Legalising the Drug Wars
A Regulatory History of UN Drug Control

Provides the first regulatory history of UN drug control and examines its enabling role in the modern 'war on drugs'.

John Collins (Author)

9781316512326, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 December 2021

224 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.9 cm, 0.48 kg

'This book is a timely and important history of an issue of immense global importance. For countries that feel like they have been cycling a stationary bike for many decades fighting the “war on drugs” it is important to go back and look to the origins of the current set of policies in order to understand how they can be changed. This book provides key insights and explanations for policy choices that we now take for granted but should be viewed through a new lens of science and policy pragmatism.' Juan Manuel Santos, Former President of Colombia, Nobel Prize Laureate and Member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy

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.

Subject Areas: International organisations & institutions [LBBU], Diplomatic law [LBBD], International law [LB], Law [L], United Nations & UN agencies [JPSN1], International relations [JPS], Drugs trade / drug trafficking [JKVG], Crime & criminology [JKV], Ethical issues & debates [JFM]