No. 3, Year 4
Third Quarter 2006

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CICAD Celebrates 20th Anniversary of Founding

CICAD is celebrating a major milestone in its history at the next regular session (fortieth) of the Commission in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia on November 29-December 1, marking 20 years since it was created. 

In November 1986, the OAS General Assembly established CICAD within the framework of the Inter-American Program of Action of Rio de Janeiro against the Illicit Use and Production of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances and Traffic Therein. The Program for Action, which had been drafted in April that year in a special conference in Brazil, was a breakthrough in the efforts to coordinate hemisphere-wide measures to control illicit drugs.

The Program of Action placed inter-American drug control policies in the context of social-economic development, respect for human rights and for the traditions and customs of national and regional groups and environmental protection.

To understand the flow of events leading up to the special conference in Rio since then, a chronology of drug policy in the Americas is available.

Ten years later, in November 1996, the General Assembly adopted the Anti-Drug Strategy in the Hemisphere. The Strategy updated of the Program of Aciton of Rio, crystalized the collaborative experience of the preceding decade, and gave specific policy guidance in the areas of demand reduction, supply reduction and control measures.

Most importantly, it formalized the concept of "shared responsibility" as the guiding principle of drug policy in the region. CICAD had avoided the trap of false divisions between "supplier" and "consumer" countries and political fingerpoint that had tainted inter-American discussions on the issue in the past.

These two texts, the Program of Action of Rio and the Anti-Drug Stratgy, have served as the foundation stones of hemispheric drug policy over two decades, and have undergone surprisingly few amendments or updates since then. CICAD has been the political instrument for a lasting, broad-based consensus to control illicit drugs in the region.  

The inaugural speech will be delivered by OAS Assistant Secretary General Albert Ramdin. 

Other Business

Also on the meeting agenda in Santa Cruz will be a discussion on whether an updating of the Anti-Drug Strategy is needed and, if so, how member states and CICAD staff should proceed. The issue of determining the legal framework for governments to channel a portion the revenue from confiscated money laundering assets to fund CICAD operations will also be the subject of a presentation and discussion on the floor. There will also be several reports from expert groups (Control of Money Laundering, Chemical Substances and Pharmaceutical Products).