ABSTRACT
This chapter has mapped the development of the international system of drug control. It investigated how opium and its derivatives became a problem of government and the subsequent prohibition of heroin and related drugs became the solution. The chapter discuses the initial problematisation of opium, its subsequent regulation, and the identification of the addict in the nineteenth century, were bound to rationalities concerned with the government and preservation of life: the life of the population and the life of individuals. It is important because it signals the emergence of a novel rationality concerned with the control and regulation of opium. Total cost of ownership (TCOs) conduct their trade outside the legitimate economy, or they hide it within the avalanche of legitimate transactions associated with the technological enhancement of global financial networks that occurred at the end of the twentieth century. The treaties themselves both describe and make up the governmental domain of drug control.
