It's a fair question. I was only able to rabbithole on this for so long before realizing I had to get back to work, but if anyone wants to continue the search here's the most relevant document I was able to find. It's dense and very legalese:
From what I was able to gather, there are a lot of holes in the convention that are large enough to drive a gunboat through. What I mean is, in the places where a clause might say something like "don't indiscriminately sink ships", it will also say "unless effects of criminal activity extend to sovereign land" or something like that. This is vague enough that your lawyers could grind the wheels of justice to a halt on the premise that "we are protecting our citizens from all that dangerous cocaine" or whatever.
Frankly, I wonder what changed between when we were putting the stuff in cola sold on shelves and now that it justifies batrillions of dollars fighting an unwinnable war to suppress.
https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unc...
From what I was able to gather, there are a lot of holes in the convention that are large enough to drive a gunboat through. What I mean is, in the places where a clause might say something like "don't indiscriminately sink ships", it will also say "unless effects of criminal activity extend to sovereign land" or something like that. This is vague enough that your lawyers could grind the wheels of justice to a halt on the premise that "we are protecting our citizens from all that dangerous cocaine" or whatever.
Frankly, I wonder what changed between when we were putting the stuff in cola sold on shelves and now that it justifies batrillions of dollars fighting an unwinnable war to suppress.