De-emphasising the Single Convention - The Lessons of Drug Control History
There is a tendency within the civil society groups and academic writings that look at international drug control to focus heavily on the UN Single Convention of 1961. In many ways this is understandable and correct. It is the legal keystone for the international system and the basis for subsequent treaties. However, an over emphasis on the Single Convention may also serve to blur the deep historical forces at work within the system, as well as the actual nature of the 1961 Convention itself. The result can be a narrative that places too much explanatory significance for the system on this one document. Similarly it often results in a focus on the postwar era, at the expense of the era when international prohibition became the governing norm for the regime: 1909-1939. (For the most thorough historical account of the regime so far written see: here.)
That the US instigated international control with the calling of the Shanghai Opium Commission in 1909 is well known. Thereafter it acted as a vigorous advocate for its own conception of how the international system should work: namely outright prohibition of all non-medical and scientific use of opium (later to include other drugs). The US was then able to use the League of Nations’ weaknesses to its own advantage and enshrine this conception of control at the international level. By 1930 the regime bureaucracy had more or less internalised the US supply-centric model and this became the unpinning for the system we have today. America’s next major hurdle was surmounted during the tumult of World War II when they forced their traditional drug control nemesis (and then wartime ally) Britain to forswear its opium monopolies and adopt prohibition in its Asian colonies. There began US international drug control hegemony.
The postwar regime became divided primarily into two camps. On the one side were manufacturing states (like America and Britain) that wished to see the burden for control placed on countries that grew the drugs. On the other side were producing states (most notably Turkey) that pushed for similar controls on manufactured drugs as a means to deflect attention from themselves. The Single Convention was shaped amidst the friction between these two camps as well as an array of other forces. As a result the document inevitably represented compromise and consensus. The United States subsequently viewed the Convention as inadequate so they refused to ratify it and instead worked vigorously to thwart it. When it became apparent that they had failed to kill the agreement (on its ratification in 1964) America walked away from the UN system until 1967 when it finally ratified the document.
These observations have practical as well as analytic significance. By misreading the Single Convention as sui generis, and a direct product of US drug control imperialism, reform advocates risk overlooking many of the historical forces that helped create - and continue to underpin - the system. For example, some regime critics are drawn to a repealist narrative - one that suggests that the path to change is through a retraction of the Single Convention. The problem with such a conception is that it is likely to lead down the path of most resistance. The Single Convention was the product of an extremely complex interplay of forces: geopolitical, economic, cultural, diplomatic and personal. It would be impossible now to reach a consensus at the international level on the future shape of the control system outside of the Single Convention. The realisation of this fact helps explain the almost paranoid defensive crouch that has long characterised the regime and its bureaucrats.
The transnational bureaucracies and layers of civil society that underpin the system are over a century old. The regime has survived two world wars and the geopolitical tides of the twentieth century. In the pantheon of international cooperation it certainly qualifies as one of the great survivors. The odds that it will simply pack-up shop or cede control of the issue to a new epistemic community are very poor. Understanding the broader historical forces, rather than focusing intently on their manifestation through treaty documents like the Single Convention, is therefore important for critics. Meaningful change will be most likely to occur when the regime internalises an understanding of it’s own failures and its bureaucrats begin to see their own futures as dependent on moving away from the failed norms and policies of the past. Such a change will not happen in a revolutionary manner. Instead it will be evolutionary and incremental. To expect anything more is to underestimate the forces of bureaucratic inertia as well as the byzantine structures of international politics.
The means to effect such an outcome is beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, for the social entrepreneurs and international networks working to effect change, a strong understanding of ones opponents is always a useful tool. Historical lessons can have some pretty practical uses in this regard.
