21/5/2004
UN Panel Examines Strategies Against Global Drug Abuse

The interaction between supply and demand strategies against the global drug abuse problem is the focus of the 80th session of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) in Vienna.

The INCB, an independent body monitoring worldwide drug abuse and trafficking, also reviews a number of other related issues and developments during the session, including the results of missions and technical visits the experts carried out in Indonesia, Portugal, Thailand and Timor-Leste. These missions were undertaken to obtain first-hand information on national drug control initiatives and on the implementation of the international drug control treaties in those countries.

During its 80th session, set to run through 28 May, the INCB will also review the extent to which the Governments of Egypt, Jamaica, Pakistan, Ukraine and Serbia and Montenegro have implemented
recommendations made to them, pursuant to respective missions carried out by the experts during 2001.

The INCB, an independent body of 13 international experts, issues an annual report usually in late February on its findings in the field of worldwide drug abuse and trafficking, which also devotes special
attention to a specific drug-related issue in its lead chapter. It was established by the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs to monitor Governments' compliance with the international drug control treaties. Its members are elected by the UN Economic and Social Council to serve in their individual capacities for a term of five years.

The current members of the INCB are: Edouard Armenakovich Babayan (Russian Federation); Madan Mohan Bhatnagar (India); Elisaldo Luiz de Ara?jo Carlini (Brazil); Philip O. Emafo (Nigeria); Gilberto Gerra (Italy); Hamid Ghodse (Iran); Nüzhet Kandemir (Turkey); Melvyn Levitsky (United States); Robert Lousberg (Netherlands); Maria Elena Medina-Mora (Mexico); Alfredo Pemjean (Chile); Rainer Wolfgang Schmid (Austria); and Jiwang Zheng (China).