Begins of the international movement against drug trafficking

During the 1870s, an international movement to prevent drug trafficking emerged, initiated primarily by Protestant churches in England and the United States. These organizations were oriented towards their previous commitment to slavery and now opium trade. With generous support of British Quakers, the Anglo-Oriental was born in 1874Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, who soon could count on the support of a Catholic cardinal and the Archbishop of Canterbury. After about three decades of intense efforts, this movement reached a significant milestone in 1906 when the British Parliament agreed to a motion to end the opium trade from Indiaprovided. In 1907, the UK reduced its opium deliveries to China under an agreement between Great Britain and China. At the same time, China tried to prevent the cultivation of opium consumption in both the coastal cities and in the provinces, but without lasting success.

Global Drug Trading Strategies: US Take a Leadership Role

While the UK was negotiating with China at a bilateral level, the US was pursuing a global strategy to combat drug trafficking. After taking over the Philippines from Spain in 1898, the United States not only acquired an archipelago of about 7,000 islands with around six million inhabitants, but also a state opium monopoly,which sold about 130 tons of opium in 1902 to thousands of Chinese over 190 opium caves. In 1903, the colonial regime appointed episcopal missionary Charles Brent as chairman of a commission that recommended the complete renunciation of opium. Five years later, the US government completely banned opium consumption in the Philippines, which was the beginning of a long-lastingUS exposures to drug trafficking.

International conferences and first measures against opium trade

When smugglers from China threatened to undermine the Philippine ban, Bishop Brent turned to President Theodore Roosevelt in a letter and advocated an international conference to combat drug trafficking. Under Brent’s chairmanship, representatives from 13 countries met in Shanghai for a month. The conference adopted unanimous but non-binding resolutions,which protected the colonial interests of the participants. A gradual reduction in opium trade – a substance with which many participants on the market – was advocated, while drastic measures were also required against the drug morphine, which was classified as particularly dangerous, which, however, was not traded by these countries. This approach reflected thefirst of numerous contradictions that were to mark the later prohibition regime. At the same time, the American delegate Hamilton Wright, a doctor with a strong moral commitment, successfully campaigned for the adoption of the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act in the US Congress, which prohibited the import of Rauchopium in 1909.

International Agreements and National Legislation

Just two years after the first major conference, the United States organized a second international meeting in The Hague. This meeting was also under the direction of Bishop Brent and in 1912 led to the signing of an international agreement prohibiting the use of opium outside of medical purposes. The US, as an important signatory nation,In 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Act, a law that only allowed the sale and use of narcotics, was passed in 1914. While many medical institutions responsibly implement this law, some doctors disregarded the prescribed regulations and continued to issue prescriptions on a large scale. A well-known case from New York shows thatA single doctor prescribed more than 4.5 kilograms of heroin, more than 3 kilograms of morphine and around 2 kilograms of cocaine within a month. The US tax authority reacted with lawsuits against these so-called “drug doctors” for violations of the Harrison law. Between 1919 and 1922, the US Supreme Court repeatedly confirmed a strict interpretation of the law, thereby enabling the originalregulation de facto was tantamount to a ban.

Prohibition and the establishment of the first federal drugs authority

With the alcohol ban, introduced by the Volstead Act in 1919, the US Treasury established a special prohibition department, which also included its own drug offense section to ensure the enforcement of the Harrison Act. through these legislative, judicial and administrative measures against abusive doctors and the subsequentCriminal traders were formed by 1923, the Narcotic Division, the first federal drug authority in the USA.

International Agreements and Global Narcotics Control

After the end of the First World War, the newly founded League of Nations invited to a conference in Geneva in 1925, where another international opium agreement was negotiated. This agreement introduced a system for the registration of legal supplies of narcotics for the first time. Six years later, in 1931, an agreement of the League of Nations to limit the productionNarcotic substances voluntary national registration by a mandatory production ban on non-medical narcotics. Under the leadership of the League of Nations, drug control thus changed from national voluntariness to internationally binding controls of the sale and production of narcotics.

