants, manufacturing and distributing narcotics. Recently, areas where drug money can be laundered at a profit have emerged. In short, drug addiction has become widespread practically on all the continents. Drug abuse has acquired a transnational nature. At the turn of last century it had already been clear that drug addiction endangered not only the lives of individuals and social groups but also the economic advancement of many countries, as it is bound to inflict considerable damage on agriculture and trade and undermine whole industries. (chemical, pharmaceutical or pharmacological).
Measures that various governments tried to employ within their countries in the hope to "curb" drug addiction, so to speak, and ban, say, in Turkey or China, the non-medicinal use of drugs, failed to bring any positive results.
On top of that, programs against drug addiction required additional financial resources for treatment and social rehabilitation of addicts, medical personnel, curative medicines, and preventive measures by law enforcement agencies. Many countries lacked such financial resources. So, actions against drug abuse began crossing national boundaries. The awareness of a possible proliferation of drugs raised concern of the world public opinion and governments of many countries began pressing for the intensification of the rule of law on the international scene.
Consequently, an objective need arose to work out and put into practice joint inter-governmental agreements, adopt effective legal norms that would regulate international cooperation, enable countries to employ coordinated measures against drugs as a whole and its specific manifestations and to establish, as a result, both a domestic and international control over the use of narcotics and their consumption.
The first experiment of international control over narcotics and of measures against drug addiction at the international level dates back to the Shanghai Opium Commission held between February 5th and 26th 1909 in the city of Shanghai.
Shanghai Opium Commission of 1909:
This commission consisted of the representatives from 13 countries: Russia, the USA, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Britain, France, China, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Persia, Portugal and Siam.
The commission attempted to work out measures that would block the illegal flow of drugs from the regions of Asia to European countries and the United States. It also discussed questions related to opium smoking and to international trade in opium derivatives.
In the long run, however, no constructive measures were produced. Documents issued by the commission contained no specific bans even on opium smoking. Members of the commission thought it was sufficient to only speak about its regulation and gradual restriction.
Nevertheless, the work of the Shanghai opium commission of 1909 played a significant role. Officially it marked the beginning of actions against drug addiction at the international level and to the launching of a system of international control over the spread of drugs. It also mapped out directions for the future international legislation in resolving problems reviewed in Shanghai.
A further advancement in combating drugs was made in the Hague at the International Opium Conference held from December 1st 1911 to January 23d 1912. Representatives of 12 countries took part in it (the same as in Shanghai excluding Austria-Hungary). The conference prepared and adopted the first convention on drugs (known as the Hague Convention). As a follow up to the Shanghai Commission, in terms of ideas, the conference proclaimed the timeliness of actions against narcotics as a whole and its specific trends.
The Hague Convention of 1912:
The Hague convention of 1912 was the first to define the specific types of drugs, which were put under international control. They were raw opium, smoke opium, medicinal opium, morphine, cocaine and a few others. The contracting parties took pledges of both domestic and international nature upon themselves to adopt national laws establishing control over the production and distribution of raw opium, and at barring its illegal imports and exports without permits granted by specially authorized persons; to take steps towards gradually halting the production, domestic trade and use of smoke opium and introducing a ban on its imports and exports; to use narcotic substances (medicinal opium, morphine and cocaine) only for medicinal and "other reasonable purposes"; to ensure a legal regulation of the production of morphine, cocaine, medicinal opium, heroin and their derivatives and also of trade in these narcotic substances; to adopt appropriate laws (if they are not adopted yet) or change existing laws concerning the responsibility and punishment of persons guilty of acts involving the illegal possession of drugs.
The provision concerning the legal regulation of the production of morphine and its derivatives and trade in them (cocaine, medicinal opium and heroin) was an important step. It was an attempt to use preventive measures such as foreseeing the establishment of international control over narcotic substances, which could appear in the future without their prior concrete mentioning in the Convention's text.
The significant feature about the Convention was that it not only proclaimed the need for cooperation among countries in establishing control over the use of narcotics but also outlined what needed to be accomplished. One of these accomplishments was the duty of countries to exchange, via the Dutch government, texts of legal acts and statistics on drugs.
The 1912 Hague Convention, however, failed to bring practical results, largely because of World War I, which began soon after the passing of the Convention. It was put into force only with the signing of the Versailles and other peace treaties which specified that their ratification was tantamount to the ratification of the 1912 Hague Convention on drugs.
International documents approved following the Hague Convention just filled in the gaps and developed its provisions. The need for such documents was prompted by the continuous expansion of drug addiction, and of the illegal trade and smuggling of various narcotics. These documents are kept within the demands of the present problems that had been approved at the international level. They had defined more precisely and expanded the range of questions pertaining to the regulation of the issue on the basis of international law. They also involved more and more countries concerned about combating narcotics.
The growing threat from narcotics was evident from a series of international acts on drugs. Apart from that, however, the passing of these acts marked an important stage in international relations. They affirmed the principle that international law was bound to help organize and ensure control over drugs. The case in point was the Agreement banning the production, domestic trade and use of refined opium. It was signed on February 11th 1925 at the Geneva Opium conference.
Following the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty and the founding of the League of Nations this conference was the first to discuss the issue of narcotics.
Its official program envisaged the development of measures to implement the decisions of the 1912 Hague Convention to limit and eliminate the production, domestic trade and use of smoke opium. But according to juridical literature, the Conference in reality expressed the latent interests of the colonial powers- the signatories of the above mentioned Agreement.
