International Opium Research Articles

International cooperation in combating drug trafficking: Contemporary challenges

The relevance of this topic lies in the fact that drug proliferation is a global issue that impacts the social, economic, and security dimensions of society, necessitating comprehensive measures at the international level. The aim of this study was to analyse the development of international legislation in the field of counter-narcotics, as well as methods of combating modern synthetic drugs. In the course of the study, using historical and genetic analysis, the history of the international fight against drug trafficking was analysed, starting from the International Opium Convention of 1912 under the League of Nations aegis, to the Vienna Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 under the United Nations aegis. Using a systemic approach to the study of social phenomena, the reasons for the widespread distribution of designer drugs in the 21st century were considered. The successes and problems of the implementation and activities of the “United Nations Toolkit on Synthetic Drugs”, the Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats were analysed; the plans for the creation of the European Union Drugs Agency were critically examined. The statistics of fentanyl-related deaths in the United States were studied. The cooperation between the governments of the United States and the People’s Republic of China in 2023, which focused on combating the leakage of fentanyl precursor chemicals into the hands of Mexican cartels, was investigated. A problem analysis of the updated strategy to combat fentanyl and other synthetic drugs by the United States Customs and Border Protection, thanks to which already at the beginning of 2024 more than 8 thousand pounds of fentanyl were seized, helped to identify problematic aspects of documents in this area. The results of the study showed that the international community was aware of the drug problem and adopted appropriate resolutions, however, modern international legislation needs to be improved to combat the international drug trafficking of synthetic drugs, which requires political publicity and the activity of political elites. The results obtained can be useful for public service workers engaged in anti-drug activities, for students and lecturers, as well as for public activists involved in social work with drug addicts

Opium Price Shocks and Prescription Opioids in the USA*

AbstractWe investigate the effect of international opium price shocks on the per capita dispensation of prescription opioids in the USA. Using quarterly county‐level data for 2002q4–2016q4, three main results emerge. First, reductions in opium prices significantly increase the quantity of opioids prescribed, and more so in counties with a larger pre‐existing market for pain relief, as captured by the incidence of mining sites. Second, the increase involves only natural and semi‐synthetic, but not fully‐synthetic, opioids, suggesting that the effect is moderated by the amount of raw material contained in the products. The impact is larger prior to 2010, when overdose deaths were more related to the use of legally prescribed opioids. Third, advertising expenses, stock prices and the profits of opioid producers increase following negative opium price shocks, suggesting an important role of supply‐side economic incentives.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE PROCESS OF PREVENTING AND COMBATING THE USE AND ABUSE OF DRUGS BASED ON THE INTERNATIONAL OPIUM CONVENTION AND ITS BACKGROUND

The present scientific work offered primary attention to the unfolding of historical facts, which contributed decisively to the construction and applicability of public policies aimed at effectively combating the use and abuse of illicit drugs, starting with the Opium Wars, in the first half of the nineteenth century, between China and Great Britain, with its main development being the holding of the first international event, the International Opium Convention, held at the beginning of the twentieth century, which sought to find a universal solution to the problem that already bothered and caused concern to the authorities of the time. With the participation and signing of the Treaty by important international powers, such as the United States of America, China, France, the United Kingdom, among others, in a total of thirteen nations, the first effort was born towards effectively combating the spread of illicit drugs in the world. From the aforementioned Convention, a Legal Framework was constructed and, subsequently, fully adopted or adapted to the legislation of each signatory and member country of this conference, as in the case of Brazil. The developments arising from these international events contributed in a rich, positive and correct way to the construction of this brief and simple scientific research instrument.

A.A. Savinsky – the Representative of Russia at the Opium Conference in the Hague, Netherlands 1911–1912

