[MUSIC] This video focuses on the international scheduling of drugs. And we have the pleasure of speaking to Gilberto Gerra from the UN Office of Drugs and Crime in Vienna. Hello Gilberto. >> Hello. >> Could you please start by briefly introducing yourself. I'm the chief of the head branch here at the UNODC, United Nation Office of Drugs and Crime. My branch is taking care of preferential treatment of dependents, HIV AIDs among the user and in prison setting and sustain their livelihood. All the humanitarian social and health issues that are not reinforced in the organization are in my branch. >> Thank you and could you tell us how drugs are currently scheduled? >> A certain number of drugs are under control and scheduled in the convention starting with the convention of 61, 1961, then 71 and 1998, that have been almost unanimously adopted by member states. Considering these drugs on one side essential, indispensible for alleviating one's suffering particularly, for pain medication, on the other side, dangerous and in the condition to induce addictive behavior, and a lot of dangerous consequences that have been considered the need of keeping them under control. The convention of 61 is particularly on narcotic drugs and some synthetic drugs. The 71 is in specific on synthetic drugs and psychotropic drugs. And the convention of 1988 is on both narcotic and psychotropic drugs. Being in schedule one, the highest level of restriction of control means that the drugs has to be imported, exported under control of the state with the cooperation with the International Narcotic Control Board, that has to be labelled, has to be prescribed, and so this is done to avoid that there is a diversion of abuse of these drugs to the non-medical use. We cannot say that these drugs are prohibited. These drugs are not permitted for non-medical purposes but they are absolutely essential and permitted for medical and scientific purposes. >> And could you explain how the scheduling is central to the international drug control framework? >> Yes, the scheduling is, when you start to have an international body that says the international board, that is granting the license to import, export in cooperation with the international authority, it means that this cannot be bought or sold without any control and move it from a country to another without any control. On the other side, you need that so you really know what is sold, what is bought on the formulation and then they need a prescription of a medical doctor. So it means that a medical professional has to take the responsibility of prescribing this medication. Clearly, the unbelievable things that happen in many years in most of the countries was sort of overruling in respect to the convention. With the myriad of rules and regulation that have created a sort of difficulty to access, to have availability and access to this medication, that was not the purpose of the convention. The convention wanted simply to control abuse and diversion and misuse, but making these drugs absolutely available and accessible for medical purposes. >> But do you think there's a legitimate basis for prohibiting drugs? >> As I said, I never use the word, prohibiting drugs. Also, I think, in some text in the past, we were called when the joined, and the INCD the prohibitionistic regime. And there is nothing totalitarian and nothing prohibitionistic in our work. It is a drug control system. It means that these drugs are not legitimate for no medical purpose, but this is absolutely not only related to the convention. In my view, it should be related to the common sense. Imagine to have a prescription of antibiotics for not pneumonia, or for no fevers, or someone asking for prescription of insulin for no diabetes. When you go outside the necessary use of this drug for medical reasons and you go in any case to provoke something that is not good, imagine that insulin that is not under control can provoke a hyperglycemia coma. The glucose is going to go down in the blood and killing the person. Antibiotics are dangerous for the liver or can create an allergy and you should not prescribe it when you don't have the absolute need for using antibiotics. And moving to the control of drugs, that says heroin, cocaine, cannabis, and amphetamines for example, the first four of the convention of 61 and 71, I think that these, when they are used for non-legitimate medical purposes, they can be absolutely very dangerous. The first issue that they create, they create the dependence. They are stimulating the reward system in the brain and this kind of appreciation for the reward is creating, is generating a sort of intensive, comparative behavior, conditional behavior. And the extinction of this behavior is very difficult. So this means that people who are engaged in substance use disorder and are clearly in need of treatment for a long time, because their brain has been significantly affected by these drugs outside any medical reason. >> But as a physician, how do you see drug use and drug dependence in relation to pathology? I have to say, I'm very happy in this generation, because myself as a neuropharmacologist, neurobiologist, and a doctor, I've had a great reward, great satisfaction to see the general assembly last year that in New York, unanimously, 193 countries out of 193, define the dependence a complex multifactorial health disorder, with chronic in nature. It means that the member states unanimously recognize that we are not in front of a criminal behavior, we're not in front of a moral failure, we're not in front of only a social consequences of something, but we are in front of a health disorder, a complex multifactorial health disorder. And it is clear which kind of policy we should adopt to respond to a disorder. We should, for sure, stop any punitive and coercive approach, any coercive, punitive, and sanction oriented approach, and adopting a social protection approach, education, information, and public health approach, treatment, rehabilitation and social reintegration. >> Thank you. Do you have anything else that you'd like to add? >> I can add that in my view, I don't know if this is a personal opinion or could be shared around the convention, the facts that have been depicted in the past as a repressive tool or misinterpreted by someone as a repressive tool, in reality are protecting the new generation from this no sense use of drugs outside medical purpose but they're protecting a special population. They're protecting the most vulnerable children and adolescents. In most of the cases they're protecting the children of the poor. the people who have had no opportunity, no advantages in life, they are not privileged children. They have to go to work at 7 or 11 years old, and they are not in school, they are a victim of school dropout. They have been abandoned by the institution. Particularly, these people, children who are working, as I said, at 11, or girls that were in the brothels in because of prostitution as 13-years-old children, or child soldiers in Africa that are given cocaine by their commander to fight better, or children used for labor for and sort of slavery in the modern world. And all these categories are also treated with drugs and are familiar with drugs and not what is called recreational use. The word, recreational use, is in my view, very well used in high income countries with the rich, with the affluent while doing their use of drugs in a recreational way and they stop when they want. But many other part of humanity, large portion of the population of humanity are in a certain sense condemned to use drugs to survive and to cope with terrible condition of life. Thank you, thank you very much for your insight and for your time. Thank you, Gilberto. >> Thank you [MUSIC]
