Ireland’s 7th EU Presidency and drug policy
by Brigid Pike
Ireland has earned a reputation for energetically pursuing drug policy issues when holding the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. For example, the first joint European action on drugs was adopted in December 1996 when Ireland held the Presidency.2 In 2004, during its next tenure of the Presidency, Ireland kicked off the development of the EU Drugs Strategy 2005–2012 with a major EU drugs conference in Dublin.3 During the first six months of this year, Ireland has presented a draft EU Action Plan on Drugs 2013–2016 to the other 26 member states and the EU institutions. Since then Ireland has worked steadily as ‘neutral arbiter’ to win agreement on its contents.4 It is anticipated that all outstanding issues will have been resolved by the time of the June meeting of the Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers and that the Council will adopt the Plan.
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Commission on Narcotic Drugs meets for 56th Session
by Brigid Pike
Between 11 and 15 March 2013 over 1,000 representatives from UN member states and civil society met in Vienna for the 56th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND). The CND is the central policy-making body within the UN system dealing with illicit drugs and is the governing body for the work of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which is based in Vienna. The CND provides member states and civil society with the opportunity to exchange expertise, experiences and information on drug-related matters and to develop a co-ordinated response.
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Irish and Portuguese drug policies profiled
by Brigid Pike
Drug policy in Ireland goes back nearly 150 years. In 1870, when Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom, legislation (the Poisons [Ireland] Act) was introduced to control the sale of various substances, including opium and morphine. Some sixty years later the Dangerous Drugs Act 1934 was passed in order to fulfill Ireland’s obligations under the League of Nations Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs of 1931. So says a profile of Ireland’s drug policy recently published by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).1
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