UNITED NATIONS DRUG COMMISSION WEIGHING MEASURES FOR STEMMING WORLDWIDE FLOOD OF 'ECSTASY' AND 'SPEED'
Press Release
SOC/NAR/754
UNITED NATIONS DRUG COMMISSION WEIGHING MEASURES FOR STEMMING WORLDWIDE FLOOD OF 'ECSTASY' AND 'SPEED'
19970320 (Reproduced as received.)VIENNA, 20 March (UN Information Service) -- One of the most challenging problems facing delegates to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which is meeting here through 27 March, is how to combat the alarming spread of abuse of amphetamine-type stimulants such as "ecstasy" and "speed".
The substances -- fast becoming part of mainstream consumer culture -- can be made in clandestine laboratories anywhere in the world, using readily available chemicals. And, the "recipes" for these dangerous and addictive drugs are accessible to anyone via the Internet. Moreover, the risk to traffickers is much lower than for plant-based narcotics, such as heroin and cocaine, because there is no need to smuggle amphetamines across frontiers where they would be subject to detection and seizure by customs officials or police.
The Commission is considering a set of proposals for forging an effective global response to the substances concerned. Among the recommendations submitted by a group of 71 experts who met in Shanghai, China, last November are: mass outreach programmes to at-risk groups to provide them with responsible information on the dangers of stimulant abuse; bringing national legislation in line with the acute threat to public health posed by amphetamine-type stimulants; finding acceptable ways to pressure Internet providers and the software industry to block the availability of information on how to manufacture illicit drugs; tightening national and international controls on the leading "precursor" chemicals used in the production of amphetamine-type stimulants, including making it a criminal offense to divert chemicals knowingly used in the illict manufacture of those substances; and monitoring sales of some types of laboratory equipment, such as tableting machines.
Introducing the Shanghai report today, the head of the United Nations drug control secretariat pointed to the United Nations' ground-breaking initiative in investigating the entire spectrum of the stimulant abuse phenomenon, linking biomedical, pharmacological, epidemiological, economic and political research.
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The Executive Director of the United Nations International Drug Control Programme, Giorgio Giacomelli, said the Programme's study had succeded in putting what was previously seen as a problem affecting only some parts of the world "very firmly on the international agenda".
The Commission, which began its session on 18 March, is expected to provide policy guidance on how the international community can move against the present flood of stimulants, which is seen by the Drug Control Programme as the "drug trend of the twenty-first century".
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