The semi-judicial agency charged with enforcing international drug treaties said such moves posed “a grave danger to public health”.
The strongly-worded statement from the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) sends a message ahead of an upcoming high-level review of the laws, which will be followed by a special session of the UN General Assembly in 2016.
Publishing its annual report, INCB president Raymond Yans said the developments in Uruguay and the US states of Colorado and Washington “contravenes” drug control conventions.
“These developments do pose a very serious challenge to the international drug control system and they represent a grave threat to public health,” he said.
“Member states themselves have recognised the dangers posed by cannabis abuse and committed themselves to the implementation, the full implementation, of the convention.”
In December, Uruguay approved a bill to legalise and regulate the sale and production of marijuana.
The sale of cannabis by licensed suppliers to adults aged over 21 became legal in Colorado last January. Washington state is due to follow in the summer.
Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan TD, who last November put forward a bill to regulate cannabis, described the statement from the INCB as “the last sting of a dying wasp”.
Source: Cormac O'Keeffe, Irish Examiner, 06/03/14
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