The article for the first time highlights Russia's participation in the First International Opium Conference of 1911 in The Hague, Netherlands. The objective of the Conference was to develop international standards for controlling the circulation of opium, morphine, and cocaine. As a result of the Conference, on January 23, 1912, the International Opium Convention was adopted, signed by representatives of 12 countries, including Russia, which laid the foundation for international regulation of the circulation of narcotic drugs. The central place in the study is given to the head of the Russian delegation, Alexander Savinsky, an experienced and outstanding diplomat who served as Director of the Chancellery of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for several years. For the first time, relying on archival sources, his biography and the stages of his career as a diplomat are traced. The paper shows that Russia's participation in the Opium Conference was due to both prestige considerations and a desire to demonstrate solidarity with its European allies, as well as an understanding of the potential threat of the uncontrolled spread of drugs. A.A. Savinsky, along with his colleagues, immediately became actively involved in the work of the Conference. Per the instructions received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Russian delegation refrained from submitting concrete proposals for consideration of the Conference, limiting itself to supporting the initiatives of the delegations of Great Britain, France, and the USA. As it is shown in the article, this tactic was determined the fact that drug trafficking was not an immediate problem for the Russian Empire at that time, and as A.A. Savinsky showed in his speech at the Conference, the Russian authorities were quite successful in fighting against illegal distribution of drugs. The article is based on the documentary materials from the Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire introduced into academic circulation for the first time.

China and the Origin of International Opium Commission

This year’s International Anti-Drug Shanghai Forum and International Symposium on the History of the Relationship between Society, Government and Science and Psychoactive Substances was named “Changing Minds: Societies, States, the Sciences and Psychoactive Substances in History.” The forum was held at Shanghai University in conjunction with the biennial meeting of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society (ADHS) and took its cue from recent shifts in attitudes toward and understandings of intoxicants and psychoactive substances, exploring inner drivers for change in ideas about such materials from a historical perspective.

“Castaways of the White Pleasure”: Six Decades of Hungarian Discourse on Narcotics

In 1924 Hungary ratified and codified the 1912 Hague International Opium Convention, the first international drug control treaty. However, the new law that regulated and later criminalized the usage of narcotics in Hungary was not the result of internal debate and had no real domestic political will behind it. In contrary, this law was the result of external demands as Article 230 of the post-World War I Trianon Treaty required Hungary to join the Hague Convention. This paper examines what the contemporary Hungarian attitude towards drugs and drug users was. In order to answer how this attitude developed and changed, the following study examines how the contemporary media, artists and intellectuals and various governmental and non-governmental organizations discussed and represented the issue of narcotics.

The Pharmakon: Concept Figure, Image of Transgression, Poetic Practice ed. by Hermann Herlinghaus

Reviewed by: The Pharmakon: Concept Figure, Image of Transgression, Poetic Practice ed. by Hermann Herlinghaus Laurence M. V. Totelin Hermann Herlinghaus, ed. The Pharmakon: Concept Figure, Image of Transgression, Poetic Practice. Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag Winter, 2018. viii + 392 pp. €38.00 (978-3-8253-6740-4). The ancient Greek word pharmakon has three main meanings: that of healing drug, that of poison, and that of magic potion. Since the third meaning is relatively close to that of "poison," one can say, together with the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, that pharmakon is a dipole concept. Its two poles, however, cannot be construed simply in terms of bad and good; the Greeks did not conceive of the pharmakon in a moralizing, dogmatic way. This volume takes the Greek notion of pharmakon as a way of entry into a reflection on the complexities of the "pharmacological imagination," a reflection that avoids the simplistic logic of good versus bad. It aims to challenge and problematize a narrow understanding of the notion of "drug"—a narrow "pharmacologicalism"—where drugs are reduced to their bio- and neurochemical effects, and where their use is classified as good (under medical supervision, controlled) or bad (addiction). Instead, the notion of "drug" must be contextualized and historicized, its appearances in literature and philosophy must be analyzed. In the opening chapter Mike Jay demonstrates that the pejorative meaning of "drug" as an illegal psychoactive substance is relatively new. He shows that the concept was codified in law only in the twentieth century, starting with the [End Page 453] Hague International Opium Conference in 1912 and culminating with the 1961 UN Single Convention on Drugs, where drug addiction was termed an "evil." Very soon, however, with the rise of the counterculture, the consensus around "bad" drugs began to fracture. The pharmakon always resists simplistic moralizing conceptualizations. There follow thirteen varied and thought-provoking chapters, exploring themes as diverse as the north-south and transatlantic dynamics in the conceptualization of tobacco (Hermann Herlinghaus and Arne Romanowski); the Chinese American author Maxine Hong Kingston as a voice of the 1960s counterculture (Agniezka Soltysik Monnet); narratives of courtly love written in the twelfth century (Cornelia Wild); the theme of intoxication in the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire's work (Diemo Landgraf); and the nineteenth-century experimental project with hashish conducted by the French psychiatrist Moreau de Tours (Katrin Solhdju). Like the pharmakon, the volume cannot be easily summarized and classified. The four sections into which Herlinghaus divided the essays (renarrations into the twentieth century; hemispheric scenarios—cultural explorations; aesthetics and poetology; interfaces) are relatively loose and flow into each other in a fruitful way—rigidity would be counterproductive here. A personal highlight was the chapter "Promise and Deceit: Pharmakos, Drug Replacement Therapy, and the Perils of Experience" by Todd Meyers (which had been previously published in Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry 38 [2014]). Here the author explores the lies he dealt with in his anthropological fieldwork among adolescents abusing heroin, with a focus on the touching story of "Megan" and "Cedric." Meyers argues that the Greek notion of pharmakos, the scapegoat that cleansed a city of its evil, is good to think with when studying addict-patients. He movingly writes "the pharmakos-pharmakon (pharmakeus) is a lie told in order to make the act of healing possible. And the patient-subject is, by necessity, ruined" (p. 334). Plato's Phaedrus and Derrida's "La pharmacie de Platon" (1972) quite naturally play a prominent role in this collection of essays. Martin Treml offers a good chapter on the topic of the pharmakon in ancient Greek traditions. The volume, however, could perhaps have included more on the ancient world. At times, authors appeared to derive their knowledge of the Phaedrus mostly from Michael Rinella's Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient Athens (2010)—there is a wealth of other scholarship on the topic. Nor did the editor settle for a single spelling of "Phaedrus" and other frequently mentioned Greek names. But it is perhaps facile for a historian of ancient medicine to pick on such small points. Generally, I found the volume engaging and stimulating. I particularly enjoyed seeing the theme of love as a drug emerge in several...

