History from cornell. In 1995. Has is now associate professor of history at indiana university. Her she is a specialist of us imperialism of relations for the United States, south asia, and especially us narcotics control. Her first book was projection of power the United States and europe. Colonial Southeast Asia,. 1919 to 1941. The book is going to present today is much more ambitious in. It is, as it is called, long war on drugs and talks about the perennial problem of fighting the war on drugs as sort of a military and criminal problem rather than as a Public Health social phenomena on. So please join me in welcoming her. Dr. Anne foster. So thank you so much to alan for terrific introduction and for the invitation to speak. I really appreciate it and i want to thank for all that youve done to make this go so smoothly. And along alan, this study of u. S. Foreign relations history at temple is helped petra gouda and Richard Zimmerman who i like to thank for support along the way. So so im here today to talk about my new book, the long war on drugs. And this is the title. I will. I will say that the images, the baggies is not actual cocaine. But my neighbor reverse searched and found its flower. So dont be alarmed. No cocaine was used in the creating its cover. So we probably all have sense of what the war drugs is. News today report on various war on drugs topics even up to the present such as currently this week, whether the philippines will cooperate with International CriminalCourt Investigation into. How former president Rodrigo Duterte conducted the war on drugs. There. We also see the trial of one Orlando Hernandez from honduras to decide whether he perpetuated the war drugs or undermined the war on drugs. So these things are still prominent todays society. But as historians we probably back to the presidencies of either Richard Nixon or ronald reagan. Nixon famously war on drugs on april seven. In april 1971, and he said, i quote him in order fight and defeat this enemy, excuse me in order to fight and defeat enemy, it is necessary to wage an all out offensive and his war on drugs did dramatically increase funding for interdiction for activities overseas where drugs were grown and for prison sentences. But the Nixon Administration also increased funding for prevention and treatment and most notably, they provided the First Federal funding for methadone clinics. So a somewhat of a mixed bag. Ronald reagan ramped up the military language and tactics such as his 1982 speech suggests and i quote, as ive said before, weve taken down the surrender and run up the battle flag and were going to win the war on drugs. And, quote, the reagan dedicated a greater percentage of the funding towards interdiction and surveillance. And, of course, famously passed mandatory minimum sentencing. I would note those were not the first mandatory minimum laws passed for drugs in the United States at the federal level. And the earlier ones were equally discriminatory. The Reagan Administration used. Nancy as spokeswoman for prevention treatment efforts. I think those us of a certain age will still remember the just say no campaign was quite prominent, but funded these efforts at much lower levels than had been done under nixon. Certainly are war on drugs act actions and. Rhetoric. Much scholarship asks why the united continues to take a war on drugs approach to the issue of drugs and if it has not for now, more than 50 years. In my though the United States has deployed war on drugs tactics for more than 100 years with the same of success making the question all the more compelling. So i wrote this short book in order to explore the continuity as well as changes in u. S. Drugs policy over the last 100 plus years. I want anyone who reads this book to have a clearer sense of the scope of, the drugs issue able to better it over time space type of drug. There are a number of inside ice that i gained into the topic from doing this work and today ill focus on four that i think help us better understand the way the us drug policy developed in an International Context and has international implications. And this seems simplistic. The choice to prohibit rather than regulate them in some way other way was important. Setting the stage of the war on approach. It is also made it more difficult up to the present to respond flexibly to evidence the war on drugs approach is not working. My book begins, all the way back in the 1880s and this image is from the 1920s, from an opium in manila in the philippines. But back in the 1880s, before turn of the 20th century, people, opium in particular for a wide variety of medicinal and recreational. The practice was most common in the United States, europe and many of asia, but happened parts of the world and nearly. Were there laws against taking opium as long as there has been drug consumption particularly of opiates though people have also misuse them and observers have thought about how to them. In the late 19th century, the number people expressing concern about or not narcotics use was growing. Some people were concerned because they had moral objections to drug use, as they did to talk intoxicants like alcohol. Others were concerned because they thought drug use had become more ubiquitous and that vulnerable groups of people, as they called them at the time, such as women children or particular races, people faced more harm than others. The availability also of morphine, cocaine and then heroin during, the late 19th and early 20th century did seem also to be increasing the problematic nature of