Social Poison: The Culture and Politics of Opiate Control in Britain and France, 1821–1926

3 The Era of National Narcotics Control: The Drug Wars Begin

Although a global system of narcotics control would not come into effect until the 1920s, many nations—including Britain and France—instituted new domestic regulations to limit the consumption and use of opiates in the first two decades of the twentieth century. International forces and universal concerns about public health were at play, but nations also had their own reasons for instituting tighter controls over narcotics, ones that influenced both the timing and the character of their drug control initiatives. In Britain, the direct impetus for opiate control was fear of economic problems, while in France, tighter regulations were put in place to address concerns about what opiate use could do to the political and ideological health of the nation during a time of war. As in the development of each country’s anti-narcotic nationalism, the push for more enthusiastic state action to control opiates reflected broader conceptions of what defined the nation and opiates’ potential to destroy it. The international opium agreements of the pre–World War I era helped set the terms of the drug control enterprise, but distinctly national understandings of what the “drug problem” was remained intact well into the interwar period, shaping how Britain and France set goals, formulated policies, and undertook the task of limiting the flow and consumption of opiates in their territories. Thus, even though the war on drugs was a global one waged c h a p t e r ฀ t h r e e The Era of National Narcotics Control The Drug Wars Begin Drug addiction is, at bottom, a matter of drug supply. —Malcolm Delevingne The Era of National Narcotics Control 87 mostly in the twentieth century, it remained largely influenced by national styles of thinking about opiates that had developed at the end of the nineteenth . The International Context Around the time that tighter narcotics control measures would take effect in Britain and France, a movement to restrict the use of opiates to medical purposes was developing throughout the world. By 1908, many industrialized countries had issued laws and regulations to control the commerce in and use of opiates. This coincided with the development of an international campaign to assist China as it tried to check the spread of the opium habit. In 1903, Britain and the United States agreed to cease morphine shipments into China, and in 1906, the Chinese government issued edicts calling for the suppression of domestic opium cultivation and use. Driven partly by a humanitarian impulse to help China and partly by a desire to curry favor with the Chinese for commercial advantage, several nations—including Britain and France—agreed to help. The British pledged to decrease imports of Indian opium into China by ten percent every year, beginning in 1908, and the French promised to shut down opium dens in their concessions on Chinese territory if other colonial powers did the same.1 European initiatives to support China were not as enthusiastic as those of a new colonial power in the Far East—the United States. Shortly after gaining control over the Philippines in the Spanish-American War, U.S. officials and clergy tried to curb the opium habit in their newly acquired territory, only to be frustrated by the prevalence of smuggling throughout the island chain. Furthermore, as the only colonial power in the region without a foothold on the Asian mainland, the United States was particularly eager to assist Chinese anti-opium efforts in order to secure favorable trade agreements. Based on its experience in the Philippines and its knowledge of China’s history with the drug, the United States believed that the only effective way to combat the opium evil in the Far East was through global cooperation. Eager to take action, the United States called for an international conference to address the drug problem in East Asia, and it organized a meeting that convened in Shanghai in February 1909.2 Despite the United States’best efforts to forge a consensus on how to place more stringent controls on opium, the representatives at the conference were unwilling to jeopardize their own countries’economic interests. Nonetheless, 88 Social Poison the nations present at the Shanghai Commission, with the exception of Portugal , agreed on nine resolutions confirming the necessity of an international effort to help China suppress the opium habit. More important for the future of participating countries’ domestic drug laws was the commission’s call for each nation...