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4.
While little of value seems to have come out of the Drug Adviser's programme, it has had within it the potential for causing positive harm, and this looks like being aggravated in the future if his proposed programme is accepted. The area of risk lies in the overlap between the conferences of an all-embracing nature which the Drug Adviser has been promoting or is proposing to promote, and the carefully prepared activities of the United Nations Narcotics Commission, both in the Near and Middle East and in the Far East. Whatever the Drug Adviser's claims about co-ordinating his activities with those of other agencies, there is little doubt that the conference he arranged in Bangkok was designed in part to pre-empt the United Nations' meeting.
5.
The 1975 Programme
Further, the conference proposed for Teheran (paragraph 13) for 1975, which is to be the analogue for the Middle East of the conference which he promoted in Bangkok in July 1974, could, if it has the same agenda as the Bangkok conference, overlap with the work of the United Nations Sub-Commission for the Near and Middle East. There seems no justification for this duplication of activity, and a distinct danger that active law enforcement officers will be discouraged from attending not only the Colombo Plan but also (and worse) the United Nations meetings, which are carefully structured and planned, because of the time taken away from their duties.
6. It is also to be noted (see paragraph (32(vi)) that the International Council on alcohol and the addictions is sponsoring an international congress on drug dependence in Bangkok in late February 1975. This will no doubt cover the same ground (excluding law enforcement) as the Drug Advise proposed to cover in his workshop in Malaysia (paragraph 30), which is also planned for early in 1975. Faragraph 32(iii) has a proposal for a workshop/seminar on "the problems of drug abuse", to be held in Singapore in 1975. It is not clear what the agenda for this would be, but it does not seem unlikely on past form that it will cover the whole field, and therefore overlap with the discussions in Malaysia and Bangkok already referred to in this paragraph.
7. Of the other main items of the proposed programme for the future, items (vii) and (viii) in paragraph 32 require comment. The development of a regional drug abuse control information centre needs careful consideration. If it is to be of any use at all it must have resources of staff and money. Merely passing round such documents as Member States feel able to contribute is valueless. In any case, the United Nations circulates legal documentation. This type of information centre is not something which can be operated with the resources at present available to the Colombo Flan, and the value of circulating the prodigious amount of literature which is produced on drug abuse, without a careful assessment of and commentary upon its merits, is dubious. The proposed comparative study of drug laws and control systems etc., again, will require resources far beyond those available at present, not merely in manpower but in quality and expertise of that manpower, and in finance. Neither of these proposals has been thought through.
Conclusions
8. To sum up, what the Drug Adviser has done so far, and what he proposes to do for the future, has been of little value to the region, when seen against the background of the already existing activity in regional co-operation, both in South-East Asia and in the Middle East. It has not been positively damaging so far but, if continued in the form proposed, it could be. The Drug Adviser has not thought sufficiently about the proper role for the Colombo Plan in this region, having regard to the activities of other international organisations and the general nature of the Colombo Flan. His programme for the future, if
2.
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