Citizenship, the Nation and the Race: China and the International Opium System, 1912–1931

Citizenship, the Nation and the Race: China and the International Opium System, 1912–1931

Anglicanism and Interventionism: Bishop Brent, The United States, and the British Empire in the First World War

Although largely overlooked by historians, the worldwide Anglican Communion proved to be a major force in mobilising support for the Allied cause throughout the First World War. This article examines the wartime career of Bishop Charles Henry Brent, a Canadian-born bishop of America's Protestant Episcopal Church, who is usually remembered as a missionary, an ecumenist, and as a campaigner against the international opium trade. This article revisits Brent's wartime career, illustrating his three-fold significance as a contemporary symbol of Episcopalian power and influence in the United States, as an epitome of Episcopalian Anglophilia, and as a morale-boosting presence in wartime Britain.

Building the «Opium Evil» Consensus – The International Opium Commissionof Shanghai

Building the «Opium Evil» Consensus. The International Opium Commission of Shanghai Global narcotics control in the twentieth century developed based on the consensus that the use of drugs for non-medical purposes was morally despicable and therefore needed to be prohibited. This premise was first agreed upon by the International Opium Commission of Shanghai in 1909 and resulted from negotiations between delegations from China, the U.S. and the British Empire. Their differing perspectives on opium and on the opium trade shaped their positions of negotiation: all had to some extent experienced domestic opium problems but their economic interest in the opium trade did not align. Open negotiation and institutionalized international cooperation boosted moral arguments against what was conceived as the «opium evil». Under these conditions the U.S. and China managed to build the foundation for a prohibitive global narcotics regime that fit their purposes.

Myanmar. Opium and empire in Southeast Asia: Regulating consumption in British Burma By Ashley Wright Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. 214. Appendix, Notes, Bibliography, Index.

