Drugs Peace Institute

Herewith the Netherlands-based Drugs Peace Institute has the honor to congratulate you with the noble UNODC’s mission you direct - to contribute to global peace and security, human rights, and development by making the world safer from drugs, crime, corruption, and terrorism, and to suggest a contribution we feel the UNODC may wish to make.

Indeed, the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine shows the world in real time, as never before, a permanent massacre. Another human tragedy of destruction and suffering that we would like to remove from our daily lives as much as possible. Especially since we feel we can’t do anything about it. Powerless we watch or look the other way.

Like all wars, this war too will not end when the last bombs are dropped. Reconstruction and reconciliation are waiting, a long-term effort. But we can act in the short term, immediately, and help with the healing of the many wounded citizens and soldiers right now or when they return from the war, to broken lives. They need adequate care and sufficient medicines, which are lacking. And here, we, you, can help.

As the letter of the executive director of the “Patients of Ukraine” attests, present medicine shortages can be reduced if medicinal cannabis were to be made available. However, national legalization of this medicine in the countries concerned will first have to happen and it is not sure the local authorities at present are aware of the medicinal properties of cannabis and would be willing to legalize this product.
The notion that not crime fighting but health care is the field of activity of medicinal cannabis, as confirmed by the competent World Health Organization (WHO), hasn’t dawned yet everywhere.

The Drugs Peace Institute therefore may invite you to please make use of the wealth of resources at your disposal and try to convince people of the obvious. Which is that science is proving at an increasing rate that the assumptions of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, which hold, among other things, that cannabis has no medicinal value, are not correct and that, to the contrary, this substance has a great therapeutic value for many pathologies.

The circumstantial evidence brought forward by so many people from so many countries, often at the risk of their own health and freedom, illustrates the evidence science is now confirming. Medicinal cannabis is a gift from nature that humanity may accept. Or, as Béatrice Budin puts it in her accompanying testimonial: "Cannabis then is like love, it soothes all pain and heals so many wounds."

Legal cannabis heals not only individuals but society as well, as it allows patients to regularly benefit from helpful therapy instead of being forced out in the street like a criminal to score this forbidden medicine. To legalize medicinal cannabis therefore is like decriminalizing the entire veteran’s community, a society's most heroic people and to give them the reward they deserve: the healing of the wounds suffered in the service to their country.

Dear Ms. Ghada Fathi Waly, the promotion of legal medicinal cannabis is a task that we believe falls within your agency's mission as described above, since it promotes the safety and health of people and fulfills the universal promises and governmental obligations of our human rights order. From this point of view, it is clear that the legalization of medicinal cannabis is a task that every government should undertake, one that the UNODC must promote worldwide in its fight against crime.

The DPI hopes that you will undertake this task and wishes you success in doing so.

Sincerely yours,

Adriaan Bronkhorst
Drugs Peace Institute

contact@drugspeaceinstitute.org