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The Convention allows to make exceptions for drug abusers by substituting treatment, education, rehabilitation and social reintegration for imprisonment.

The Convention mandates drug treatment, education, and prevention measures and requires Parties to assist efforts to gain an understanding of the problems of abuse of psychotropic substances and of its prevention. To comply with these provisions, most Parties financially support organizations and agencies dedicated to these goals. The United States, for instance, established the National Institute on Drug Abuse in 1974 to comply with the research requirement and began sponsoring Drug Abuse Resistance Education in 1983 to help fulfill the educational and prevention requirements.

The 1971 Convention was designed to control legitimate pharmaceutical markets, rather than illicit markets, a limitation that has hampered efforts to develop clandestine production and trade of methamphetamine and other stimulants.

Control of stimulants has become a major challenge for the UN. In 2007, the World Drug Report warned that throughout the world 30,000,000, people use ATS. This is 0.5 per cent of the global population and exceeds the number using heroin and probably those using cocaine.

A UN General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem report noted that the Psychotropic Convention was designed to control and regulate legitimate pharmaceutical markets to prevent their diversion into illicit markets.

The report mentioned proposals to increase the flexibility of scheduling drugs under the Convention and to amend the drug-control treaties to make them more responsive to the current situation. Due to the ease of manufacturing methamphetamine, methcathinone, and certain other stimulants, control measures are focusing less on preventing drugs from crossing borders. Instead, they are centering around increasingly long prison sentences for manufacturers and traffickers. The International Narcotics Control Board and Commission on Narcotic Drugs help coordinate this fight by adding additional precursors to the Tables of chemicals controlled under the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

It was stressed that it was important to enforce international law by cooperating with relevant international organizations, such as the International Criminal Police Organization and the World Customs Organization in order to promote coordinated international action in the fight against illicit demand for and supply of amphetamine-type stimulants and their precursors.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime believes that East Asia (particularly Thailand) now has the most serious amphetamine-type stimulant (ATS) problem in the world.

The Office called on nations to bring more resources to bear in the demand reduction effort, improving treatment and rehabilitation processes, increasing private sector participation in eliminating drugs from the workplace, and expanding the drug information clearing house to share information more effectively.

In 2000, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) chastised Canada for refusing to comply with the Convention's requirement that international transactions in controlled psychotropics be reported to the Board.

The Board also warned that the Internet provides easy access to information on drug production and drug-taking, calling it a growing source of on-line drug trafficking. The Board pointed out that some Internet suppliers sell controlled drugs without regard to the Convention's medical prescription requirements.

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