drug use. So before that, people had mostly by smoking or by consuming things like laudanum, which is a mixture of alcohol and opium. America was with religious motivation, particularly those who had served in china as missionaries were among the most strongly concerned. And they promoted a prohibitionist to regulating opiates. These religiously motivated American Anti opium activists saw their chance in the philippines. Soon after, the United States had acquired as a colony in 1898, they lobbied it both through personal connections. President Theodore Roosevelt and they also used a massive telegraph campaign sending several thousand telegrams to the president advocating prohibition. In 1905, they succeeded in getting a law passed to quote, prohibit absolutely the importation or sale of opium in the philippines. And it came into effect in 1908. U. S. Officials realized pretty quickly that enforcing this law would be impossible, surrounded as the philippines was by countries where opium was legal and with the porous borders of the colony. So the fact that americans decided to prohibit it rather than regulate opium steps both stemmed from and prompted many of the issues we associate with the war on drugs approach all present at the beginning of the us effort and persisting to the present first. And this is a really important point for understanding all that follows. Prohibition means any drug use is illegal, with a presumption that such should prompt a policing response. So whether users are sympathetic or not, they are in criminals. Any kinds of policies attempting to focus on treatment or what we now call Harm Reduction have always had to contend with simple fact that drug use against the law and will just take a small moment to use own state of indiana as an example. So indiana has not liberalized policy, but many prosecuting attorneys have said theyre not going to prosecute possession of marijuana. Theyve made the statement publicly that this is not worth focusing on. And then in response, the Republican State Legislature is now passing the law that requires the attorney general of the state of indiana to sanction any local prosecutors. Do not prosecute these of crimes. They call them. Its a feature in our governors ad campaigns. They call them radical attorneys. So okay. So thats first point. The prohibition itself, rather than regulation of some other form is it sets the stage for all these other things that follow. Second, racialized of drug control also has been since the beginning. We are all familiar with racial components of things like mandatory minimum sentencing today. But racialization even started at the very beginning as well, although ethnic groups in both the United States and the philippines use drugs, Ethnic Chinese in both places were deemed the problematic users. The us law in the philippines in fact was explicitly written in part to encourage Ethnic Chinese who americans believed were the most inhabitants of the philippines to be addicted to opium, to leave the philippines to return to china, where they could still consume opium. Once those Ethnic Chinese, many of them had no of return to the philippines because, the chinese exclusion act of 1882 had been extended to apply in the philippines. So unless they had a particular status, if they left, to go back to china, they would not be allowed to come back to the philippines. And american officials explicitly said that they hoped that that would be the result of prohibiting opium in the philippines. So in this we see how racialization of the drugs issue in which a drug can be demonized because of its association a particular ethnic group and in which an ethnic group can be demonized because of its association with a particular drug is embedded from the beginning. So Ethnic Chinese were considered outsiders because they opium and opium smoking of opium was considered problematic because it was done by Ethnic Chinese. Finally, the prohibitionist approach was as we can see in the language of the law, focused on preventing drugs from entering us controlled spaces. This conception of the drug that it originated originated outside us controlled spaces does have some validity. Opiates have never been grown in commercial levels in any u. S. Controlled territories, and neither has cocaine nor marijuana. Not as much marijuana as in places. Obviously, marijuana is grown in. The United States. So this focus on, the drugs coming in outside, of course, ignores role of demand in creating the drug problem that we talk about a bit in American Society and as historians. More problems. However, this focus on drugs as originating outside the states and coming in to pose a threat means that you to engage in a policing surveillance and militarizing approach the control of drugs. At least have to control them at the border leading to militarization of borders and that and a much more likely as happened ever increasingly over course of the 20th century, you had to go to the place where the drugs were produced and try to eliminate them there. Those are outside the United States being in u. S. Policing and surveillance efforts are taken outside the United States. We see this already in the 19 tens and twenties since the United States engaged in surveillance and exchange of intelligence and placing of secret agents in spaces around you, around world that were not controlled by the United States particularly surveilling on the Pacific Ocean for ships coming from asia, but placing agents of the federal bureau of narcotics in countries across europe, asia. The us war on