Reduction of opium production and the emergence of illegal networks

Although Southeast Asian countries retained their state opium monopolies, they took measures to reduce opium sales by about 65 percent within 15 years. An example of this is Dutch India, which reduced its opium sales from 127 tons to just 15 tons. Multilateral control efforts led to the centuries-long increase in drug useStopped and global opium production decreased from about 41,600 tons in 1907 to an estimated 16,000 tons in 1934. Similarly, legal heroin production fell from 8,900 kilograms in 1926 to only 980 kilograms in 1931.

Consequences of the Prohibition: Criminalization and Shadow Economy

Despite or precisely because of these successes, the high gains in opiate trade drove the emergence of criminal syndicates. This market development restricted the effectiveness of government controls. The prohibition thus did not lead to the eradication of drug abuse, but moved him to the area of an illegal economy, which was eventually taken by drug barons in remoteMountain regions of the so-called Third World and organized criminal syndicates in First World cities.

The development of illegal drug centers and smuggling routes

From the outset, every state intervention led to an equally strong criminal counter-movement in this way. After the League of Nations banned opium in 1925, Shanghai developed into an important center of illegal heroin smuggling and supplied a significant portion of the New York market. When the League of Nations in 1931 restricted the production of heroin in Europe,The attaché of the US Treasury in Shanghai just three years later a “sudden shift in the narcotic trade from Europe to the Orient”. Similarly, while the League of Nations measures reduced legal opium sales in Southeast Asia, the smuggling caravans from the Chinese opium mountains were now able to see the unsatisfied demand for inexpensiveSatisfied opium, not stop.

Impact on addiction development in the USA

The sharp decline in legal drug sales did not lead to the end of mass addiction in the US. Since the addicts could no longer obtain their usual drug from pharmacists or doctors, they turned to illegal street vendors. Although the Prohibition made white middle-class women disappear from the market, white working-class men filled this gap,So that around 1925 the USA counted around 200,000 drug addicts. With the surge of the huge trade in alcohol and drugs into the underground, organized crime from local gangs to nationwide syndicates that gained political influence in cities such as New York and Chicago.

Long-term consequences of drug prohibition

Although the alcohol ban lasted only 13 years until its abolition in 1933, the ban on narcotics remained permanent, Heroin made a constant source of income for organized crime and created the basis for an enormous illegal economy that was able to fully develop after the Second World War. Prohibition, on the other hand, did not change the economic oneDependence of the opium farmers in Asia’s highland regions and the Andes on the global drug trade. In remote, hard-to-reach areas with expensive transport routes and bad roads, natural drugs – due to their low weight and safe sales markets – remained the most suitable agricultural product for income generation. There it was often rebel leaders, warlordsOr drug barons who controlled opium cultivation and, as respected tribal heads, had weapons and armies to protect their trade.

Global Distribution and Control of Drug Trading

After growing and processing, the drugs entered international criminal networks via port cities, with local gangsters dominating this lucrative trade. In fact, the crime syndicates of the 1920s emerged in the major port cities and transport hubs of the world – such as New York, Chicago, Marseille, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Saigon and Sydney. Because free port economies strongdependent on the fluctuating cycles of world trade, flourishing illegal sectors developed there, whose powerful entrepreneurs controlled the employment of the lower class in areas such as prostitution, gambling, extortion and organized theft.

The change in global drug trafficking since the 1920s

The events of the 1920s thus mark a profound change in the global drug trade. Opium was traded legally for two centuries – a global trade that connected the highland poppy farmers of Asia with urban consumers, first within Asia and later also to Europe and America. The prohibition regime, introduced since the 1920s, drove thatDrug business from the legal area to the illegal sector, where it was subject to its own political rules and a shadow economy that was difficult to control was established. In the decades after the Second World War, drug prohibition promoted a global illegal economy that financed criminals, warlords, rebels, terrorists and undercover government operations. becauseThe international community did not recognize the particular character of these goods, they undeterred in the inefficient and ultimately counterproductive policies with which they tried to prevent any illegal drug use – an undertaking that was doomed to fail from the start.