History of Opium Part III

In England the Dangerous Drugs Act came into force in 1920.
The treaty of 1912 was 'as leaky as a sieve' because it allowed the states to determine for themselves when and how they would fulfil their obligations with regard to opium, which of course kept the use of opium legal until that time.

To make this battle more effective the League of Nations held two conferences which led to two Geneva Conventions: one of 11 February and one on 19 February 1925.

The first convention concerned limiting the domestic production of and trade in opium in the colonies in the Far East. The second extended the number of substances covered under the Convention to include the coca leaf, raw cocaine, ecgonine and Indian hennep. Also, the states were to step up monitoring of the preparation, trade and possession of the 'numbing' substances involved.

In 1931 there was an international change of course and efforts were also made to forbid the legal production and consumption of opium for nonmedical purposes. New conventions were signed for this purpose: the conventions of Geneva (13 July 1931), of Bangkok (27 November 1931) and Geneva (26 June 1936) a more and more complicated network of conventions. The last convention especially for the suppression of the illicit traffic in narcotics went further towards criminalizing the use of drugs by requiring the convention partners to lay down harsher punishment, in this case with imprisonment for all offenders of the provision from the relevant conventions.