5.1 History of International Drug Controls
The Shanghai Opium Commission (1909), a U.S. led initiative (UNODC, n.d.; Sinha, 2001), was the start of the development of international drug control efforts. Over the course of the next 40 years, numerous meetings of the international community were held, resulting in the formation of drug conventions/treaties aimed at strengthening, enhancing, and expanding upon an international drug control system (See Chronology: 100 Years of Drug Control below). Two key developments that occurred during this period of time were the formation of the League of Nations (1919), at the end of World War I, and its subsequent replacement by the United Nations (UN) (1945), formed at the end of World War II – both of which centralized the administration of drug control (Boister, 1996; Heilmann, 2011; Sinha, 2001).
Beginning in 1948, efforts began to consolidate the numerous existing drug treaties (Gregg, 1964; Heilmann, 2011; Sinha, 2001). This process took 13 years, resulting in the Single Convention (1961), one of three parts of the current international system of drug control. The international drug control efforts that followed include: The Convention on Psychotropic Drugs (1971); The Single Protocol (1972) (an amendment to the Single Convention, 1961), and The Convention Against the Illicit Traffic in Narcotics Drugs and Psychoactive Substances (1988) (UNODC, n.d.). Two constant themes run through the international drug control conventions, from 1909 to the present. The first is the differentiation between legitimate use and illegitimate/illicit use of substances, with legitimate use being for scientific and/or medical purposes (Sinha, 2001). The second is the reinforcement and legitimation of prohibitionist/criminalization policies, both nationally and internationally, as the means by which to control the illegitimate/illicit manufacture, trade, and use of psychoactive substances.