Opium and empire in Southeast Asia: Regulating consumption in British Burma By ASHLEY WRIGHT Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. 214. Appendix, Notes, Bibliography, Index. doi:10.1017/S0022463414000757 Opium was a mainstay of colonial revenues throughout Asia during the high colonial age. The Dutch, French, Spanish, and, briefly, Americans all sold opium to their subjects through one state-led scheme or another. Britain was the key player in this vast enterprise. It sold opium to its own subjects in India and Southeast Asia and to legions of others in China and elsewhere. And it was largely British opium from the poppy fields of Bengal that flowed through government and private hands to smokers in the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, and countless other markets in Asia. Opium and empire in Southeast Asia tells a small part of this large story. It traces how Britain went about selling opium to its subjects in British Burma and how its officials managed to square this practice with both their imperial priorities and their imperial consciences. Opium was significant enough in the kingdom of Burma for King Bodawhpaya (r. 1782-1819) to declare it a capital crime. Yet, as the English East India Company moved into Arakan and Tenasserim--outlying territories of the kingdom's large mandala--after the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824, among the first institutions it imported from British Bengal was the retail opium-licensing system, alongside similar revenue-farming arrangements for gambling and toddy shops. A certain amount of trial and error followed. A.D. Maingy, the first commissioner of Tenasserim, became an early critic of selling opium to native subjects. By the time the Company seized Lower Burma (Pegu) following the Second Anglo-Burmese War, certain assumptions about opium were in place. In this discourse, it was perfectly all right to peddle opium to some colonial subjects, including Chinese, Indians, and certain local ethnic minorities such as the Shan and Kachin; no ill effects appeared to accompany the practice among these groups. But it was not all right to peddle opium to ethnic Burmans, whose childlike ways and self-indulgent habits made them prey to addiction, sloth, and crime. Britain's solution to this dilemma, never perfectly executed, was to regulate opium sales so that consumption among Burmans was curtailed, if not completely eliminated, and so that profits flowed freely from selling opium to the others. This strategy was the essence of Chief Commissioner Charles Aitchison's landmark 1881 memorandum, adopted as law in 1891. Wright's book emphasises the recurring policy debates around this strategy--as Britain completed its conquest of Burma in 1885, executed the India-wide Royal Commission on Opium inquiry of the 1890s (in response to anti-opium sentiments in Britain), confronted rising international and much-resented American pressure in the twentieth century in one international opium conference after another, and as reformist Burmese nationalists agitated for prohibition from within the colony itself. To the end, as Wright amply demonstrates, colonial officials nimbly adopted the rhetoric of opium suppression even as they employed every strategy possible to prevent or delay the end of government opium sales. …

Cannabis Prohibition in Egypt, 1880–1939: From Local Ban to League of Nations Diplomacy

This article examines Egypt's stance on cannabis prohibition, from the 1870s ban on cultivation and consumption, to the role Egypt played in the international ban on traffic in cannabis, in the 1924–25 International Opium Conference. Relying on Egyptian polemic writing, British correspondences and League of Nations documentation, this article argues that elite concerns with national modernity, rather than merely British colonial interests, motivated Egyptian drug policy and diplomacy. This article further demonstrates the effects of the Egyptian ban on consumption, as well as on production – across and beyond national borders.

The International Opium Conference of 1924–25 and Japan

I do not understand very clearly what has happened at the Opium Conference except that Japan is taking sides with America against us. This no doubt means that Japan is glad to show America that in spite of the exclusion clause she has no objection to friendly cooperation on occasion. It is also a hint to us. . . . Japan also sometimes feels it prudent to defer to this same powerful country though in so doing she may to her great regret inconvenience her former ally.This is what Sir Charles N. E. Eliot (1862–1931), the British Ambassador to Japan from 1920 to 1926, wrote home regarding the Japanese representatives' stance at the International Opium Conference held in Geneva from November 1924 to February 1925. At the initial meetings of the conference, unexpected arguments between the representatives of Britain and Japan puzzled the British officials. This paper examines why the Japanese delegates took such a firm attitude on the occasion, and why Japan failed to adopt policies which might have altered the situation.

Opium Smoking in Late Imperial China: A Reconsideration

A social problem in one country may often be held up as an example to others, but it is rare for it to bring forth an internationally coordinated response with a world-wide application. One of these rarities is the campaign against ‘hard’ drugs. While liquor laws differ widely from country to country, the modern system of laws against cocaine and the opiates have been established by international convention. These arrangements evolved out of the measures taken to help imperial China with its opium problem, which was regarded, at least in part, as a foreign responsibility arising out of the vast quantities of Indian opium which had been imported by foreigners into China throughout the nineteenth century, often in questionable circumstances. The behaviour of the opium merchants and their governments seemed all the more reprehensible because of the encouragement which it gave to the Chinese to break their own government's laws against opium smoking and poppy cultivation. The first International Opium Commission met in Shanghai in 1909 and passed a number of resolutions to help China; it also laid down principles of co-operation between producing and consuming countries which tended logically to expand in scope and force, leading to a global system of control of all narcotic substances, and to the institutionalization of these arrangements under the League and the United Nations.

