It would be wrong to deduce from the gap of six years between the ... last meeting of the ... Advisory Committee and the first meeting of the Commission that the new body started everything afresh. In fact it is rather striking to note that a number of people at present engaged in the work of the Commission, as well as in the Division ... had also worked in the same field during the period of the League of Nations.
"Twenty Years of Narcotics Control under the United Nations," Bulletin on Narcotics, (1966)

A description of international drug control will be incomplete if it does not go beyond the surface activity to take a look at what happens behind the scenes. The facade of common goals presented by the records of the international bodies is deceptive. The assertion of national interests by individual countries is usually cloaked in the language of diplomacy, and the way in which decisions are formulated is typically vague and sometimes deliberately inexplicit. Although these decisions are often a compromise between conflicting interests, the more powerful individuals and countries can better make their wills felt in both the formulation and interpretation of the decisions. The limits of action in the drug field are, like in many other fields, set by the lines of political relationships prevailing in the world at large.

A Note on Power

The concept of power is necessary to an understanding of all international systems. We discuss it here without any intention of making a contribution to the extensive social science literature on the subject. Indeed, we will draw from this literature, and use what others have written to elucidate those aspects of the system which we are attempting to describe and to which this concept is particularly pertinent.

Power denotes the capacity to produce intended results; one speaks about power when its possession or exercise makes a difference in the behavior or situation of others. Paradoxically enough, when one has power one does not always have to wield it; objects behave without coercion in accordance with the expectations of those having power (Russell, 1937; Jansson, 1964). As soon as one begins to consider the exercise of power by different groups or nations, one is faced with the fact that power relationships are diffuse and arise from the combined action of a number of actors on several fronts. In the case of international drug control such fronts consist of diplomatic activity, mass media, and international organizations. Johan Galtung's discussion of power in his book on the European Economic Community (1973) is helpful, and we will use it as a framework in which to organize our own discussion of the relations between states in the international drug control apparatus.

Galtung distinguishes between types and channels of power. There is the "ideological" power channeled by culture and the international transmission of ideas. There is also the exercise of "renumerative" power by the promise of rewards through trade and economic concessions. Finally, there is the excercise of "punitive" power by, at the extreme, the threat of military force. In the drug control field, power is exerted both by the threat of sanctions—a means akin to the last category of punitive power—and by the promise of reward.

In identifying the sources of power Galtung distinguishes between resources and structural power. The former relates to knowledge, money, people, size, and military capability. The latter, structural power, is an equally important concept to which the notions of exploitation, fragmentation, and penetration belong. The notion of "exploitation" needs no clarification. Fragmentation, or "divide and rule," is the concept implicit in the statement by the UN secretary-general, Kurt Waldheim, that bilateral agreements may harm the UN system (Dagens Nyheter, 9 May 1973). That the scientific elite of a developing country is mainly trained in the West or at least in institutions modeled on those of the West is an illustration of the phenomenon of penetration. It is this phenomenon which nullifies the UN principle of equitable geographical representation, especially where it applies to the selection of members for bodies like the expert committees. If the "experts" from developing countries are drawn from the Westernized elite, then the so-called equitable geographical representation achieved is merely formal.

Key Countries

One way of discerning the pattern of power is by measuring the degree to which various countries are represented in the membership of the key organs. Countries which are represented in an organization will have greater opportunity for exercising influence over the policy of that organization than countries which are not represented, and the duration of their representation will determine how consistently they can wield that influence. Thus both access and continuity are necessary for the deployment of power. In order to identify the more influential countries in the international drug control arena, we arrived at a set of criteria by which to rank countries. These criteria were based on the duration of the country's membership in the key organs, the size of their delegations—since multiple action depends on manpower capability—and the frequency with which its representatives were elected to office in the Commission, since this confers some power of decision and implies recognition on the part of others. Thus, for every country we counted the number of years over the period 1921 to 1971 that it had been a member of the Opium Advisory Committee, the Commission, the Drug Supervisory Body, the Permanent Central Board, or the INCB, and the number of times it had been represented in the WHO Expert Committee and in the Bureau (that is, among the officers of the Committee and the Commission). This yielded eight criteria on which countries can be rated. As it is impossible to justify whatever cut-off point is used, we arbitrarily drew a line after the top eight countries and defined as influential all those which, on at least one measure, can be relegated to one of the eight topmost positions. Table 9.1 displays the countries and their respective scores on each of the criteria mentioned. In cases where the ninth and tenth countries have the same score as the eighth, they too are included in the table.

Twenty-one countries appear in table 9.1. It is apparent that wide differences exist between them as to the duration of participation in the system and as to the number of criteria which are met. If, however, we consider as influential only those countries which satisfy at least four criteria, on the assumption that a country which can pursue its interests in only one of the several bodies will be a less active force than one whose presence is more pervasive, then we arrive at the following results. The U.S., the U.K., France, and India qualify for inclusion among the "elite" on the basis of seven criteria, Yugoslavia and Turkey on the basis of five, and Switzerland and Canada on the basis of four.

