REPORT ON THE IPO PARTICIPATION AT THE UN 1ST INTERSESSIONAL MEETING OF THE 66TH SESSION OF THE CND

During this week from October 23 to 25, the 1st Intersessional meeting of the 66th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) took place at the UN office in Vienna, where the IPO Delegation organized and led by the IPO HQ under the direction of the Chairman of the IPO Delegation to the United Nations, the Founder and Honorary President of the IPO Ass.Prof.Dr. Ilija Zivotic and the Executive President - CEO of IPO Dr. Mareglen Tomori.

As members of the Committee on Drugs at the UN in Vienna, whose collaborators we have been for many years, we had the opportunity to participate for the 4th time in the work of the Commission on Narcotics of the United Nations.

As many times before, in this extremely important event, our delegation was numerous, with us were also representatives of the IPO of several sections, such as Mr. Danijel Prastalo Representative of the IPO Section Slovenia, Mr. Ivan Pekic Representative of the IPO Section Montenegro, Mr. Danijel Panovic Representative of the IPO Section Austria, Ms. Marsela Bashari Representative of the IPO Section Luxembourg and Mr. Alberto Arnaud Representative of the IPO Section Italy (online participation).

Also, the IPO Section Serbia was represented by Dr. Zivotic, and the IPO Section Albania was represented by Dr. Tomori, 2 sections which, together with the IPO Section Italy, are playing an important role in the prevention of drug use and trade in the Balkans and trafficking to EU countries.

The IPO delegation was joined this time by another very important partner for the fight against drugs, the Italian Association "No alla Droga" where, together with the President Mr. Alessandro Greco, we presented to IPO colleagues and CND members the anti-drug program with which work will be done in the coming years for the realization of joint projects aimed at informing citizens about the truth and the drug problems and the professional training of actors who implement preventive and educational programs in schools and in the wider community.

A few days ago, on October 11 and 12, 2023, at the Mondial Hotel in Tirana, IPO HQ, IPO Section Italy and IPO Section Albania in collaboration with the Italian Association "No alla Droga", the Center for the Prevention of Juvenile and Youth Crimes QPKMR, and the State Agency for Children's Rights and Protection ASHDMF, organized a 2-day conference on "Prevention of drug use by young people", a meeting which gathered over 160 attendees from a number of institutions and organizations on each of the days and 140 School Safety Officers and public administration employees related to this field were trained and for which the IPO presented a detailed report on the activity to the leaders of CND.

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During the first session, held on October 23 and 24, there were more than dynamic discussions by the ambassadors of the main world powers, who all indirectly connected the war against narcotics with the current situation in Ukraine and Israel. And yet we can draw the following conclusions.

1. The Balkan cartels have the main say in Ecuador when it comes to cocaine smuggling and cooperate strongly with local drug clans that have several thousand armed members. This information presented by the Ecuadorian ambassador should be taken with special care, because the connection of the Balkan cartel with these criminal parapolice organizations could mean that in the territory of the EU it is easy to find contract killers from Ecuador, who in At first glance, it is difficult to connect with people from our area. Also, this interesting combination of criminal organizations shows us that the Balkans in Latin America is still something more than just a distributor in Europe.

2. The main problem in Great Britain is represented by synthetic drugs and their fluidity, that is, frequent changes in composition, which significantly complicates recognition and treatment.

3. Last year, Iran seized a record amount of drugs on its territory, which is good news for the international community, which has often characterized Iran as a country that deliberately releases mainly opiates to the West.

Therefore, the predictions are that in the next period, the greatest risk will be the synthetic drug produced from the combination of fentanyl and the heaviest drug (nitazene). The animal preparation xylazine is often added to this combination. Otherwise, the heaviest is 10 times stronger than fentanyl, which is 50 times stronger than heroin. This combination swept the US last year, and the number of deaths has risen rapidly since 2020.

A particular danger with these synthetic opioids is that the drugs used to save a patient's life in the event of a heroin overdose are difficult to work with or search for. This mainly refers to Naloxone or Narcan.

Unfortunately, when it comes to such heavy and dangerous synthetic drugs, recovery is much longer and more difficult, and the consequences are much more severe.

The other thing to note is the proliferation of synthetic drugs that are made from readily available and legal ingredients, not just illegal ones. This makes it much easier for dealers, who have much easier access to such substances and produce these types of drugs with much more convenience.

New synthetic drugs have a much more difficult clinical picture, they cause severe forms of poisoning in humans, and on the other hand are difficult to detect because traders are bringing new types to the market every day and cocktails are the talk of the town. words a deadly combination.

In any case, synthetic drugs, due to easier production and transportation as well as low prices, present a serious risk in the future and society must prepare new responses to them. In terms of police work, we have heard that seizures are at record levels everywhere and that the amounts seized are increasing every year, which makes us think that the amounts escaping state services are also at record levels.

We heard from Interpol and Europol that online sales are already very present and will soon become a serious competitor to classic street sales as things are. When we add to this the payments of large amounts in cryptocurrencies, it is quite certain that we need an additional number of people to control this type of sales, which requires specific knowledge from the IT field.

In this regard, the head of the IPO Delegation to the UN, Dr. Zivotic has had a meaningful conversation with the chairman of the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board, Professor Jallal Toufiq.

Also, the Drug Committee from Vienna asked us to submit a statement that will be placed on the website of the Narcotics Commission in early December, about which we will inform you in due course.

During the 2-day activity at UNODC, all our representatives made numerous contacts with representatives of other organizations and ambassadors to the UN, which will significantly improve the strength of our organization.

IPO News Room