A historic resolution at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in mid-March may be the beginning of a major shift in international drug controls. Or, given the US withdrawal from the world stage, it may mark the beginning of the end of the multilateral drug regime.
The resolution — proposed by Colombia and adopted by 30 member countries with 18 abstentions and three votes against at the annual CND plenary in Vienna, Austria on March 14 — established the framework to suggest reforms of the over 60-year-old system set up by the United Nations.
“We did it,” Laura Gil, Colombia’s ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna, wrote on X following the vote.
The resolution created a “multidisciplinary panel of 20 independent experts, acting in their personal capacity, to prepare a clear, specific and actionable set of recommendations aimed at enhancing the implementation of the obligations” of the three major conventions adopted in 1961, 1972, and 1988.
Those conventions have remained largely unchanged over the years, and while they are not necessarily binding, they have created the scaffolding for most drug laws the world over, as countries largely adopt regimes that mirror those of the UN or rarely contradict them. The resolution seeks to upend this status quo, which many view as excessively punitive in nature and lacking attention to other aspects of legal drug distribution and access to palliative care.
“This panel constitutes an extraordinary opportunity to propose serious changes to the drug policy regime to truly serve the ultimate aim of the conventions — the protection of the health and welfare of humankind,” the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), the liberal drug policy watchdog group, wrote after the resolution passed.
Still, the timing of such a bold proposal could prove fatal for the commission. The United States is pulling back from its global commitments, and the US delegate at the meeting issued a veiled warning that any major shifts would put funding for the commission at risk.
Reform would also come at UN speed: The panel will have two years to propose changes, which will then be reviewed by the CND in 2029.
Colombia: Blood and Sacrifice
The CND is a complex space. Governments change, and with them, drug policies. Brazil, for example, has oscillated its position wildly in recent years, depending on its president. Internal drug policies can also be contradictory: Bolivia has pushed for decriminalizing the coca leaf but not marijuana.
Fittingly, the current debate that culminated in the Colombian resolution began in Cartagena, Colombia, in 2012, during the Summit of the Americas, when then-Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos famously likened international drug policy to being on a stationary bicycle.
“The moment has come to analyze if what we’re doing is best, or if we can find a more effective and cheaper alternative for society,” he said at the time.
The international drug regime was already being stretched. Parts of Europe, led by the Netherlands and Portugal, had long since moved in a less punitive direction. Uruguay and Colombia were by then exploring new drug laws that decriminalized consumption and new regulatory measures, and states in the United States were getting ready to legalize recreational marijuana. Even Guatemala’s former military general-turned-president Otto Pérez Molina wrote an op-ed pushing for alternative strategies.
The campaign culminated in a 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session, during which member states recognized the “shared responsibility” of the problem and widened the debate regarding government approaches to include health, human rights, and economic development. More than reform, it was a change in tone, said Juan Carlos Garzón, a drug policy expert and consultant to the Open Society Foundations, so that the focus was more balanced, evidence-based, and humane.
“The conversation is not just about drugs,” Garzón told InSight Crime. “It’s also about human rights, sustainable development, [and] the obligations of each government.”
Still, the drug regime continued to be more punitive than palliative. For production countries, this meant police crackdowns and sometimes waging war with the armed forces. And when countries like Colombia and Guatemala threatened to shift course, sanctions often followed, even while European states had much more liberal laws. That asymmetry plays out in practice as production countries often rely on consumption countries for the resources to wage these battles, and broader aid packages are contingent on their cooperation in counterdrug matters.
The CND’s annual meetings reflect this asymmetry as well. For years, while liberal groups hosted “side events” that promoted harm reduction, the UN delegates in their cavernous plenary maintained the status quo via what was euphemistically known as the “Vienna spirit.”
That consensus was broken during the 2024 CND, opening the door to voting and new language in resolutions, such as “harm reduction.” Colombia brought that same spirit to the 2025 CND, where it proposed the creation of the review panel.
“My country has sacrificed more lives than any other in the war against drugs that was imposed on us,” Gil told the plenary following the vote, before echoing Santos’ famous stationary bicycle comment 12 years prior. “We want more effective means to implement the global regime. To continue doing the same [thing] does not bring us anywhere.”
But just how this will happen remains an open question. The United States, Russia, and Argentina voted against the resolution. And following its adoption, the US Chargé d’Affaires, ad interim, Howard Solomon, expressed his dissatisfaction with how this reform might play out.
“The United States called a vote and voted no on this resolution because we believe that any discussions about strengthening the international drug control framework should remain within the Commission on Narcotic Drugs,” Solomon said, referencing the status quo.
The panel, he added, will “shift the debate beyond Vienna, introducing a more politicized process that will undermine the technical approach of this body, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. While the United States recognizes the need for approving drug control efforts, we remain convinced that the CND is the appropriate forum for such discussions, ensuring that reforms are guided by expertise rather than political dynamics.”
The United States: A 180-Degree Shift
During the 2024 CND, the United States played a very different role. In addition to going along with the new rules on voting, the United States was the country that proposed the resolution that ended with the words “harm reduction” in it.
The US position was directly related to the historic rise in opioid-related overdose deaths in the United States. Nominally, this concern remains. Nonetheless, during the 2025 plenary, the United States isolated itself, voting against nearly every resolution due to its objections of gender-neutral, gender-inclusive, and climate change language in the texts.
And when it came to the Colombia resolution, the United States went further. It warned of political intrusion by “non-governmental groups with political agendas” and hinted at bureaucratic hurdles before flexing its financial muscle.
“In light of the liquidity crisis at the UN and budget constraints … we must ask: How much will this effort cost?” Solomon inquired.
The veiled threat was part of a larger storm gathering over the multilateral body. Since Donald Trump took office on January 20, the United States has withdrawn from international health, climate, and economic agreements. The international drug regime, should it shift in any significant way, could be next.
To this end, the United States has already withdrawn most of its funding from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the secretariat to the CND. And in a blistering statement on the first day of the week-long meeting, US representative Cartwright Weiland attacked China, Mexico, and India for facilitating the trafficking of illicit fentanyl.
“We have to be relentless when the questions we face are existential: Do nation states retain the ability to control the dangerous substances they’ve created?” he said during his March 10 remarks.
Drug policy experts told InSight Crime that US withdrawal is unlikely. The current prohibitionist regime remains a cornerstone of US drug policy and support of it is still relatively cheap, even with the global economic upheaval Trump’s tariff policy has unleashed. What’s more, if the panel the Colombia resolution convened seeks to significantly alter the conventions, it could backfire and leave an even more Draconian international regime in its place.
“Everybody complains about the international law texts,” Khalid Tinasti, a drug policy expert and long-time United Nations-watcher at the Center on Conflict Development and Peacebuilding at the Geneva Graduate Institute, told InSight Crime. “[But] they would have been much worse if they were to be negotiated today.”
Still, for the next four years at least, the battle lines have been drawn. Colombia and 29 other countries will seek to upend the status quo, while the United States, smashing it in so many other ways, will seek to keep it intact.
“They’re making a statement,” said Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, who works with the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC). “From a historical point of view, [they are saying] that countries like Colombia are not just going to be told what to do in the international control system, but they’re also going to propose different paths as to how it should work.”
Featured image: United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Vienna, March 10, 2025. Credit: United Nations.
