in Instruments of international order
Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526172570.00012
Online Publication Date: 19 Nov 2024
Abstract
This chapter charts the growth and decline of American colonial drug diplomacy efforts by examining the role of the Philippines in the multilateral summits on drug control and interim negotiations during the first half of the twentieth century. Having taken control of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War in 1898, the United States ended the Spanish monopoly system on opium and in 1905 prohibited all recreational sale and use of opiates and cocaine. The subsequent failure of colonial authorities to contain the flow of illicit narcotics into the Philippines resulted in the United States successfully reframing international drug control as an international responsibility rather than a quixotic imperial undertaking. Through multilateral summits, the United States sought to convince foreign producer and manufacturing states of the need to restrict exports of drugs to countries permitting their entry and to work towards restricting their use to medical purposes, thus establishing an international drugs regulatory regime. The outcome of these summits represented a victory for the transnational movement against the opium trade, largely driven by Protestant missionary influences. Following the First World War, the drugs regulatory regime was solidified with the 1925 Geneva Convention. This nascent regime was not without conflict, however. As signatories to these agreements, the United States and the United Kingdom eventually had to end the sale of opium in their own possessions and take action against international trafficking. Begun in order to enforce colonial policy, American interwar efforts ended up shifting towards a focus on drug control in the metropole.