ABSTRACT
A confluence of interests led to the international regulation of drugs. China discontinued opium imports from India in the early part of the twentieth century and as a result cheap opium flooded Europe. Simultaneously, an unregulated market was developing in pharmaceutical preparations. In the United States, around 90 per cent of narcotic drugs were used for non-medical purposes.2 Colonial interests in Great Britain combined with assertions of national sovereignty and rejection of imperialism in China to develop international regulation. Domestic interests in international regulation in Europe and the United States arose out of drug abuse problems and domestic lobbying against the opium trade, while commercial interests, having shifted to the developing pharmaceutical industry, sought to regulate other sources of drugs.