drugs then has long focused on source, meaning eliminating drugs at the source, or at least preventing them from entering the United States. Well see in the next two sections, some of the ways this has been both ineffectual, harmful. A second component of the u. S. War on drugs is it has always been conceived in an International Context and the u. S. Approach always shaped how the drug situation develops around the world. This image is of a girl standing in a legal poppy in turkey. So poppies are producing opiates. Opiates are in some medicines as well. Right. So you to have legally grown sources of them. And so shes standing in a poppy field where its legal to grow opium opium. And these this image. And then the next two photographs are by steve raymer for National Geographic thick photo essay that appeared in the 1980s. So as i mentioned, one of the first realizations of u. S. Officials after passing that law prohibiting opium in the philippines was that it was going to be very difficult to enforce this law. In fact, i initially interested in this topic when some reports in the dutch archives between between officials, the netherlands indies and the philippines in the 1920s. They were very worried about the smuggling that was taking place between those two colonies. So officials in the philippines thought that good solution to this problem would be for all Asian Countries to prohibit opium. And they proposed a conference for all the countries that had interest in asia so meaning Asian Countries and also european imperial powers to meet and discuss the opium problem. This conference met 1909 in shanghai with some finagling. The u. S. Representatives there got agreement that it was everyones goal to prohibit opium except for medicinal. That was not binding, of course. But u. S. Officials pushing. And in 1912, the International Opium Convention stipulated signatories would work toward prohibiting opium. So this is the putting of this prohibition of opium into law. In 1912. Ironically, the United States would push strongly for this international opium commission. And in 1912 still had perfectly legal opium consumption in the United States. And that law prohibiting u. S. Opium consumption was passed in 1914 as the harrison narcotics act. So we see that the United States is pushing a prohibition that begins to affect the rest of the world. But that policy that they push in the rest of the world comes back to affect also u. S. Law. The United States moved pretty quickly, obviously, to pass this law. Other signatories moved a little slowly, but still, england, france and netherlands all had passed similar prohibition laws by the end of world war one, although only effective, the metropole colonies. They still had legal and profitable for the european countries. The opium prohibition was extended the rest of the world because any countries signing the treaty of paris ending world war one also automatically signed the opium convention. So this became the most at the most basic Level International law. By 1919, the league of nations contained an Opium Advisory Committee tasked with implementing this prohibitionist stance. U. S. Representatives who of course, represented themselves not the u. S. Government, played powerful roles on this committee throughout, the interwar years, and pushed the choice of prohibition at the internation final level. U. S. Leadership promoting a prohibitionist source control approach continued World War Two. Harry anslinger, who was the notorious head, the federal bureau of narcotics, promoted the 1953 opium protocol in the United Nations against wishes of pretty much almost other countries. And because this treaty implemented two changes, most countries did not want the point of this treaty was to sort of regularize all of the various treaties that have been before World War Two and bring them all together. But it added two things that anslinger wanted and the United States wanted, but that other countries did not. First of all, it prohibited what then called quasi medical use, what we might call selfmedication, a designation which covered uses of opiates to treat the symptoms of diseases such malaria and cholera as well as to offer pain relief. And this was a common usage of in places where there was not much access to modern medicine or to doctors, and where clean Drinking Water was not yet completely available. Officials from, countries such as india had argued successfully for retention of this exception to prohibitionist laws. So this was passed over their objection. The 1953 opium protocol also that global opium production should be perfectly calibrated to match reported need. So the idea is that you would figure out how much opiates had been used for medical purposes in the year and the next year. Production of opiates would have to match number precisely locking go wrong. As you might imagine, only seven countries were legally to grow opium for the medical market. In this 1953 protocol. And those were india, iran, turkey, yugoslavia, the soviet union and greece. So if you know anything about opium, you might there is a few countries that you would expect that might be growing a little bit of opium that are left off. This list. One of the most adamant people countries to object to it was actually mexico, which had started to grow a significant amount. Opiates during World War Two, when the markets were divided because of the war. And so they wanted to be able to be in the medical market as well. So countries that wanted to have a piece of this medical market objected out of their own