Banned chemical weapons are still in use today after the 1997 CWC which bans the production and use of chemical weapons worldwide.

Chemical weapons laws should be better enforced by governments  around the world. 

Chemical weapons are mostly invisible, odorless, tasteless, and lethal at tiny doses which is the reason why they are banned and popular. The recent use of chemical weapons against individuals was on a Russian opposition politician called Alexei Navalny. The drip of the synthetic chemical was put in his food which no one noticed including himself until he became very ill from it.

People will agree with the use of chemical weapons because they can be used as a deterrent for developing countries against rich countries. Chemical weapons are pretty easy to produce compared to nuclear bombs which are also used as deterrents. What I mean by “easy” is that they can be produced with non-illicit chemicals in a pesticide factory. Most of these nerve gases are based on pesticides. Other people will say that chemical weapons can help developing countries fight against rebels/insurgents. This is true, but here is evidence that the advantages don’t compensate for the disadvantages.

Chemical weapons are hard to control when deployed because the chance of heavy collateral damage is much higher compared to regular weapons. For example In World War 1, the Germans decided to bust tanks filled with chlorine gas to kill the opposing soldiers at a distance which it did very well. The problem with releasing all that gas it can migrate to different regions which it did and ended up killing some of their allies ‘ soldiers which was unintentional. 

Other downsides are that chemical weapons have similar characteristics to weaponized anthrax which is being able to spread uncontrollably. If a person becomes in contact with chemical weapons, they can poison the people around them which those people can poison other people around them depending on how much got in contact with them. Weapons such as bombs can do a lot of collateral damage, but they are much easier to control and the damage they do is a lot more predictable.

In the aftermath of chemical weapons attacks, the whole affected area needs to be cleaned up which is a very expensive process, because every drip in the area is a lethal dose for someone.

This makes them worse than cleaning up bombed areas as construction workers just have to knock down the building or repair it unless the site is filled with bombs that haven’t detonated such as landmines and cluster bombs which are all banned weapons.  

Synthetic poisons are a major threat to the entire world. Because they are cheap and do a lot of damage as well having a similar trait to weaponized anthrax (banned weapon)

To solve this issue, Governments that are creating these weapons by putting should be pressured to stop by restricting their oil supply as an example,  have inspection teams go in and inspect industrial/agricultural chemical factories regularly if they are manufacturing anything illegal and set up other teams that check chemical storages and manifests if the government is importing those chemical weapons.