This chapter tells the largely untold story of the political economy of international drug regulation in the 1950s. It will tell the story of producer country efforts, led by Turkey, Iran and India, to agree an international quota system for opium and thus to divide up the licit global market. It examines the simultaneous efforts to suppress the global illicit market and minimise the numbers of producers to a small select few who would enjoy an enforced oligopoly. It highlights the quiet diplomatic pressure placed on countries viewed as epicentres of the global trade and a conscious ignorance of strategically important states – for example the US State Department refusing to criticise French Indochina and Mexico. Further, it tells the story of Harry Anslinger’s efforts to incorrectly portray Communist China as the world’s leading narcostate. It concludes with a look at the breakdown of multilateralism over the 1953 Opium Protocol, a treaty which few accepted but was rammed through by the US and some select allies. It was this Protocol which ultimately galvanised moderates and producer states around the need for a Single Convention to roll back the excesses of the 1953 Protocol.

This chapter outlines the early development of UN CND and how it progressed towards its first new international treaty in 1948. Emerging from the tense post-war negotiations the key uncertainties for CND were: how it would operate in practice; how it would fit into broader UN and geopolitical streams; and whether it would function as a talking-shop or, as per the US vision, a tool to enforce regulations and publicly bludgeon member states as needed. The first three meetings of CND in 1946– 1948 would be pivotal. The first two served to sound out the political context within which CND would operate and how the structures would function in practice. Following this, a major political push occurred around the Third Session, first concluding a new Protocol and then spring boarding into discussions on a new production limitation convention and even advocating a new ‘single convention’ to unify all previous drug treaties.

This chapter charts the occasionally tense inter- and intra-governmental infighting surrounding the creation of the UN drug control system. It highlights the key institutional, legal and geopolitical issues as well as foundational member state divisions over market control, regulatory reach and legal enforcement capabilities. The deep regulatory and oversight structures of the League treaty system were transferred wholesale, with no formal wartime interruption. However, reconstruction of the political apparatus proved a much more contested issue. Strict control advocates in the US pushed the creation of a more uniform, stringent and enforcement-oriented system. The majority of states, however, simply aimed for conservatism and continuity with the League drug apparatus. They were supported in this aim by the US State Department which sought to minimise areas of disagreement within the fledgling UN organisation. Drug control was far from a strategic or geopolitical post-war priority and entrenched interests among producing states and colonial powers remained. Astride the enormous economic, social and political challenges facing the post-war world, a consensus-oriented system appeared the path of least resistance for most, including the US State Department.

This chapter examines the creation of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. It was also a period when transatlantic relations reached a new low in drug diplomacy. Minor cooperation in the aftermath of the 1953 Opium Conference gave way to divisions leading to an eventual rupture over the Single Convention, particularly between Britain and the US. This breakdown was ultimately was the result of failures of US leadership as well as deep divisions over policy and economic interests. The US found itself increasingly alone in negotiations. State Department leadership sought a more conciliatory approach towards producers like Iran and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, with Anslinger increasingly absent and with a lack of institutional knowledge within the State Department US delegations struggled to develop a US grand strategy. Britain, continuing to carve out a role of quiet, consensual and self-interested drug diplomacy, found the new environment conducive and became increasingly assertive. London pragmatically worked with shifting coalitions, while building a moderate bloc of manufacturing states in Europe to help protect British domestic interests via the Single Convention. The result was a consensus-based treaty and one largely rejected by the US, which tried and failed to torpedo the treaty.

This chapter examines regional efforts to secure drug markets and re-regulate industries. As peace arrived, and the creation of a UN drug control system looked certain, questions of national and regional controls loomed large. First was the question of re-establishing regulatory frameworks in post-war Europe. Germany was key given its historical centrality to licit manufacturing as well as its geopolitical lynchpin status. However, it was unclear whether the Allies could bridge widening geopolitical fault lines to re-establish drug control. In the case of Japan the US had a potential prohibitionist and regulatory beacon for the rest of Asia. With the strong support of the General Douglas MacArthur Administration US goals would be far easier to achieve. Next was the re-resettling of political frontiers of international drug policy reform. Momentum towards a production limitation convention had stalled prior to the war. The future role of China, the world’s largest opium producer, was rendered insoluble by its internal collapse. The US initially focused on creating a tripartite Turkish-Yugoslav-Iranian producer agreement. Further, the question of ‘quasi-medical’ opium use in British and other European colonies remained a transatlantic dividing line. If Britain could continue a non-smoking form of opiate consumption in Malaya, Hong Kong, Borneo and Burma it would provide an alternative to the US model of outright prohibition.