The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is the international treaty against illicit drug manufacture and trafficking that forms the bedrock of the global drug control regime. Previous treaties had only controlled opium, coca, and derivatives such asmorphine and heroin. The Single Convention, adopted in 1961, consolidated those instruments and broadened their scope to include cannabis and allow control of any drugs with similar effects to those specified in the treaty. The Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the World Health Organization were empowered to add, remove, and transfer drugs among the treaty's four Schedules of controlled substances. The International Narcotics Control Board was put in charge of administering controls on drug production, international trade, and dispensation. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime was delegated the Board's day-to-day work of monitoring the situation in each country and working with national authorities to ensure compliance with the Single Convention. This treaty has since been supplemented by the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, which controls LSD, ecstasy, and other mind-altering pharmaceuticals, and the Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, which strengthens provisions against money laundering and other drug-related offenses.
Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_Drugs
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1252: Pope Innocent IV issued the papal bull ad extirpanda, authorizing the use of torture on heretics during the Medieval Inquisition. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Inquisition)
1756: Seven Years' War: Britain declared war on France, two years after fighting began in Ohio. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years%27_War)
1928: Cartoon characters Mickey and Minnie Mouse made their movie debut in Plane Crazy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse)
1934: Prime Minister K?rlis Ulmanis dissolved the Saeima and established an authoritarian rule in Latvia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlis_Ulmanis)
1990: The Portrait of Doctor Gachet by Vincent van Gogh was sold for US$82.5 million, at the time the world's most expensive painting. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Doctor_Gachet)
_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:
"Things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams— daydreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing— are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to invent, and therefore to foster, civilization." -- L. Frank Baum (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum)