Egypt: When we say “promoting informal networking within the scientific community” what are we aiming at?
Russia: The aim is to promote the use of science in drug policy.
Egypt: We can go along with that.
PP1
Egypt: Change to “to drug demand reduction and supply reduction”. This is the language used in the 2009 Political Declaration.
Colombia: We’d prefer “recalling” instead of “reaffirming”.
Egypt: We can go along with that, but in that case let’s include “commitments undertaken, and the targets and goals to be be achieved”.
Colombia: We think “commitments” covers the other aspects.
Russia: Don’t think “recalling” is good here. It seems as though it means we are a bit reluctant to endorse it. Maybe change it to “acknowledging”?
Chair: Could we stay with the original text of “reaffirming”? I see no objection.
Turkey: There is repetition in PP1, in the section concerning drug demand reduction. I think we should delete the second repetition for linguistic reasons.
PP2
Egypt: Delete “supply reduction” and bring back “demand reduction”, because I don’t think you can scientifically evaluate supply reduction measures.
US: We were just taking the exact text from the Joint Ministerial Statement. This was discussed in informals. That’s the reason “supply reduction” was chosen.
Egypt: OK, I think our preference is to keep both supply and demand reduction measures.
Pakistan: We’d like to have demand reduction in the text.
PP2 bis
Australia: The last word is “evidence” rather than “evidences”.
Egypt: I’d like to insert “as part of a comprehensive, integrated and balanced approach to demand and supply reduction strategies” at the end of this PP.
PP2 ter: No comments
PP3
Egypt: We can’t go along with an assessment of these measures. We’d prefer to say “enhance” these measures. And we’ like to change “consequences” to “impacts”.
Australia: I recall in the informal, that there was a debate over “consequences” vs. “impacts”.
Chair: We stick with “consequences”.
PP4
Norway: Add “evidence-based” to “scientific assessment”.
Russia: I’d remind Norway that it is a direct quotation from a previous resolution – it is agreed language.
Chair: Then we go with the agreed language.
PP4 bis
Egypt: “UNODC, in collaboration with …”
Chair: I think we are losing the original sense with this addition, because the other agencies do important work in this area.
Egypt: We think UNODC is the primary player on drugs, so they lead. Any work on drugs has to be related to them.
Chair: No more comments. Move to PP5.
PP5: No comments
PP6: No comments
OP1: No comments
OP2
Egypt: I’d like to add sharing findings on *both* demand and supply reduction. And add this same language to OP1, too.
Switzerland: We discussed the scope of research that we’d like to include in this scientific network meetings. We wouldn’t want to restrict their mandates to demand and supply reduction. That’s why we added “to address the world drug problem” to the end of the OP, to broaden the scope of such meetings. So we’d like to keep it the same for both OPs, as was agreed in the informals.
Egypt: Change to “including demand and supply reduction”
Switzerland: We’d really like to keep it broader. If we include Egypt’s suggestion, we’d then have to include all the other aspects that should be covered by these meetings, and that would be a very long list.
Chair: “including” would introduce open-endedness, and I’d really like to tie this up now.
Switzerland: As a compromise, we could add “including the social, health, economic and environmental impact” to the part about demand and supply reduction.
Germany: We would prefer to keep it as it was. Egypt didn’t come to the informals unfortunately. We could go along with Switzerland’s proposal, but would prefer the shorter version.
Egypt: We go along with Russia’s original text.
OP2 bis: No comments
OP3: No comments
Chair: Very happy to note that we have finalised L3.
Peru: I just wanted to say that Peru would like to be listed as a co-sponsor. Thank you.
China: We’d also like to be included.