The ‘Vienna Spirit’ shatters: Report of the 67th session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs and its high-level segment

Make sure to also check out our post-CND webinar: Crisis unveiled: Making sense of CND67 for drug policy reform.

The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) held its 67th session in March 2024. The meeting was marked by high tensions and the largest attendance in the Commission's history.

Despite high hopes for the midterm review of the 2019 Ministerial Declaration, the resulting document was disappointing and failed to address the glaring failures of the global drug control regime.

Against this backdrop, Colombia led a historic charge, supported by 62 countries, to challenge the punitive drug control paradigm and ultimately precipitate the first-ever vote on CND resolutions in decades.

The session placed human rights, Indigenous Peoples' rights, and harm reduction on the spotlight, prompting fierce debate. Divergent government positions on cannabis regulation and overdose prevention added further fodder to an uncharacteristically tense session — bringing to the fore the fractures within the CND.

As the world moves ever closer to health and rights-based drug policies, contested by a handful of recalcitrant countries, the CND faces an existential crisis: address dissensus and consider transformative reform, or fall apart at the seams.

The ‘Vienna Spirit’ shatters: Report of the 67th session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs and its high-level segment

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