 This year governments will discuss the preparations of the United Nations General Assembly on drugs that will take place next year in New York. Ungas provides an opportunity to rethink what we have been doing over the last 50 years. The world has changed and world drug policy has also evolved. But have the objectives of the drug treaties which are to ensure the health and welfare of our populations really become outdated? I don't think so. We do believe that policy changes can be achieved within the existing legal drug control framework. The most popular mantra of the commission was shared responsibility. The world drug problem remains a common and shared responsibility. On the basis of the principle of common and shared responsibility. Common and shared responsibility. For some member states, most of them Latin American, this shared responsibility should lead to an open debate about the alternatives of current punitive drug policies. We agree with Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia and Ecuador with the support of other Latin Americans and European states that this preparatory process for the Ungas should guarantee a real debate and dialogue. The global drug problem is a complex issue that is not possible to approach in a simplistic, single-minded way. As such, for years we have called in this forum for a broad and diverse debate without constraints or taboos. What is the position of the group of Latin American countries on Ungas? What do they want to achieve next year? The first challenge of the Latin American and Caribbean group is to achieve a common position. There is a majority of countries that see the Ungas as an opportunity to have an open debate where all policy alternatives can be debated and analyzed. In general, I would say that the aim of the region is to acknowledge and make visible the negative economic and social consequences of the war on drugs. So the international community can discuss whether it is still relevant to just tackle and approach the drug phenomena from one perspective rather than from a comprehensive approach, including development, public health, justice, human rights and other very relevant issues, not just security. Does it mean that there are some Latin American countries that would change the treaties themselves? I don't necessarily see the Ungas being that particular occasion in which Latin America will directly advocate for treaty reform, although I would say that the Latin American region is one of the regions that are pushing the most for the Ungas to have a very strong political outcome. However, the majority of U.N. member states and institutions think drug prohibition works well, so they don't want to open a debate about the U.N. drug conventions at the next year, Ungas. What do you expect from next year's Ungas on drugs? Well, in 2016, Ungas will be a meeting of the General Assembly in special session to talk about the problem of the war on drugs. My concern is that if we just go to Ungas and just talk, nothing will have been accomplished. We need amendments to the United Nations Drug Treaties signed and filed in advance of Ungas, so a nation who is unhappy with a particular aspect of drug policy should file an amendment. The United States should sign and file a petition to say end the cannabis prohibition in these treaties. Uruguay could sign the same statement, and then the countries of the world would have something specific to debate and act upon when they get to Ungas instead of just talking about it. I would like to see more organizations from different kinds of sectors coming out and explaining that this is their turf as well, because I think for too long it's just been the drugs NGOs, and it's too easy to sideline or silo us. But when the likes of Human Rights Watch spoke out more, when Health Poverty Action recently spoke out more, and if we can get child rights organizations just pointing out the intersections, you don't all have to agree with policy solutions, just pointing out that this is actually a very wide-reaching policy area, and it is trampling human rights in different parts of the world. It is undermining development. It is a security nightmare. Many, many countries are calling for, you know, we need to take a public health approach to illicit drugs or illegal drugs. And what they, many times that's well-intentioned and it's not a bad thing per se, but what they don't really want to consider is some of the more powerful public health interventions, which are the regulatory interventions. I mean we, the successes we've had with tobacco in various countries has not been just because we educated people about it and we did some research to find out the harms. We regulate the heck out of the product. We tell people, you know, how old they have to be to buy it, where they can buy it, where they can smoke it, where they can't smoke it mostly. So in some countries you, the regulatory aspects of it are really profound and they complement the educational and the research aspects of it. And you use enforcement to, you know, bust people who are selling to miners and bust people who are producing illegally, that sort of stuff, who aren't licensed producers. So public health has a lot of power and some, much of that power is through their regulatory interventions. So we should be looking at how can we use that type of framework for currently illegal drugs. On a good day, on gas is a big opportunity to open the door to new ways of thinking and approaching this issue. On a bad day here it's going to be just more of the same and not much different.