In September, 2015, the member states of the UN endorsed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030, which aspire to human-rights-centred approaches to ensuring the health and wellbeing of all people. The SDGs embody both the UN Charter values of rights and justice for all and the responsibility of states to rely on the best scientific evidence as they seek to better humankind. In April, 2016, these same states will consider control of illicit drugs, an area of social policy that has been fraught with controversy and thought of as inconsistent with human rights norms, and in which scientific evidence and public health approaches have arguably had too limited a role. Reforming international drug policy"Drugs have destroyed many people, but wrong policies have destroyed many more", said Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary-General. Indeed, international drug policy has been fraught with inconsistency and controversy. Global drug control started when the first international drug treaty—The International Opium Convention—was signed at The Hague, Netherlands, in 1912. However, a global system against narcotic drugs was not fully fledged until 1961, when the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was adopted. Full-Text PDF Regulating illegal drug markets: what legal markets can teach usWe read with interest the report by Joanne Csete and colleagues (April 2, p 1427).1 The authors raise important points, but fail to mention the externalities that drug markets create under weak regulatory systems. Full-Text PDF