This chapter tells the largely untold story of the political economy of international drug regulation in the 1950s. It will tell the story of producer country efforts, led by Turkey, Iran and India, to agree an international quota system for opium and thus to divide up the licit global market. It examines the simultaneous efforts to suppress the global illicit market and minimise the numbers of producers to a small select few who would enjoy an enforced oligopoly. It highlights the quiet diplomatic pressure placed on countries viewed as epicentres of the global trade and a conscious ignorance of strategically important states – for example the US State Department refusing to criticise French Indochina and Mexico. Further, it tells the story of Harry Anslinger’s efforts to incorrectly portray Communist China as the world’s leading narcostate. It concludes with a look at the breakdown of multilateralism over the 1953 Opium Protocol, a treaty which few accepted but was rammed through by the US and some select allies. It was this Protocol which ultimately galvanised moderates and producer states around the need for a Single Convention to roll back the excesses of the 1953 Protocol.

This chapter examines the creation of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. It was also a period when transatlantic relations reached a new low in drug diplomacy. Minor cooperation in the aftermath of the 1953 Opium Conference gave way to divisions leading to an eventual rupture over the Single Convention, particularly between Britain and the US. This breakdown was ultimately was the result of failures of US leadership as well as deep divisions over policy and economic interests. The US found itself increasingly alone in negotiations. State Department leadership sought a more conciliatory approach towards producers like Iran and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, with Anslinger increasingly absent and with a lack of institutional knowledge within the State Department US delegations struggled to develop a US grand strategy. Britain, continuing to carve out a role of quiet, consensual and self-interested drug diplomacy, found the new environment conducive and became increasingly assertive. London pragmatically worked with shifting coalitions, while building a moderate bloc of manufacturing states in Europe to help protect British domestic interests via the Single Convention. The result was a consensus-based treaty and one largely rejected by the US, which tried and failed to torpedo the treaty.