ASIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY

Series One: The Opium Trade and the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, 1945-48

Publisher's Note

This small 4-reel collection brings together the Foreign Office Files relating to the Opium Trade and the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in the period 1945 to 1948. Immediately after the end of the Second World War, there was a requirement to transfer to the United Nations all the activities of the League of Nations relating to the Control of Narcotic Drugs and to simplify and modernise the international system of control. There were a number of urgent measures to undertake. These included a new Protocol to amend the pre-war agreements and conventions signed at The Hague on 23 January 1912, at Geneva on 11 and 19 February 1925, 13 July 1931 and 26 June 1936 and in Bangkok on 27 November 1931. This was achieved by the Protocol of 11 December 1946. A further agreement was needed to cover all those drugs not covered by the 1931 convention, especially with respect to the new synthetic drugs of a habit forming character. Further measures and controls were needed to limit the production of raw materials from which narcotic drugs were being manufactured and also to restore and strengthen international control in areas affected by the war, Germany, Japan and the Far East.

This strengthening of international control and its reorganisation under the auspices of the United Nations was achieved in the period 1945 to 1948. This microfilm edition documents this process. Included are papers of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, the Permanent Central Opium Board, the Drug Supervisory Body and the UK Delegation to the UN Economic and Social Council.

The material is truly international with memoranda, papers and correspondence reflecting activity in Burma, Syria, the Lebanon, Cyprus, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, India and Ceylon, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, the Philippines, North Borneo and Sarawak.

The system of world collaboration in connection with dangerous drugs was one of the significant successes of the League of Nations. The US Secretary of State in a message of 8 July 1935 praised the system “based on multilateral treaties ... implemented by national legislation and ... enforced through international boards exercising control of distribution and through international police co-operation to combat the illicit traffic ... has come to be a form of co-operative international effort which commands the effective support of Governments to a greater extent than any other undertaking.”

A similar point of view was expressed by the delegate of France at the second session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in August 1947, when he declared that: “Narcotic drug control had been the first example of world-wide rationalization of a specialised industry by diplomatic instrument; it had created an international administration which now directs and controls world trade in several hundred drugs. It had set up efficient international legislation.”

An article by George A Morlock in the US Department of State Bulletin of December 1944, Limitation of the Production of Opium sets out details of the initiative taken by the United States in accordance with the Judd resolution. Draft memoranda were despatched to Afghanistan, Britain (for India and Burma), China, Iran, Mexico, the Soviet Union, Turkey and Yugoslavia, these being the principal opium-producing countries with which the United States then had friendly relations. Other significant opium-producing countries included Bulgaria, Chosen, Japan and to a lesser extent Indo-China and Thailand. The military conflict of 1939-1945 had resulted in a huge demand for drugs for military purposes. This gave rise to a potential problem after the cessation of hostilities and it was crucial to reassert firm controls at an international level.

At times the United States were critical of British inaction in the Far East. However, these documents brought together in a single microfilm edition, show how the United States and Britain led the way in the post-war period. Included are surveys of estimated world requirements of dangerous drugs, details of the Hashish campaign in Syria and the Lebanon, directives for the control of Opium in Burma, the Bill introduced into the House of Representatives in Washington DC by Representative Mills (Democrat for Arkansas), texts of the various Narcotics Protocols, United Nations Questionnaires, the creation of a more powerful Far Eastern Drugs Bureau and reports on methods of determining the origin of opium by chemical or physical means.

Further details are provided by the Contents of Reels Listing.

David Tyler
October 1991

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