Editing Drug prohibition (section)

===Changing attitudes and the drug prohibition campaign===
[[File:Brassey1.JPG|thumb|[[Thomas Brassey, 1st Earl Brassey|Thomas Brassey]] was appointed the head of the [[Royal Opium Commission]] in 1893 to investigate the opium trade and make recommendations on its legality.]]

Foreign traders, including those employed by [[Jardine Matheson]] and the [[East India Company]], smuggled opium into China in order to balance high trade deficits. Chinese attempts to outlaw the trade led to the [[First Opium War]] and the subsequent legalization of the trade at the [[Treaty of Nanking]]. Attitudes towards the opium trade were initially ambivalent, but in 1874 the [[Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade]] was formed in England by [[Quaker]]s led by the [[Frederick Storrs-Turner|Rev. Frederick Storrs-Turner]]. By the 1890s, increasingly strident campaigns were waged by [[Protestantism|Protestant]] [[Mission (Christian)|missionaries]] in China for its abolition. The first such society was established at the 1890 Shanghai Missionary Conference, where British and American representatives, including [[John Glasgow Kerr]], [[Arthur Evans Moule|Arthur E. Moule]], [[Arthur Gostick Shorrock]] and [[Griffith John]], agreed to establish the Permanent Committee for the Promotion of Anti-Opium Societies.<ref>Lodwick, Kathleen L. (1996). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=gT42B-69owoC Crusaders Against Opium: Protestant Missionaries in China 1874–1917]''. University Press of Kentucky. {{ISBN|0-8131-1924-3}}</ref>

Due to increasing pressure in the [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|British parliament]], the [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal]] government under [[William Ewart Gladstone]] approved the appointment of a [[Royal Opium Commission|Royal Commission on Opium to India]] in 1893.<ref>Ocampo, J. A. (2009) ''100 Years of Drug Control'', United Nations. {{ISBN|978-92-1-148245-4}}, p. 30</ref><ref>Buxton, J. (2006) ''The political economy of narcotics: production, consumption and global markets'', Zed Books, {{ISBN|978-1-84277-447-2}} p. 29</ref> The commission was tasked with ascertaining the impact of Indian opium exports to the [[Far East]], and to advise whether the trade should be banned and opium consumption itself banned in India. After an extended inquiry, the Royal Commission rejected the claims made by the anti-opium campaigners regarding the supposed societal harm caused by the trade and the issue was finalized for another 15 years.<ref>Brook, T and Wakabayashi, B. (2000) ''Opium Regimes: China, Britain and Japan 1839–1952'', University of California Press, {{ISBN|978-0-520-22236-6}} p. 39</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Baumler|first=Alan|title=The Chinese and Opium under the Republic: Worse Than Floods and Wild Beasts|year=2007|publisher=[[State University of New York]]|isbn=978-0-7914-6953-8|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dfAKoolkV-wC|page=65|quote=Although the Royal Commission killed opium suppression as an active political issue for the next fifteen years, the anti-opium crusaders continued their campaign, denouncing the commission as a whitewash and attempting to counter it with data of their own.}}</ref>

The missionary organizations were outraged over the [[Royal Commission on Opium]]'s conclusions and set up the Anti-Opium League in China; the league gathered data from every Western-trained medical doctor in China and published ''Opinions of Over 100 Physicians on the Use of Opium in China''. This was the first anti-drug campaign to be based on scientific principles, and it had a tremendous impact on the state of educated opinion in the West.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6hX1ycCAZJcC|title=Healing Bodies, Saving Souls: Medical Missions in Asia and Africa|editor=Hardiman, David |year=2006|publisher=Rodopi|page=172|isbn=978-9042021068}}</ref> In England, the home director of the [[China Inland Mission]], [[Benjamin Broomhall]], was an active opponent of the opium trade, writing two books to promote the banning of opium smoking: ''The Truth about Opium Smoking'' and ''The Chinese Opium Smoker''. In 1888, Broomhall formed and became secretary of the Christian Union for the Severance of the British Empire with the Opium Traffic and editor of its periodical, ''National Righteousness''. He lobbied the British parliament to ban the opium trade. Broomhall and [[James Laidlaw Maxwell]] appealed to the London Missionary Conference of 1888 and the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910 to condemn the continuation of the trade. As Broomhall lay dying, an article from ''[[The Times]]'' was read to him with the welcome news that an international agreement had been signed ensuring the end of the opium trade within two years.

[[File:An Opium Raid (1912 headline).jpg|thumb|left|Newspaper article from ''The Daily Picayune'', [[New Orleans]], [[Louisiana]] in 1912 reporting on a drug arrest, a month after the [[International Opium Convention]] was signed and ratified at The Hague]]

In 1906, a motion to 'declare the opium trade "morally indefensible" and remove Government support for it', initially unsuccessfully proposed by [[Arthur Pease (MP)|Arthur Pease]] in 1891, was put before the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]]. This time the motion passed. The Qing government banned opium soon afterward.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Windle|first=J.|date=2013|title=Harms Caused by China's 1906-1917 Opium Suppression Intervention|url=https://repository.uel.ac.uk/download/48f2cb7a02646f510ccec4a0566d80e532f8ef5ba7775eeba124d7a4ed60364c/248399/Harms%2520caused%2520by%25201906%2520intervention%2520-%2520pre-print%2520copy.pdf|journal=International Journal of Drug Policy|volume=24|issue=5|pages=498–505|doi=10.1016/j.drugpo.2013.03.001|pmid=23567100}}</ref>

These changing attitudes led to the founding of the [[International Opium Commission]] in 1909. An [[International Opium Convention]] was signed by 13 nations at [[The Hague]] on January 23, 1912, during the First International Opium Conference. This was the first international [[Drug prohibition law|drug control treaty]] and it was registered in the ''League of Nations Treaty Series'' on January 23, 1922.<ref>''League of Nations Treaty Series'', vol. 8, pp. 188–239.</ref> The Convention provided that "The contracting Powers shall use their best endeavors to control or to cause to be controlled, all person manufacturing, importing, selling, distributing, and exporting morphine, cocaine, and their respective salts, as well as the buildings in which these persons carry such an industry or trade."

The treaty became international law in 1919 when it was incorporated into the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The role of the commission was passed to the [[League of Nations]], and all signatory nations agreed to prohibit the import, sale, distribution, export, and use of all [[narcotic]] drugs, except for medical and scientific purposes.