The Geneva Conference of 1925 Agreement of February 11th, 1925:
The Agreement provided for the establishment of monopoly associations on the territories and domains controlled by these powers to deal with the opium turnover, for handing over the production of smoke opium to the state monopoly, as well as conducting anti-opium propaganda.
The general control over the implementation of the Agreement's provisions concerning the trade in opium was placed upon the League of Nations- an international body set up in accordance with the Versailles peace treaty.
One of the provisions of this Agreement stipulated the need to study the state of control over smoke opium in the Far East. This study was carried out, practically for the first time in world practice, by a Special Commission appointed by the League of Nations Assembly in 1928.
The results of the study were examined in Bangkok and paved the way for the signing of the Bangkok Agreement of November 27th 1931, which banned opium smoking. The Agreement entered into force only in April 1937.
The Bangkok Agreement of 1931:
The Bangkok Agreement added some new provisions to the Geneva Agreement of 11th February 1925. These new provisions made retail trade in opium possible only by government institutions; established criminal offence for persons under 21 years of age who visited opium dens; legally regulated the sale of smoke opium for cash and so on and so forth.
However, prior to the Bangkok Agreement, in view of the deterioration of the drug situation in the world in the postwar period, the second Geneva Opium Conference passed an Opium Convention that was signed in Geneva on 19th February 1925 and entered into force in September 1928.
The Opium Convention of 1925:
It underlined that there was no way to end drug abuse and drug smuggling unless the production of those drugs was reduced considerably and a more stringent control over their international trade was introduced than the one stipulated by the 1912 Hague convention.
For this end, the 1925 Convention stipulated some legal and organizational measures against drug abuse both at the international and domestic levels.
This Convention confirmed the principles of the 1912 Hague Convention and, what is more, it firmly established that drugs could be produced only for the legal purposes of states, having defined what these legal purposes were. Of principal importance was the decision to put several more kinds of raw materials which drugs could be produced from (coca leaves, raw cocaine, and cannabis) on the list of the controlled substances (in addition to the ones named by the 1912 Hague Convention). Moreover, the Convention was applicable to any substance, which, in accordance with the conclusion drawn by an authorized body, could cause the same harmful consequences as the substances listed in the Convention.
To exercise domestic control over narcotic substances the parties to the Convention agreed to the following pledges: to pass national laws that would ensure the control over the production, dissemination and exportation of raw opium and to systematically revise and toughen those to the extent that the articles of the Convention would require; to limit the use, production, importation, sale, distribution, export, and application of narcotics exclusively to medical and scientific purposes; to exercise control over the activities of persons who were allowed to produce, import, export, sell, distribute and use drugs and also to exercise control over premises where these persons work with drugs or traded in them; to curtail the number of ports, cities and other populated centers where the importation and exportation of narcotics would be permitted and to pass through and adopt domestic legislation that would envisage punitive measures for the violations of the Convention's provisions.
To exercise international control over narcotic substances the Convention stipulated adoption of the following measures: to introduce a system of evaluation and estimation of a country's domestic need in narcotics for medical, scientific and other purposes in the up-coming year; to hand in statistics connected with drugs (in a special form and at definite periods of time); to establish control over international trade in drugs and to also establish firm rules for the importation and exportation of drugs (to import and export narcotics only if there is a special written permission, as outlined by the Convention; to regulate the order of transit shipments and the storage of drugs at stores of third countries to prevent their possible leakage from the legal circulation during their shipments and storage); to establish control over the compliance with all commitments taken by the countries- parties to the Convention; to place the exercise of that control on a newly organized international body called the Permanent Central Committee (later its official name changed several times, although most of the time, it was known as "The Permanent Central Committee on Narcotic Substances").
The Convention also stressed the need for cooperation between countries in preventing the use of narcotic substances for purposes other than designated. It stipulated that the exchange of information about laws and decisions on the implementation of the proclaimed principles (using the services of Secretary General) would be a concrete form of this cooperation.
To put it in a nutshell, the Convention defined the content and forms of realization of international control over narcotics. It introduced a system of licensing and recording foreign trade operations of drugs and obliged the member countries to submit detailed statistics about such operations.
The convention on the limitation of production and the regulation of the distribution of narcotic substances signed on July 13th 1931 in Geneva proved to be another link in the international control system.
The Convention of 1931:
That Convention meant to introduce amendments to the two already existing conventions in force, those of 1912 and of 1925. It contained the following additions: uniform definition of notions, through the control over drugs. Alternative versions of such notions as "production", "refining", "processing", "storage reserves", "state storage reserves", "import-export" and others were removed. For the first time, a list of medicines containing drugs was established and production, processing, use, exportation and importation of them would now be controlled. The system of evaluating and estimating the overall demand for drugs in all countries regardless of their membership in the given Convention was perfected. Accountability for the commitments of member governments was enhanced. A special agency, the Control Commission, was set up to study data from governments about the quantity of narcotics and accounts about their receipt and use. In case the Commission found any deviations or the demand for drugs was too large in its judgment, the Commission had the right to question the examined figures and carry out its own calculations. The extradition of criminals was envisaged (under certain conditions) for committing crimes linked to drugs. The convention stipulated that member-countries had to have norms in their national legislation concerning the criminal punishment of persons who encouraged the illegal spread of the most dangerous forms of drugs.