The stages of the international drug control system

Abstract

This paper argues that the history of the international drug control system of the League of Nations/United Nations can be divided into three cumulative stages. The first stage, the supply stage, dates back to early part of the 20th century, and aimed to reduce the supply of drugs through careful monitoring and trade regulations. This has remained the dominant control strategy. In the middle of the century, demand control, in the form of treatment and criminalization of the individual user, began to appear. This was the least successful stage. Finally, in the 1980s, the dangers of the drug traffic assumed an important place on the international agenda and measures to reduce drug-related organized crime were enacted. To date, this has been a process of proliferation of regulatory strategies. Recently, new challenges to the international drug control system have emerged, including well-funded non-governmental organizations critical of the war on drugs, and the adoption of harm reduction measures in national policies around the world.

Politics and science in classifying the dangers of drugs

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“…The controls on drug manufacturing were included in the 1925 and 1931 treaties despite the opposition of countries with strong pharmaceutical industries, such as the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland. Only with the 1936 convention did illicit drug trafficking become the central concern of an international treaty (Carstairs, 2005). Almost paradoxically, none of the early treaties entailed any binding provision to limit the production of opium itself.…”

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“…Nevertheless, the drug question before the 1950s had always intertwined with issues of "national security and economic growth, competing policy objectives, maneuvering for bureaucratic position, defense of cultural prerogatives, and the vicissitudes of personality" (McAllister, 2000: 2). Moreover, this early stage of international narcotics control aimed to reduce the supply of drugs through careful monitoring in drugproducing non-Western countries (Carstairs, 2005).…”