The 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem, convened 10 years ago this month, is widely seen as a turning point, when the international community began questioning the prohibitionist orthodoxy that had shaped drug control for decades, and took meaningful steps towards rebalancing approaches to better reflect public health and human rights.

As Global Commissioners Helen Clark and Juan Manuel Santos argue, however, the promise of that moment, to which Commissioner Santos contributed significantly during his presidency of Colombia, has largely gone unfulfilled. While there has been notable progress in some areas – including the expansion of harm reduction and regulated markets, as well as growing engagement from the human rights system – progress has been uneven, with stagnation and even regression in many contexts. Drug use and production continue to rise, while the illicit drug supply has become increasingly synthetic, potent, and unpredictable – a consequence of prohibition long anticipated by the Global Commission.

The Commissioners call for this moment of reflection – marking not only ten years of UNGASS but fifteen years since the establishment of the Global Commission – to serve as a catalyst for renewed action, embracing health-, rights-, and development-based drug policies and leaving behind the punitive paradigm.

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