UN General Assembly
1986

Mankind is threatened and we must have an international instrument to enable us to punish the crime and focus on the social and economic roots of the problem. At the thirty-ninth session of the General Assembly President Lissinchi warned of the dangers for the internal and external security of countries created by the illicit traffic in drugs which has even altered relations among them. To quote the President of Venezuela, these dangers include attempts to "destabilize Governments through corruption, making use of all kinds of criminal elements, tying them into an intricate network of operations, conspiracies and complicities which involve all levels of society, from subversives of the left and right to the most affluent and most impoverished of our citizenry, striking at the very heart of public life. ... its penetration ... has reached such a magnitude that ... drug trafficking not only represents a threat to the national security and sovereignty of several countries but is also turning into a dangerous agent of international conflicts."