Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Table of treaties and other international agreements
- Table of cases
- PART I General principles
- PART II Interdiction and maritime policing
- 3 General introduction to Part II
- 4 Piracy and the slave trade
- 5 Drug trafficking
- 6 Fisheries management
- 7 Unauthorised broadcasting on the high seas
- 8 Transnational crime: migrant smuggling and human trafficking
- 9 Maritime counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
- PART III The general law of interdiction
- Select bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW
5 - Drug trafficking
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Table of treaties and other international agreements
- Table of cases
- PART I General principles
- PART II Interdiction and maritime policing
- 3 General introduction to Part II
- 4 Piracy and the slave trade
- 5 Drug trafficking
- 6 Fisheries management
- 7 Unauthorised broadcasting on the high seas
- 8 Transnational crime: migrant smuggling and human trafficking
- 9 Maritime counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
- PART III The general law of interdiction
- Select bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW
Summary
Introduction
Interdicting drug smugglers is a well-recognised head of coastal state jurisdiction over vessels within national waters. It may be impractical, however, to wait for traffickers to enter territorial or contiguous waters before taking action. Drug-running ‘mother ships’ may sit in international waters, distributing their cargo to faster, smaller boats to convey ashore at night. Major treaties creating high-seas boarding rights to address this problem are the 1988 UN Narcotics Convention, a 1990 Spanish–Italian treaty, the 1995 Council of Europe Agreement, and numerous US bilateral agreements with neighbouring states. Most create procedures allowing one party to request permission to board another's flag vessel, without imposing any obligation to permit arrests or seizure. It is convenient to begin with the historic bilateral practice between the United States and the United Kingdom, culminating in the 1981 US–UK Exchange of Notes, which may have influenced later developments.
US–UK bilateral practice on smuggling
Modern treaty law on smuggling interdiction has its origin in the 1924 Liquor Treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom, which aimed at combating rum-running during Prohibition. The United States had, in the years preceding the treaty, taken to arresting vessels ‘hovering’ in international waters if by means of their small boats (or boats coming out from shore) they had participated in running liquor ashore. At the time, the United Kingdom vigorously opposed such action as incompatible with international law and in order to avoid what it saw as an attempt to extend the effective breadth of the territorial sea.
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- Shipping Interdiction and the Law of the Sea , pp. 79 - 96Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009