The UN doesn’t like cannabis legalization

UNITED NATIONS, BUT NOT WEED
The UN’s INCB doesn’t like legal cannabis

What’s happening: The United Nations’ International Narcotics Control Board, which is responsible for monitoring controlled substances under the UN’s three main drug control conventions, released its annual report on Tuesday.

And if you thought this would be the moment that the international agency changes its tune on cannabis legalization, then you were, perhaps unsurprisingly, mistaken. 

The details: In a press release summing up the report, the UN specifically says that the “several” European countries that have recently legalized cannabis — including Germany, where a quasi-version of legalization is set to go into effect on April 1 — aren’t consistent with the agency’s drug control conventions.

Specifically, the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which placed cannabis in the UN’s most tightly regulated schedule, as well as the 1988 convention, which “requires the criminalization” of the cultivation of the cannabis plant to produce “narcotic drugs,” as Matt Lamers pointed out on X. (Read: Non-medical use).

Why it matters: Some experts have pointed to the 1961 UN Single Convention as a possible hurdle to the US legalizing cannabis by removing it from the list of federally controlled substances. 

Major economies like Canada and Germany have plowed ahead anyways, with little blowback. 

What’s next: But still, despite the UN’s waning international influence, the agency still has a major say in how individual nations govern their affairs. We expect the UN’s reticence on cannabis legalization to continue — and to slow the process of global legalization. 

-JB

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In other New York news, the OCM is getting sued yet again, over the state’s rules governing hemp. 

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