Pre-hague history of opiates control

Abstract

Before the implementation of an international policy regime with the aim of restricting the trade in opiates beginning in 1912, the free availability of opiates in domestic and international trade was the norm. Opiates were not unregulated, however. Another set of policies ruled the day, formed by other preconceptions of the dangers of drugs and by a high degree of consciousness of the limits of state power. Examining both these preconceptions and limits from a comparative perspective, this chapter describes how a discourse featuring opium as a poison accompanied regulations that took great care not to exacerbate the effects of a dual market in opium but rather to regulate "on the cheap." Assessed both by its own set of goals in a historical context much different from ours and anachronistically in light of latter-day prohibition regulations, this chapter suggests that maybe the prior approach of regulating opium as a poison should not be deemed a failure.