The report contains an analysis of the drug control situation worldwide so that Governments are kept aware of existing and potential situations that may endanger the objectives of the international drug control treaties. Divided into four parts, it covers the following topics: drugs and corruption, functioning of the international drug control system, analysis of the world situation and finally, a set of recommendations to Governments, the United Nations and other relevant international and regional organisations. A set of Annexes follow as well.

Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.

Illicit drug supply and demand are inextricably linked components of a single phenomenon. Contents of this 2007 report by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB): (1) The International Drug Control Conventions: History, Achievements and Challenges; (2) Operation of the International Drug Control System; (3) Analysis of the World Situation; (4) Recommendations to Governments, the United Nations and Other Relevant International and Regional Organizations. Annexes: (1) Regional Groupings Used in the Report of the INCB for 2008; (2) Current Membership of the INCB.

The three UN drug conventions comprehensively and almost universally regulate the dealing with illicit drugs worldwide. Although the treaties are prohibitive, more and more member states seek to liberalise their national drug policies and implement depenalisation, decriminalisation or even legalisation schemes. The article explores member states’ possibilities and limitations under the current treaty framework by giving an overview of their obligations, contractual exceptions and means under general public international law.

Illicit drug supply and demand are inextricably linked components of a single phenomenon. Contents of this 2007 report by the International Narcotics Control Board: (I) The Principle of Proportionality and Drug-Related Offenses; (II) Operation of the International Drug Control System; (III) Analysis of the World Situation; (IV) Recommendations to Governments, the United Nations and Other Relevant and Regional Organizations. Annexes: (I) Regional Groupings Used in the Report of the International Narcotics Control Board; (II) Current Membership of the International Narcotics Control Board.

There remains substantial agreement among the international community on many aspects of the contemporary UN drug control regime. However, diverging views on the non-medical and non-scientific use of a range of controlled substances make drug policy an increasingly contested and transitionary field of multinational cooperation. Employing a fine-grained and interdisciplinary approach, this book provides the first integrated analysis of the sources, manifestations and sometimes paradoxical implications of this divergence. The author develops an original explanatory framework through which to understand better the dynamic and tense intersection between policy shifts at varying levels of governance and the regime's core prohibitive norm. Highlighting the centrality of the harm reduction approach and tolerant cannabis policies to an ongoing process of regime transformation, this book examines the efforts of those actors seeking to defend the existing international control framework and explores rationales and scenarios which may lead to the international community moving beyond it.