Presentation for Canadian Senate on International Drug Diplomacy

William B. McAllister, Ph.D.
University of Virginia

  BRIEF NARRATIVE OVERVIEW 

The international history of drug regulation traces back over a century and can profitably be divided into several general periods. 

·        Between roughly 1880 and 1920 governments and non-governmental actors strove to define the nature of the drug problem and craft initial policies to deal with the perceived negative effects of abuse.

·        From around 1920 to the mid-1930s states and international organizations negotiated an international regulatory regime that supervened and channeled national legislation.

·        During the remainder of the 1930s through the mid-1960s governments and other actors attempted to implement these international/national rules, continually modifying their content and application in light of changing circumstances.

·        Beginning in the later 1960s a global eruption of drug use caused the system's participants to reconsider their aims and practices.

In one sense the century closed much as it began, with differing visions about and solutions for the international drug problem competing for attention. Yet the nature and scope of the drug question changed radically during the 20th century. Governments, international agencies, pharmaceutical companies, medical societies, enforcement officials, etc. constructed massive bureaucracies, engaged in considerable legislative activity, and attempted to implement policies intended to change the behavior of millions of individuals, with varying degrees of success.

Of the several themes appear in the history of this subject, the following may be of most interest to the Committee.

1.   National lawmakers and administrators were acutely aware of the interrelation between their domestic initiatives and global trends. American, Canadian, British, and other governments’ activities can be best understood by taking into account the international context within which contemporaries operated.  

2.  Non-medical considerations often played a key role in determining the nature and application of drug-related legislation. A variety of political, economic, socio-cultural, strategic, religious, and other factors have impinged on drug policy-making at both the international and domestic level.  

3.  For the most part, attitudes about drugs and drug control have not differed that much from one industrialized western nation to another, at least until relatively recently. Although overweening American influence is often blamed for the negative results of other nations’ domestic policies, domestic unwisdom regarding the drug issue has been common in industrialized countries, including Canada. 

4.  Canada has historically acted as a leading representative of what I call “consumer nations”—those states that neither produce raw materials (opium and coca growing areas of the world) nor contain significant pharmaceutical manufacturing interests (e.g. Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain, USA, Japan). Canada’s principal interest in international negotiations has been to secure a relatively open market for licit psychoactive medicinal substances in order to keep costs down, ensure adequate availability, and limit supplies to legitimate medical needs.

The Flow of Reaction 

Domestic responses to the drug question in the industrialized west evince a typical "attention pattern." Using the U.S. as a case study: In the late 19th-early 20th centuries American authorities attempted to devise local/national solutions, only to discover that the nature of the drug problem made it necessary to engage in international negotiations. During 1900-1920 American control advocates accomplished some of their goals through multilateral talks, joint efforts, and treaty negotiations, but could not achieve their more far-reaching policy objectives that attempted to solve the domestic "drug problem" by eliminating excess supplies overseas. That disappointment led legislators and bureaucrats to redouble their efforts to ensure domestic action on key policy initiatives between the mid-1910s and the early 1920s. Again feeling the need for international support, the U.S. engaged in high-profile activity at the League of Nations during 1923-25. Frustrated in their hopes for thoroughgoing international reform, American policymakers turned to domestic measures until 1930-31. At that time a combination of bureaucratic, economic, and strategic imperatives impelled greater U.S. participation in transnational negotiations. This pattern recurred, with major domestic activity taking place during the later 1930s and early 1940s, the mid-1950s, and from the later 1960s-through the early 1970s. Important international initiatives took place during the early 1940s through the early 1950s, during the mid-1960s, and in the early 1970s. Since that time the progression has been more mixed, but one can nevertheless discern the yin-yang nature of drug policy: success or failure on the domestic front leads to new activities in the international arena, and vice-versa. The "inward" and "outward" periods do not correspond precisely, but the general pattern recurs. Most governments have gone through similar undulations as they attempt to wrestle with the complexities of the drug question. P.J. Giffen, Shirley Endicott, and Sylvia Lambert, Panic and Indifference: The Politics of Canada’s Drug Laws” outlines the domestic aspects of roughly the same progression in the case of Canada.

{Handouts/Overheads for BRIEF NARRATIVE OVERVIEW}

 The Historical Sequence

1: Later 1800s-early 1920s

-     problem was identified and classified

-     early attempts to construct national and trans-national solutions

2: Mid-1920s-early 1930s

-    creation of a set of rules, procedures, and expectations (normative behaviors) for international conduct with regard to drug control (The section below outlines the tenets developed during this period and expanded upon in subsequent periods.)

3: mid-1930s-mid 1960s

-     attempts to enforce, refine, and modify the international control system to meet changing conditions.

4: mid-1960s-mid 1970s

-         Explosion of drug use worldwide and fundamental challenges to the control system. Responses include:

o        movements to impose controls over psychotropics

o       re-organization of bureaucracies

o       reconsideration of demand-side issues.

5: mid-1970s-present

-     Bureaucratization -- end of the era of the “Gentlemen’s Club,” where individuals could have a profound impact on policy conceptualization and implementation. The apparatus for changing the trajectory of the control system becomes much more cumbersome to re-direct.

-     Professionalization -- drug enforcement officials, traffickers, treatment programs, and other interest groups become more effective at their tasks.

-     Globalization -- all aspects of the drug-industrial complex become fully integrated into the world political economy.

The Flow of Reaction