Dear friends, This is my second and last report from Vienna. I will also include links below to other reports from Vienna from ENCOD.
As we conclude these meetings of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs meetings we have many achievements.
For the first time:
For the first time NGO’s were given reserved seating by name in the Commission meetings and for the very first time NGO leaders were allowed to participate in a meaningful way in round table discussions on a variety of subjects instead of having to wait until the end of the schedule where they most often were never given the opportunity to speak at all. I am told that this CND was the very first time a synthetic cannabinoid has been scheduled and this may be the first time NGO’s were effective to help stop the strongest of member states from scheduling a substance, ketamine. I will talk more about this in a moment. This was the first time Law Enforcement Against Prohibition was able to present a side event with co-sponsorship of a member state, the Czech Republic and this was the first year that cannabis patients presented their stories and showed their medicine in side events during the CND meetings. Finally this was the first year our various coalitions were able to distribute our documents directly to the member state delegations utilizing the process under the secretariat of the governing bodies.
Capacity:
Our total number of NGO representatives working inside the CND on drug policy reform generally is about 250 and the total of NGO representatives is probably close to 1000 where many of these NGO representatives are working on public health, drug treatment services or harm reduction and the balance being those who steadfastly support prohibition like Kevin Sabet and his ilk. These NGO’s along with the 1000 or more representatives of government and the 100’s of UN staff people should give you an idea of the scope of these meetings.
Informal dialog:
As has become tradition since 2008 NGO’s are given the opportunity to meet with leaders of the various UN drug agencies, the CND Chair, the Director of UNODC and the President of INCB. This year we were not able to meet with Director Feditov because of a schedule conflict but some NGO’s expressed that the meeting was actually even more productive as senior staff people were able to be much more open with NGO leaders about the day to day activities of the UNODC. Of particular concern to us would be the presentation of Gilbert Gerra of UNODC scientific section. You can read about the various questions and answers of this interaction in the link just below but suffice it to say that Gilberto has essentially challenged us to provide UNODC with more up to date and inclusive information about cannabis as medicine.
UNODC Informal Dialog CND Blog:
http://www.cndblog.org/2015/03/informal-ngo-dialogue-with-executive.html#more
Our dialog with the new president of INCB was particularly interesting. Dr. Naidoo made it very clear that medicinal cannabis policies were well within the scope of the international treaties but he expressed concerns about smoking as a route of delivery. Again I would see this as an opportunity and invitation to provide information to INCB about vaporization, edibles, tinctures, extracts etc. Also of interest was his assertion that no member state had actually complained to INCB about the legalization of cannabis in USA or Uruguay!
INCB Informal Dialog with President of INCB:
http://www.cndblog.org/2015/03/informal-ngo-dialogue-with-president-of.html
NGO Civil Society Task Force:
To assist in bringing into the 2016 UNGASS process voices of civil society the NY NGO Committee of which I hold a leadership position and the Vienna NGO Committee of which I am a member have joined forces with UNODC to form a civil society task force. It will be up to us to make this task force represent our positions through our cooperation with it. I suggest all of our organizations join the NY NGO Committee and also apply for recognition [accreditation] with the United Nations ECOSOC as well.
Civil Society Task Force:
http://www.unodc.org/documents/NGO/The_Civil_Society_Task_Force_in_brief.pdf
Private meeting with ONDCP, INL, NIDA:
On Monday night I was able to meet informally with ONDCP director Botticelli, Dr. Volkow [NIDA] and senior state department officials working with Secretary Brownfeild. I was very stern with Dr. Volkow that despite how proud she was of all the single cannabinoid studies that she ticked off from memory I made it clear that we weren’t happy with NIDA’s obstruction of studies of the medical efficacy of whole cannabis. I mentioned how the groups like CADCA had access to her and that she has spoken at their conferences but that she had made no meaningful effort to coordinate with the medicinal cannabis movement in USA so that left me no choice but to use my time with her on such a basic conversation about the past and future relationship of NIDA to our work. My meeting with Director Botticelli was far more congenial and at his suggestion I was able to have a meaningful follow up meeting with his senior staff and representative from FDA where, as leader of VMCA, we established a new practical working relationship on Veterans medicinal access issues, encouraging cannabis research and on mitigating unintended consequences to patient access from the administrations fight against opiate misuse. Interesting that the ONDCP rep said we don’t mean to scare doctors when the FDA representative chimed in that indeed we do mean to scare doctors but only away from i inappropriate prescribing of opiates not scare them away from all prescribing!!
CND Cannabis Side Events:
During the CND we had two side events on cannabis supported by the NGO ENCOD. I presented the IMCPC resolution formally during both of these side events. To save time I will not write about these side events other than to say they were excellent and very well received and historic and further than that I refer you to these excellent reports of the side events from our ENCOD colleagues:
Smoke Signals From Vienna:
The Encod Vienna team at the 58th Commission on Narcotic Drugs
http://www.encod.org/info/Smoke-signals-from-Vienna.html
Report in French about ENCOD side events, IMCPC announcement etc.
https://www.chanvrelibertes.org/p/imcpc-creation/
http://www.ungass-on-drugs.eu/data/322
Distribution of IMCPC Prague Resolution to United Nations:
We succeeded finally in submitting our resolution for distribution to the member states through the secretariat of the governing bodies. This means that our document has been delivered personally to each of the national delegations present in Vienna. I first had to make 250 copies of our resolution but then they refused to distribute the document for us as a coalition and instead I had to submit the document under a sponsor ECOSOC accredited organization. Many thanks to SSDP for acting as our sponsor and submitting the document on our behalf. I then had to create a cover letter for SSDP to present our coalition document and then staple the hundreds of copies together for distribution. This is a very important step as this is the first time we are communicating with the member governments of the CND and observer nations in attendance in such a direct fashion.
Our sister coalition:
VMCA is also a formative member of the ad-hoc US Coalition for Global Drug Policy Reform and we also were able to distribute this coalition statement as well:
Ketamine:
The World Health Organization opposes the scheduling of Ketamine because it is the only substance they have available that can be used as a general anesthetic in places that do not have electricity making it an important drug in developing countries. Of interest to us this fight can be seen as implicit proof that drug scheduling hampers legitimate patient access and further it is in this fight that we have developed a good working relationship with WHO that will help us be effective in a year or two when the WHO takes up the review of cannabis. It is important to note that the WHO also pressured the CND to lower the schedule number of THC [dronabinol] years ago and the CND has been opposing these evidence based advice based upon political reasons. The CND is in this way overstepping it’s authority. NGO’s working here in Vienna worked very hard to prevent China from scheduling ketamine. For now we hold this ground.
Our WHO cannabis team is now being assembled comprised of Human Rights Watch, VMCA, ASA, TNI and SSDP. If your organization would like to be in the loop on these activities in Geneva please do let me or Steph know.
As I am writing this report we are in the last day of meetings at CND and indeed they have saved the most contentious resolution for last, the UNGASS resolution itself. They expect to possibly be working on this until 11pm! You can follow up on the result of this debate by checking back to the IDPC CND Blog:
This has been a hard set of meetings for us patients to navigate but I think the work that has been done here is critical to ensuring the world establish meaningful reform of the cannabis policy under treaty and will help make cannabis more easily available to patients regardless of what country they live in.
In this quest I remain, Sincerely yours, Michael
Michael Krawitz, Executive Director of Veterans For Medicinal Cannabis Access and proud representative of our International Medicinal Cannabis Patients Organization Coalition!
Vienna, Austria United Nations CND meetings