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by Dominic Corva, Executive Director
This morning I woke up to an email from Dr. Tony Silvaggio, our Senior Research Associate who is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Humboldt State University. He was being invited to present in Switzerland, at the December International Cannabis Policy Conference (ICPC).
The ICPC is an overlapping and parallel conference at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (UNCND). It is organized by FAAAT, For Alternative Approaches to Addiction Think and do tank. FAAAT is what we in the social sciences call a global civil society organization, or a Transnational Advocacy Network, or sometimes even an “alter-globalization” social movement organization.
The UNCND produces a “World Plan of Action” report on the subject of drug control every 10 years. It is part of an ecology of what we call in the social sciences “global governance institutions” that form the “top layer” of legal frameworks for prohibition worldwide. The UNCND is a fairly old global institution. It was established in 1946. It has been a central node for the creation of prohibition’s global frameworks, along with other United Nations (UN) institutions like the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
That “top layer” is responsible for worldwide prohibition, but it has been changing in the last several decades. This process has been documented by the Transnational Institute’s (TNI) Drugs and Democracy program, another global civil society institution. Two of their academics, political scientist Martin Jelsma and historian David Beweley-Taylor, have been publishing for more than 20 years on how the drug war consensus has been destabilized in that top layer.
Anyway, although it’s short notice, Tony may be able to represent CASP in early December, given that his invitation specified his affiliation with us in particular, which is pretty cool and evidence of CASP’s global reach. How that happened was the subject of Tony’s inquiry.
For this post, I’ll only say that the invitation followed CASP’s invited responses last May (2018) to a questionnaire from the Swiss Advisory Commission on Addiction Issues (EKSF). The post to follow will publish those responses for the first time.
The post The Globalization of Postprohibition, CASP role appeared first on Post-prohibition Cannabis Education for a Drug War Free World.
