“It’s a direct breach of the 1961 U.N. convention on narcotic drugs,” said Martin Jelsma, a Dutch scholar on drug control laws at the Transnational Institute, a center in the Netherlands that advocates for less punitive global drug policies.

Jelsma said nations and states “will have to find a way to reconcile” their laws with the global treaty, which has some 190 signatories. Some may choose to follow the path of Bolivia, which said in the middle of last year that it would withdraw from the convention to protest the U.N. classification of coca leaf as an illegal substance. Many indigenous people in the Andes chew coca leaf as a medicinal and social practice.

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Also published at Seattle Times

photo by Medcannaman