Legalising the Drug Wars A Regulatory History of UN Drug Control

Where did the regulatory underpinnings for the global drug wars come from? This book is the first fully-focused history of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the bedrock of the modern multilateral drug control system and the focal point of global drug regulations and prohibitions. Although far from the propagator of the drug wars, the UN enabled the creation of a uniform global legal framework to effectively legalise, or regulate, their pursuit. This book thereby answers the question of where the international legal framework for drug control came from, what state interests informed its development and how complex diplomatic negotiations resulted in the current regulatory system, binding states into an element of global policy uniformity.

1. Drug diplomacy from the Opium Wars through the League of Nations, 1839–1939; 2. International drug control in wartime, 1939–1945; 3. Creating the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, 1945–1946; 4. Reconstructing drug control in Europe, Asia and the Middle East; 5. Old battles anew at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, 1946–1948; 6. Dividing up the global licit market, 1948–1953; 7. From the 1953 protocol to the 1961 single convention; 8. Assessing the legal legacy of the single convention.

John Collins is Director of Academic Engagement, the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, Vienna. He is also a Fellow at the University of Hong Kong, and Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, LSE Press. John's contemporary policy interests focus on the political economy of international drug control and the evolving dynamics on national and international policy reforms.