Page 230 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol Two

drugs 579

In the course of history many more people have died for
their drink and their dope than have died for their religion
or their country. • Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

alcohol traffic as among the many imperialist crimes the duction and export regulations. The 1971 Psychotropic
French had committed against his people. Substances Convention brought several new categories of
drugs, including hallucinogens, amphetamines, and bar-
Restriction and biturates, into the international control regime.
Prohibition None of this diplomacy ended international drug traf-
Revulsion against imperial drug profiteering was one ficking, though it did reduce its volume and alter its char-
important reason for the worldwide movement to restrict acter. Criminal syndicates and guerrilla armies played an
or prohibit drug trafficking. The reformers initially con- increasingly important role in the clandestine manufac-
centrated on China, where nationalists and Christian mis- ture and illegal distribution of regulated drugs. Illicit traf-
sionaries had long been concerned with opium smoking. ficking became concentrated in chaotic or weakly gov-
The problem originated with opium imports from British erned regions, such as China between the world wars or
India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Though Colombia in the late twentieth century. Protracted civil
forbidden by Chinese imperial edict, the import trade war was good for the illicit drug business. Contending
flourished, and acquired legal status after the British pre- factions knew they could acquire cash for weapons by
vailed in the Opium Wars of 1839–1842 and 1856– protecting local growers and smugglers, and appropriat-
1858. Chinese domestic production rose even faster ing a share of their profits.
than imports; by the early twentieth century the Chinese The international movement to rein in the narcotic traf-
were growing most of their own opium in vast poppy fic was part of a larger campaign against the abuse of psy-
fields.The traffic threatened the nation’s health, morale, choactive substances. By the late nineteenth and early
and productivity. Chinese officials wanted it stopped. So twentieth centuries the world was awash with manufac-
did Britain’s reformist and temperance-minded Liberal tured drugs, including cheap spirits and mass-produced
government, which came to power in 1906.The follow- cigarettes. A growing body of medical evidence testified
ing year, 1907, the British began to phase out Indian to the toxic effects of these substances, both for their
opium exports, conditional upon the Chinese eliminating users and for children exposed in the womb. Urbaniza-
domestic production at a similar rate. In 1913 the India- tion and industrialization had made intoxication more
China opium trade officially came to an end. The initial wasteful and dangerous. No one wanted drunken opera-
(if imperfect) success of this joint effort set a precedent for tors around heavy machinery, or behind the wheels of the
supply control, which became the central object of drug growing fleet of motor vehicles.The new industrial real-
diplomacy for the rest of the twentieth century. ities also gave rise to a cosmopolitan progressivism, a
By 1912 diplomats from Britain, the United States, conviction that governments should restrain economic
and other nations had hammered out the Hague Opium activity that generated inordinate social costs. To many
Convention, a treaty aimed at limiting the manufacture progressive reformers, poisoning people for profit fell into
and consumption of opium and coca-based drugs to the the same category as rapacious monopoly, unrestrained
amount required for medical purposes.At first Germany, industrial pollution, and adulterated food. All merited
whose pharmaceutical industry could produce large government suppression.
amounts of narcotics, put off signing the agreement. But, What made drug suppression tricky was that excep-
after defeat in World War I (1914–1918), Germany and tions had to be made for legitimate medical use. Even in
its ally Turkey, a leading opium producer, were required the United States during Prohibition (1920–1933),
to ratify the Hague Convention as part of the peace medicinal alcohol was exempted and widely available
process. Over the next half century diplomats and drug- through prescription. By the last third of the twentieth
control bureaucrats negotiated further amendments and century the problem of medical exemption was com-
treaties, the upshot of which was tighter narcotic pro- monly resolved by a system of “scheduling.” That meant