• Achieve full application of the Hemispheric Drug Strategy 2020 and its Plan of Action 2021-2025 in OAS member states’ policies and, consequently, an alignment with the commitments acquired in the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly of 2016 (UNGASS 2016) and within the general framework of the United Nations 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development.
• Strengthen mutual trust, dialogue, and hemispheric cooperation to confront, with greater efficiency and efficacy, the diverse aspects of the world drug problem.
• Follow-up on the individual and collective progress of hemispheric efforts of all countries participating in the Mechanism, indicating both the results attained as well as the obstacles faced by the countries.
• Promote, within the CICAD framework, the following actions based on the evaluation results:
  • Support OAS member states in the planning and execution of their national drug plans;
  • Contribute to the strengthening of member states' capacity to confront the drug problem; and
  • Stimulate the development of technical assistance and training programs and the exchange of experiences and best practices according to each country’s needs. 
• Produce and periodically publish national evaluation reports and hemispheric briefs that provide reliable information on the drug policy situation in the countries for each of the thematic areas in the current Hemispheric Plan of Action on Drugs.
• Strengthen multilateral participation to ensure an objective evaluation of the member states' efforts to address the drug problem.
• Encourage, through CICAD, the strengthening of cooperation and coordination with other regions, the United Nations, and other international entities.

The Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism (MEM) is an instrument for measuring anti-drug activities carried out by the member states of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD, by its Spanish language acronym). This measurement is carried out through the preparation of reports evaluating the progress of drug control.

The reports produced within the MEM process are written by government experts appointed by the OAS member states. Each country is entitled to one main expert and alternate experts, with the exception that each country has only one voice and that the experts do not participate in the evaluation of their own country. In this way, the Governmental Expert Group (GEG) is composed of a multidisciplinary group that guarantees objectivity and the multilateral component of the MEM.

Since its establishment in 1998, the MEM has contributed to the OAS member states' improvements of a wide array of national drug polices and strategies. These include:

• Ratifying international conventions and bilateral agreements.
• Conducting studies/surveys on drug use, at a national, university, and school level.
• Implementing and strengthening of demand reduction programs.
• Enactment of laws and control regulations on chemical substances and pharmaceutical products.
• Establishing intelligence information exchange mechanisms for the control of drug trafficking.

In its eighth round, the MEM operational process was reviewed to carry out annual thematic evaluations, in accordance with the Hemispheric Plan of Action 2021-2025, during its first three years of execution, concluding with a comprehensive evaluation in its final year. Moreover, at the end of each thematic evaluation, a hemispheric brief will be prepared on regional trends derived from the national reports.