The use of psychotropic substances

Ten years after the United Nations Conference for the Adoption of a Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in New York in 1961, the United Nations Conference for the Adoption of a Protocol on Psychotropic Substances in Vienna approved the Convention on Psychotropic Substances which established an international control system for psychotropic substances. The Convention responded to the diversification and expansion of the spectrum of drugs of abuse and introduced controls over a number of synthetic drugs according to their abuse potential on the one hand and their therapeutic value on the other.

Member States recognized that the use of psychotropic substances for medical and scientific purposes was indispensable and that the availability of substances for these purposes should not be subject to any unjustified restriction.