- using the system of statistical reports. The governments submit statistical reports to the Committee about the production and preparation of specific drugs, their use and consumption, their exportation and importation, their detention, their stocks and fields used to cultivate opium poppy and other data which allows the Committee to determine if countries are abiding by the Convention's decisions and then take appropriate measures to ensure their implementation and the accomplishment of the control functions.

The Committee collects and analyzes information submitted to it by the United Nations agencies, individual governments and international organizations, including Interpol. This information features the production, manufacture, modification, and consumption of drugs, as well as international trade in them, supply and confiscation of drugs. The Committee also points to the shortcomings in the arrangement of control functions and offers recommendations as to how these shortcomings can be dealt with. If need be, the Committee has the right to invite representatives of any country to its meetings.

Upon getting the information that the target set by the Convention is endangered in any country due to its failure to abide by the Convention's decisions, the Committee has the right to ask for an explanation and also to recommend adjustment measures. If a particular government fails to provide a satisfactory explanation or to accept the adjustment measures proposed by the Committee, the problem can be brought to the attention of the involved parties, of the Council or the Commission. The involved party may be recommended to stop the importation or exportation of narcotics to given countries or territories for a specific period of time until the Committee recognizes that the situation in that country has become satisfactory.

The Committee is endowed with the right to impose restrictions, under certain conditions, on the manufacture and import of drugs.

Since a large volume of information is available at the Committee it is able to prepare reports, publish them and forward them to the Council to be sent to the parties concerned. In these reports the Committee can touch upon any issues connected with drugs and inform its readers about newly passed decisions. For example, in its report of 1989 (Vienna) the Committee called on the governments of all countries to strictly observe the Convention's provisions, to submit statistical accounts about the available quantities of narcotics and trade in them, among other related data.

To avoid alternative versions and form a single understanding, the Uniform Convention establishes identical definitions of special terminology related to drugs.

Drug-related Terminology as Established by the Uniform Convention:

For example, according to the Convention a "narcotic substance" is any of the substances included in List I and List II regardless of whether it is synthetic or natural. Lists I, II, III, and IV are enumerations of narcotics or drug-bearing preparations and are supplements to the Convention in which possible changes may be made from time to time in accordance with the procedures established by the Convention.

Definitions are also given for cannabis and its plant and resin, cocaine shrub, coca leaves, opium, opium poppy and poppy straw.

Significantly, the international understanding of the word "cultivation" pertaining to drugs covers only the cultivation of opium poppy, cocaine brush or the cannabis plant. It should be mentioned at this point that the 1988 UN Convention defines this term differently. But this will be discussed below.

The term "illegal trafficking" means the cultivation of or any action relating to the sale of narcotics in violation of the Convention's decisions. The term "importation" and "exportation" mean the physical shipment of narcotics crossing the boundaries of one country to another or from one territory to another within one and the same country. The term "territory" means any part of a country defined as a separate unit for the purpose of applications of the system of drug importation certificates and drug exportation permits to it.

The term "manufacture" implies (with the exception of production) all the processes that pertain to obtaining narcotic substances, including refining or turning one narcotic into another.

The term "production" means the separation of opium, coca, cannabis leaves and cannabis resin from the plants, which they are obtained from.

The term "preparation" means a hard or liquid mixture containing a narcotic substance.

The term "storage stocks" is used in relation to the amount of narcotics which are available in a particular country or on its territory and meant to be used for medical or scientific purposes, for exportation or for the needs of various pharmacists, authorized traders and specialists or institutions where medical or scientific research is carried out.

Included in this term is also the notion "special storage stocks" which is used to describe the amount of narcotics available within a country or a territory of that country and put at the disposal of its government to be used for special purposes or in case of an emergency.

The Uniform Convention introduces a number of specific restrictions and bans and a special procedure for the cultivation of drug-bearing plants. The most important restrictions are those concerning the cultivation of opium poppy, cocaine shrub or cannabis plant.

Special provisions are envisaged in the first place in relation to opium. Government-run institutions (one or several) should be set up to deal with the cultivation of opium poppy and with opium production. They should have the right to determine areas and sizes of fields, and issue licenses and permits for land plots where a certain amount of opium poppy can be grown and a certain amount of opium-produced. These government-run institutions should be endowed with the exclusive right to buy opium poppy crops from farmers and to import, export, conclude wholesale trade deals and maintain storage opium stocks (with the exception of medicinal opium and preparations from it.)

The responsibilities of persons are outlined who have permits (licenses) to grow drug-bearing plants, to turn over crops of opium poppy only to the institution which they had received their permits from. Any departures from the established procedures are qualified as violations of the law. The Convention permits narcotics to be made only at government-run enterprises or in accordance with licenses issued to persons with necessary qualifications.

The Convention introduces uniform rules for storing narcotics to ensure that the substances are maintained in proper condition. It envisages the responsibility of member-states for taking precautionary measures to prevent the inappropriate use of narcotics or the possibility for them to become part of illegal trafficking in cases when, for example, they are kept in airliners' first aid compartments.