The beginnings of international drug control.

International cooperation in drug control began in 1909 when the International Opium Commission met in Shanghai, China (above). Convened by the United States and attended by 13 world Powers, the Shanghai Conference led to the signing in 1912 of the first international Convention to attempt the control of a narcotic.

At the time, the opium trade was coming under increasing criticism, partly due to growing addiction problems in the Far East and in the colonial Powers, but also due to changing diplomatic and political allegiances within the broader context of international relations. As a direct consequence of the Shanghai Conference, the Hague Opium Convention was signed in 1912. The parties to the Convention agreed to: limit the manufacture, trade and use of these products to medical use; cooperate in order to restrict use and to enforce restriction efficiently; close opium dens; penalize possession; and prohibit selling to unauthorized persons.

The second International Opium Convention, concluded in 1925 and entered into force in 1928, introduced a statistical control system to be supervised by a Permanent Central Board. The Board also established a system of import certificates and export authorizations for the licit international trade in narcotic drugs. A Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs, signed in Geneva in 1931, introduced a compulsory estimates system aimed at limiting the world manufacture of drugs to the amounts needed for medical and scientific purposes. It established a Drug Supervisory Body to monitor the operations of the system. A group of manmade substances outside the scope of the 1931 Convention was brought under international law and control by the 1948 Protocol.

The 1936 Convention for the Suppression of the Illicit Traffic in Dangerous Drugs was the first to call for the severe punishment of illicit drug traffickers, but for a variety of reasons, this Convention was never fully implemented.

In 1946, the United Nations assumed the drug control functions and responsibilities formerly carried out by the League of Nations. The functions of the League's Advisory Committee were transferred to the United Nations Commission and a subsidiary body on Narcotic Drugs (CND), established in 1946 as a functional Commission of the Economic and Social Council. The CND remains the central policy-making body within the United Nations system for dealing in depth with all questions...