It is the first major review in nearly two decades and inevitably pits countries favouring the "war on drugs" approach against those advocating decriminalisation and human rights.
Protesters laid siege to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna, chanting to end the death penalty and the war on drugs as delegates filed in to draft the policies now up for debate in New York.
But the chants appear to have had no effect.
The death penalty and other drug-policy reforms considered long overdue by many countries are not mentioned in the final document.
A spokesman for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), David Dadge, says the outcome reflects consensus.
And he says the death penalty is not part of UN drug-control conventions.
"UNODC is not a separate organisation. We are an office of the United Nations secretariat. That secretariat seeks the abolition of the death penalty, and the Secretary-General has said that on a number of occasions. And where we have not been able to convince countries to abolish the death penalty, we've tried to convince countries to accept a moratorium on it."
And the main thrust of the recommendations to the special session of the UN General Assembly?
"It talks about the health and welfare of humankind. That's the foundation for the drug-control convention, but also for the work of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Secondly, you have shared responsibility. That's saying that all countries are either producing countries, transit countries or consumption countries. And some are all three."
At an underground station in Vienna's multicultural Ottakring district, police conduct spot checks for illegal drugs.
Almost all of those searched are from ethnic minorities.
"They've checked me three times, and I've never had any drugs," one man says, adding, "I think that, when you are a foreigner, that's just what happens."
A letter signed by a thousand people, from rock stars to heads of state, was sent to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon ahead of the New York meeting.
It says existing drug policies mostly penalise the poor and ethnic minorities, and it calls for change.
The founder of the British-based Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Danny Kushlick, says he agrees.
"The issue here is that there are an enormous number of terrible outcomes from the global drug war, one of which is the application of the death penalty for trafficking, particularly in places like Iran and China. And the fact that this process has again gone forward without any censure for nations who are killing people in the name of the drug war is appalling and increasingly shows that this is an increasingly dead process."
At a session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, in Vienna, non-government organisations such as Transform claim this is where major powers hijacked the process, ensuring the status quo prevails against the wishes of poorer countries.
Danny Kushlick explains.
"The start of the process was the anger, the total frustration, of Latin American countries, who've borne an enormous amount of the brunt of the global drug war, who've very much done the bidding of the US over many decades now, whose countries have really been screwed up by attempting to fight a drug war that only hands power to the cartels."
But David Dadge, of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, defends the process.
"It's building momentum. It's been a quite inclusive and wide-ranging process. It sought the input of academia and civil society. But at the end of the day, it has been driven by the member states."
The United Nations says global drug problems can only be met by countries working together and implementing the conventions on drugs and crime.
But Danny Kushlick says, because this review fails to deliver the reforms many countries want, they will turn to their own solutions.
"And what we think will happen out of this session, despite the fact that it has been so coopted by the reactionaries, is that it will push countries further away from that UN-held orthodoxy and into exploring action at the national level."
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