The Art of Suppression: Pleasure, Panic and Prohibition since 1800 by Christopher Snowdon

Author:Christopher Snowdon [Snowdon, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
Publisher: Little Dice
Published: 2012-05-29T06:00:00+00:00

The worldwide war on drugs

America’s drug war began with a complacent shrug and the global crusade was set in motion with similar nonchalance. Most countries regarded the International Opium Convention, as agreed in the Hague in 1912, as an aspiration rather than a commitment. Although intended to take force in late 1914, this was contingent on thirty-five countries ratifying it in the meantime. Since only twelve nations had bothered to send a representative to the conference in the first place, this was a tall order. Few governments were prepared to lose millions of dollars in tax revenue by acting unilaterally and only seven countries had made any attempt to stamp out drug use by the time the First World War ended in 1918.

But it was the war that allowed matters to be sped along, just as it had for the alcohol prohibitionists. Not only did Germany’s defeat mean that the world’s leading drug manufacturer was silenced, but the Americans managed to insert a clause into the Versailles Treaty which automatically ratified the International Opium Convention. All the nations that had fought in the war were thereby compelled to restrict and regulate the sale, production and export of opiates. Narcotics control effectively became an issue for the League of Nations—founded in the same year and replaced with the United Nations in 1945—which put pressure on the neutral countries to sign up to drug prohibition.

The passage of domestic drug laws continued to be characterised by lethargic insouciance. In the UK, the right to consume opiates was one of the many liberties lost under the Defence of the Realm Act during the war. The Versailles Treaty demanded a permanent peacetime solution and the Dangerous Drugs Act (1920) was the result. Largely based on the Harrison Act, it remained the cornerstone of British narcotics legislation for the next fifty years but was debated by just six MPs when it came before Parliament.262 Five years later, marijuana was added to the Dangerous Drugs Act after a debate lasting less than five minutes.263

By the time the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed in 1933, all the fundamental aspects of the War on Drugs had been set in stone. All that remained was to close loopholes and increase enforcement. A series of conferences held in Geneva in the 1920s and 1930s tightened regulations and limited the production of drugs to a level deemed sufficient for the world’s legitimate medical needs. New international treaties were drawn up to criminalise possession and ban exports. In the USA, the price of a drug-dispensing tax rose and the number of registered suppliers dwindled. Possession of drugs became a crime in most US states. The manufacture of heroin was banned outright in 1924. Patent medicines were outlawed. Prison sentences got longer.

In 1937, the sale of marijuana was put under the same limitations as cocaine and opiates after a Congressional debate lasting half an hour.264 Most states had already banned the weed after a wave of hateful propaganda in the Prohibition era. Almost a carbon

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