UN General Assembly
1990

We must remain equally united in our commitment to fighting the global problem of drugs in all its aspects production, trafficking and use; for, just as the destruction of the environment undermines our fundamental resources in the form of trees, water, the air and the soil, so the drug epidemic continues to undermine our precious natural resource in the form of human beings themselves. I began by saying that we find ourselves at a crucial turning-point in history. If we rise to the opportunities which have now been opened to us we can take a giant stop forward in the direction of a more prosperous, more peaceful world, making the twenty-first century a century of peace, co-operation and achievement. If we succumb to the difficulties and fail to raise this day of opportunity and hope, then we stand to regress to a period of conflict and destruction even more terrible than anything we have already witnessed in this century.