International Control of Narcotic Drugs and International Economic Law

For over fifty years there has been international co-operation in the control of narcotic drugs. This co-operation has expanded in scope and depth as the years have passed since January 23, 1912, when the International Opium Convention was signed at The Hague. Four more conventions and three protocols deal with the international control of narcotics, and two agreements aim at suppressing opium-smoking in the Far East. The most recent convention, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs signed at New York on March 30, 1961, does little to advance the steps already taken but rather consolidates much of the work accomplished in the preceding years.

The Ecumenical Thought of Bishop Charles Henry Brent

Episcopalian Bishop Charles Henry Brent was one of the outstanding pioneers in the modern ecumenical movement. His career as an international figure began in 1901 with an appointment at the age of 39 to be first missionary bishop of the Philippine Islands. From this mission vantage point his influence extended around the world. In 1909 President Taft chose him to be President of the First International Opium Commission in Shanghai. During the last year of the First World War he served as Senior Headquarters Chaplain to the American Expeditionary Forces. But Brent' greatest achievement was to be in the realm of church unity. He founded and inspired the Faith and Order movement, and presided over its First World Conference at Lausanne, Switzerland in 1927.

International Control of Narcotics

Narcotic drugs came into widespread use in western medical practice during the latter part of the nineteenth century. They had, in their crude form, been known for their so-called beneficial effects for centuries and had been extensively used, both therapeutically and nontherapeutically, for their calming, intoxicating, and presumed curative properties. Their introduction, however, shortly led to their abuse, and it soon became necessary to try to limit their availability. Accordingly, control mechanisms were early established in most western countries, whose prime objective was the prevention of individual access to these drugs, except by medical prescription. The imperative demand for drugs by the addict and the impossibility of its satisfaction through legitimate channels, however, encouraged the growth of an extensive and lucrative illicit traffic; and if drugs could not thus be obtained domestically, they were procured in foreign countries where control was either nonexistent or less effective. As a result, even the most effective national control was rendered largely nugatory, and the campaign against narcotics abuse came to be recognized as a truly international problem. It was, in fact, the opium-smoking habit in China that led Theodore Roosevelt, in I908, to summon to Shanghai the first international gathering for the purpose of planning concerted government action against the abuse of narcotic drugs. It was not, strictly speaking, an international conference, but rather a commission to discuss the problem and recommend possible solutions; and its membership was comprised of those governments within whose far eastern territories opium smoking was a problem. This commission proceeded to lay the groundwork for the first international drug conference, which was held at The Hague and which concluded the first international instrument in this field, generally referred to as The Hague International Opium Convention of I912. This convention did not, unfortunately, meet with immediate success; signatures and ratifications were slow in forthcoming before World War I supervened in 1914 and halted all progress. The experience was, in fact, so disappointing, that at the war's conclusion, the victorious powers decided vigorously to underwrite the international campaign against narcotic drug abuse. To this end, two steps were taken:

Stutz et al. v. Bureau of Narcotics of Department of Treasury of United States et al.

Treaties — Operation of — Power of Congress of the United States to Enact Legislation Necessary to Carry into Effect Provisions of Treaties — International Opium Convention of 1912.

The Adjustment of the International Opium Administration to an Eventual Dissolution of the League of Nations

The Adjustment of the International Opium Administration to an Eventual Dissolution of the League of Nations

TURKEY

<h3>The Opium Question</h3> In regard to publications made recently by some foreign papers, especially Egyptian, concerning the illicit introduction of opium from Turkey, the Turkish official press replies: Because the object of the international opium convention of the League of Nations in 1921 was the ultimate restriction of opium cultivation, and considering from the economic point of view that the cultivation of opium is of importance to Turkey, we did not accept the league's invitation at the time. Besides, there are in Istanbul three commercial laboratories concerned with the manufacture of opium preparations and derivatives for medicinal use. That makes Turkey not only an exporter of opium but also a manufacturer of opium preparations and derivatives. On the other hand, Turkey, being through no convention under any obligation, has never lost sight of the humanitarian point of view and under no circumstances has this point of view been departed from.