Foundations of the international drug control regime: Nineteenth century to the Second World War

This chapter outlines the principal factors contributing to national governments' negotiation of globally applicable rules that defined the boundaries of the licit drug trade. A centuries-old, increasingly robust, unregulated traffic in opium across Asia proved so problematic by the early twentieth century that states deemed it necessary to act. In forging a series of international treaties, governments protected domestic priorities, ensured low prices for medicinal substances, and focused on limiting the supply of the key agricultural raw materials: opium and coca. States sanctioned the creation of international regulatory bodies to track the licit trade and enforce the rules. In certain respects, the regime proved successful, but the treaties also created incentives for entrepreneurial smugglers that fostered a permanent illicit traffic. In the first half of the twentieth century, states determined the basic pitch of the playing field; the fundamental thrust of those rules, institutions, and practices remain intact today.
Today's global "drug problem" is inextricably intertwined with the international regulatory system intended to address the issue. This co-dependent relationship evolved over the last three centuries as an unprecedented array of forces interacted on the world stage. Over the first half of the twentieth century, those factors combined to generate a formal set of arrangements designed to limit humans' access to powerful psychoactive substances. The rules and structures created by drug control advocates 100 years ago illuminate the perennial dilemmas inherent in the "drug question" (McAllister, 2000).