2. 2 The post World War II era

In 1946, the United Nations was established and a new body, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) was to co-ordinate the international control system on drugs. Another important body was the World Health Organisation (WHO), which recommends to the CND which substances should be classified as narcotics. After the war, there was agreement on the necessity to consolidate all previous treaties into one single convention.5 After thirteen years of
negotiating, the parties came to an agreement on the final document and the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was established in 1961 (McAllister 2000). The convention became effective in Sweden in 1964 and in the Netherlands in 1965. The Single Convention combines all previous treaties (except the 1936 treaty) and is considered the basis for other treaties that were to follow. The Single Convention would become of particular importance for the development of the modern national drug policies in Sweden and the Netherlands, and there is good reason for describing it in more detail, and especially the problem definition as accepted by the signatories. In the preamble to the convention the basic view on narcotic drugs and the need to control them is outlined:

The Parties,

Concerned with the health and welfare of mankind,
Recognizing that the medical use of narcotic drugs continues to be indispensable for the relief of pain and suffering and that adequate provision must be made to ensure the availability of narcotic drugs for such purposes,
Recognizing that addiction to narcotic drugs constitutes a serious evil for the individual and is fraught with social and economic danger to mankind,
Conscious of their duty to prevent and combat this evil,
Considering that effective measures against abuse of narcotic drugs require co-ordinated and universal action,
Understanding that such universal action calls for international co-operation guided by the same principles and aimed at common objectives,
Acknowledging the competence of the United Nations in the field of narcotics control and desirous that the international organs concerned should be within the framework of that Organization,
Desiring to conclude a generally acceptable international convention replacing existing treaties on narcotic drugs, limiting such drugs to medical and scientific use, and providing for continuous international co-operation and control for the achievement of such aims and objectives,

Hereby agree as follows:

Noteworthy is the statement that narcotic drugs are indispensable for medical use but also that drug addiction is considered an evil to the individual and causes social and economic danger to mankind. In both Sweden and the Netherlands, addiction was still a matter for the medical profession and hardly perceived as a problem of the dignity as formulated in the preamble. In the convention, narcotic drugs were ranked into four categories of which the schedules IV and I are of particular interest. The most stringent control was to be exercised over drugs in schedule I, such as opium, heroin, morphine, methadone and cannabis. Each party could adopt special measures to control drugs in schedule IV, such as prohibiting them totally.

If the World Health Organisation finds that a drug in schedule I is particularly liable to abuse and to produce ill effects and that such liability is not offset by substantial therapeutic advantages not possessed by substances other than drugs in schedule IV, the Commission may, in accordance with the recommendation of the World Health Organisation, place that drug in Schedule IV (Single Convention art. 3. 5).

Schedule IV includes substances such as heroin and cannabis that generally have no legitimate therapeutic use and have particularly dangerous properties. The position of cannabis in this treaty is of special interest because it will play an important role in laterdiscussions on drug policy in the Netherlands and Sweden. The question is why cannabis was put on the same level as heroin. The WHO recommended including prohibition or restriction of the use of cannabis in the convention but only as a non-mandatory recommendation (Solomon 1969: 89). A statement by the Swedish delegation might give us a lead when it stressed that heroin was strongly addictive but not abused by many people, whereas cannabis was used by a large number but not in itself strongly addictive (Wootton Report 1968). This means that cannabis was placed in Schedule IV for reasons of widespread use and absence of medical use. It should also be noticed that within the WHO there was no consensus on the pharmacological properties of cannabis and its harmful effects.
In the same year, 1961, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), established to supervise compliance with the Convention, noted in its annual report that in the Dutch press, professional persons had stated that cannabis addiction was no worse than alcoholism. The fact that this was noticed by the INCB indicates that, in spite of uncertainties among WHO experts, statements of this kind were controversial.
The Single Convention was a compound of previous treaties and contained few novelties. One new feature, however, is worth mentioning in particular: for the first time in a section of a convention, attention was paid to the treatment and rehabilitation of drug abusers. This fact can be attributed to the influence of the WHO (Bruun, Pan, and Rexed, 1975). Article 38 Treatment of drug addicts:

1 The parties shall give special attention to the provision of facilities for the medical treatment, care and rehabilitation of drug addicts.
2 If a party has a serious problem of drug addiction and its economic resources permit, it is desirable that it establish adequate facilities for the effective treatment of drug addicts.

According to the Swedish UN official Bertil Renborg, there had been a controversy for many years between proponents for the view that drug addicts can only be treated successfully in special closed hospitals and those who proposed ambulatory treatment. Due to these divergent opinions no recommendation was made on this point in article 38 but the conference adopted a resolution (resolution II) saying that one of the most effective methods of treatment is that given in hospitals where drug addicts are sealed off from narcotics coming from the outside (Renborg 1961: 252). The establishment of the WHO and the provision on treatment in the Single Convention meant that a new actor had
entered the arena of international control, namely the medical profession. The Single Convention would be followed by several more. In particular the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971, when synthetic drugs such as amphetamines and their derivatives became subject to international control, will be discussed in relation to national developments in the course of the thesis.

5 Two more treaties were agreed after the war: the Treaty of Paris in 1948 and the Treaty of New York in 1953. The latter never became effective because too many
countries (including the Netherlands) did not ratify the convention.