Chair: Good Morning. We begin with L5.
Slovenia: We were able to agree on a couple of PPs and OP4 in informals.
Chair: Very well, we start with OP4 then. I see no comments, agreed.
OP5, OP6
Chair: Agreed. Fantastic.
Singapore: In OP6 “drug use initiation among children and youth” when we were discussing this, we apologize for not realizing this sooner, throughout this negotiation we have had issues with “drug use” being used instead “abuse”. Here we can agree, in this para this is the only issue that we have been raising during the entire negotiations.
Slovenia: I would like to draw your attention to OP3 where we used the same diction and so I am surprised by Singapore´s comment. It is a bit different than talking about abuse or use, it is “drug use initiation” which is still something troubling, that is how I understand anyhow… I am not a native speaker, but I think it makes more sense to talk about “drug use initiation”. The last comment I recei3ed was from Iran that they need to check this with their capital.
Australia: The critical issue here, as explained by the chair of the informal, that it is not about abuse, it is about stopping any form of use of illicit drugs. We are trying to prevent any kind of use, so it is a deliberate choice of words – we are preventing the initiation of drug use and we are not waiting for any problems to develop.
Singapore: Thank you for your explanation, colleagues. In this instance, I will remove my reservation, but I would like to make it clear that we are in agreement, but it is not a blanket approval.
Japan: I support the statement of Slovenia. In this context, this is a proper term.
Iran: We thank the delegations for all this explanation. Really, the context is different here, so I hope I will soon receive the comment from the experts in my capital on this text. Let us talk again in informals.
Germany: This is the exact wording from the UNGASS outcome document … particularly about the protection of children and youth by providing them with appropriate information to prevent use. So the words we are talking about are 6 years old now. I support Slovenia and Australia and I strongly ask for an agreement on this.
Venezuela: Would it not be better to say “risk mitigation factors” at the end of the paragraph? Just a question…
Slovenia: We have been using “risk factors” so I am not used to “mitigation factors” but I see no reason to object. We can go along with this.
USA: We are losing something about youth protection with adding “mitigation factors”… we would like to retain protective factors as well as the risk factors, so we don´t support this edit.
Chair: Seems that this para needs a bit more work.
Venezuela: I am not insistent on it, so I can withdraw my suggestion, it is just something that would make more sense in Spanish.
Iran: I will push my capital for approval until 2.
Chair: Okay, we leave it to further discussions then. Now we move to OP8 that used to be OP7.
OP8
Slovenia: We agreed to this text when it was OP7 but we haven’t discussed the order, so it makes sense to flag this to other delegations.
Iran: We proposed “illicit drug use” or “drug abuse” and we are in agreement to apply it to the whole text?
Slovenia: As mentioned before, we cannot speak of the same context throughout the whole text.
Chair: Can we adopt this text as on the screen?
Iran: We can go along with it, yes.
Chair: I am a bit lost here. In the new wording we crossed out “drug use” and we have “early prevention”?
Slovenia: We can strike out “drug use” because early prevention itself is not solely focused on use, the same interventions can be also effective in preventing other undesirable behaviors – this has been proven scientifically effective.
Chair: Thank you. Then we can consider this adopted? Adopted.
OP11 and OP11bis
Chair: I see no comments. Adopted. This wraps our consideration of paras that have been agreed on in informals. Now we have PP1 on the screen – awaiting approval.
Slovenia: Could we confirm the title?
Chair: Right. Any comments on the title? I see none. Title agreed on at CoW.
PP2
Chair: (adopted)
PP3bis and PP3ter
Slovenia: We have exhausted the debate around the use of words, so we came to the unhappy formulation of the “use of controlled substances” which was used in the past but didn’t seem acceptable for some delegations. We would focus on pp3bis.
Singapore: The way these sentences are formed is not acceptable for us. Does “drug use” mean that if my child is feeling unwell, am I not able to give medication to them? Canada´s explanation was relating to accidental access, but it is the same as if I leave a pair of scissors around, so I think the intent to abuse is the important here. I think it is correct for kids to see parents take preventive measures.
Slovenia: I feel like a broken record, but as I said, we have exhausted the debate. I am proposing a compromise by using “abuse” here and then “use of illicit drugs”. I don’t think we have other options to explore here, really.
Australia: We feel Singapore is misunderstanding our proposal. I can only repeat what Slovenia has said.
USA: We believe that we need to acknowledge that young people might be at increased risk. We have seen it in the USA that even if the medicine is correctly used and prescribed, the fact that it is in the home can create a greater risk for them. We hear the point of Singapore that we can’t control everything, but we are merely recognizing this increased risk.
Iran: I can not go along with the new term without confirmation from medical professionals.
Russia: We believe we are headed in the right direction. The compromise regarding “drug use”, we believe that “illicit” should not be related to narcotics but rather the fact such as “illicit use” or “illicit trafficking”. The drug itself is not illicit, it is the activity attached. Why don’t we say “improper use” or “nonmedical”? Could we have that on the screen?
France: We support the Slovenian proposal.
Chair: The Secretariat will read out Canada´s proposal and I invite Russia to clarify.
Russia: Instead of “illicit drug use” we suggest “nonmedical use of drugs” – this can be used for other paragraphs as well.
Egypt: We think the Russian proposal is a good way forward for all of us.
Slovenia: This will make many delegations unhappy and my experts tell me this is really stretching their flexibility, but for the sake of compromise, we can go along with this… I hope other delegations will show us the same flexibility as we go along.
Chair: Okay, PP3bis is for the floor to discuss. (…) agreed. Thank you all for your flexibility, I think the same wording can be applied to OP5bis.
OP5bis
Russia: We have a technical comment. On the 3rd line, the word “that” should be taken out… or something is missing… we are not really sure. Can the authors chime in?
USA: Yes, it appears too much has been deleted by the editors. My recollection is that new words have been introduced that were later deemed unnecessary, but “of others” is missing. I am happy to refer to Slovenia.
Slovenia: We probably lost something when we pasted the text among the PPS, so can we look at OP5bis? Some words were forgotten to be deleted… Can we also mark the “nonmedical use” here?
Chair: Great. What´s next… ?
PP3ter and PP3bis
Slovenia: What we have here is the package of policy documents. Let´s delete the text in the brackets but keep the text proposed by the USA and Singapore… and we can ask the room if this is acceptable.
France: We agree with Slovenia and reiterate our reservation (…)
Chair: PP3ter agreed.
PP4alt
Slovenia: The issues here were connected to the previous pp, so we can resolve those.
Chair: Accepted. Moving on to PP11 and PP11bis. How close are we to agree on this?
Slovenia: One of the remaining issues is regarding marginalized populations in PP11bis and there are a few more unsolved issues remaining, but I believe we can present you with solutions in the afternoon CoW.
Chair: I would request to prepare to finish all texts today. We now move on the L7.