Origin of International Control
Under Spanish rule, there had been an opium monopoly in the Philippines from which opium smokers could obtain supplies. The newly arrived U.S. government decided to reinstitute the monopoly and use the profits to help support universal education there.
However, U.S. missionary and political leaders strongly rejected the proposal. The impasse led to the creation of an investigating committee appointed by the Philippine government that included Charles Henry Brent, Protestant Episcopal bishop of the Philippines, who would become the key figure in establishing an international campaign against narcotics. The committee examined control measures used in other areas of the Orient and recommended a gradual reduction approach for opium users in the Philippine Islands. The U.S. Congress took a more severe stance, mandating total prohibition of opium and derivatives, except for medical purposes, for Filipinos in 1905 and all other groups (mainly Chinese) in the Islands in 1908.It was obvious to the U.S. government that its meager enforcement could not prevent the smuggling of opium into the Philippines. Conflict with China over the treatment of Chinese aliens in the United States along with the crucial events of 1906 in China and the United Kingdom provided Bishop Brent with a rare opportunity. He wrote President Theodore Roosevelt urging that the United States convene a meeting of relevant nations to assist China with its antiopium crusade. Successful control of narcotics traffic would aid the Philippines and the United States, and might also placate China. The acceptance of Brent’s idea resulted in a survey of the U.S. domestic drug problem and the convening of the International Opium Commission at Shanghai in February 1909. Brent was chosen to preside over the 13 nations that gathered there. The commission’s rather noncontroversial resolutions were used by the United States to convene the International Opium Conference, a treaty-making body, at the Hague in December 1911. The dozen nations represented at the conference, again chaired by Brent, adopted an International Opium Convention in January 1912.
This treaty also included provisions for the control of cocaine. Control would be enforced primarily through the domestic legislation of several nations: However, the treaty would not come into force until every nation on earth had ratified. This difficult requirement arose out of the fear of some producing and manufacturing nations that, without universal adoption, the nonadhering nations would be able to dominate a lucrative market.At a conference in June 1914, it was decided that any nation ratifying the treaty could put it into effect without waiting for unanimity. The United States chose to do so, and enacted the Harrison Narcotic Act in December 1914. World War I slowed ratification, but when the fighting ended, several of the victorious nations, including the United Kingdom and the United States, added the Hague Convention to the Versailles Treaty, mandating that ratification of the Peace Treaty include the Opium Convention. It was as a result of this requirement, and not of any domestic drug crisis, that the United Kingdom enacted the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1920. In later decades, especially in the United States, the origins of this act were forgotten, and the provision of opiates to some addicts allowed under the act was claimed to have solved a serious addiction problem in the United Kingdom. This is an example, common in the area of drug policy, of trying to base solutions to an addiction problem on the laws or practices of another nation without taking into consideration differences in history and culture.