It is the responsibility of the International Narcotics Control Board to alert Governments and the public to any developments relating to drug abuse and trafficking. The Board reviews the operation of the international drug control system and presents an analysis of the world situation with regard to illicit drugs. The Board believes that the progressive acceptance of drug abuse over the past three decades, will be hard to reverse and that the 'normalization' of drug abuse is a high-risk approach to a complex problem, the prevention of which should be firmly based in scientific research.