These eight may be considered the key countries in international drug control. They are of course by no means equal in their degree of influence upon the system. Clearly, in terms of the weight of the indices in table 9.1, the U.S. predominates. It is also noteworthy that countries which might be expected to be influential on the basis of the stratification of power in the world at large do not appear to be so in the drug area: the USSR, for instance, is conspicuously absent.

The absence of the USSR from among the top influential countries requires some comment. As historical continuity is a criterion in our definition of key countries and the USSR, being a latecomer to the system, was not present for the entire period, this does, to some extent, explain its apparently minor role in the international drug control context Yet, despite the USSR's not having been active in policy-making, a study of the proceedings of the two last drug conferences—the Vienna Conference and the conference to consider amendments to the Single Convention—clearly reveals that it and other socialist countries have played a decisive role in the treaty-making process. The case of the USSR reveals a limitation in our analysis of power, which may have been unduly confined to participation in the the drug control organs. The USSR's role may be said to be that of a countervailing power or a "vetoer," somewhat analogous to that of the U.K. during the League period, when it consistently exercised a countervailing power to U.S. initiatives and set the limits of action. One of the USSR's main concerns has been to ensure that limitations are not placed by treaty provisions on the exercise of its national sovereignty, by binding it to accept inspections, sanctions, arbitration, and the like. It has therefore constantly voted against the inclusion of such measures in international action, although its general stand is one of providing support for pro-control initiatives. That the USSR has not been more of an initiator itself may be a consequence of its assertion that it has no significant drug problem.* Also, consistent with its socialist ideology, the USSR expresses more interest in general socio-economic change than in programs specifically focused on such symptoms of social malfunctioning as drug addiction.

Key Persons

But influence is wielded by states through individuals, and a policy never emerges without having gone through the process of formulation, discussion, and amendment, a process which is carried on by individuals. Thus attempts at locating the sources of power must take account of persons also. Individuals may derive much of their influence from the positions they occupy and the status of the countries they represent, but personal forcefulness can enhance it. However, to extract from the international drug control system those who may be considered influential requires somewhat different criteria from the set used to identify the key countries.

We looked at the composition of the national delegations to each of the sessions of the key bodies throughout the period from 1921 to 1971. The names of those persons who figured in them repeatedly were noted. The heads of the various secretariat units were also noted. The list of people thus derived represent those who have had most opportunity for excercising influence: they constitute our key persons. Inclusion among this group presupposes that a person has

—participated in at least 10 sessions of the Advisory Committee or the Commission; or at least four times in the Bureau;
—been reelected at least once to the DSB and PCB or the INCB, and has held office for six years at a minimum; —served at least three times on the WHO Drug Dependence Expert Committee;
—headed one of the following secretariats for a minimum of five years: the Division, the Board secretariat, the WHO

* See, for example, its report to the UN for 1971 (NAR/AR.96/1971), which states that: "As in previous years, drug addiction is not a public health problem. As has been stated earlier, this is due primarily to the general social and economic conditions prevailing in the Soviet Union and to the special measures generally taken by the Soviet Government. In the Soviet Union there is no unemployment whatsoever. Special measures taken by the Government constantly raise the population's economic and cultural level of living. All this serves to prevent the spread of addiction."

Drug Dependence Unit; or, if such a position has been held for less than five years, the person concerned has occupied other positions in the secretariat for a sufficiently long period to make up for the deficiency.

These criteria are, of course, all arbitrary, but they do yield a group of persons which covers all those who might be termed influential, if other criteria, based on what can be gleaned from the literature and from our interviews, are applied. Where a person has participated in more than one organ, this was noted in the tabulation (see Appendix E).

Altogether seventy names from twenty-eight countries appear in the list. Their distribution by organ and nationality is shown in table 9.2. It will be seen that the Committee/Commission accounts for more than one-third of the names. This is a consequence of its size and age. The distribution of names among the three other bodies is fairly even. Altogether, thirteen people have been represented in various combinations of two or three bodies. Thus five people, for example, have at different times been members of the INCB as well as representatives of their governments on the Commission, and three have been Commission representatives as well as members of the WHO Expert Committee. Insofar as distribution by country is concerned, the eight key countries earlier identified account for forty-two names and fife top four countries for twenty-eight. The U.K. and the U.S. have nine and eight respectively; Switzerland has six; France has five; India has four; and Canada has three. The other two key countries, Yugoslavia and Turkey, have two each. When countries are compared as to what influential positions they have occupied, it is noteworthy that only the U.S., the U.K., and Switzerland have had influential nationals in all the bodies concerned; that no national of France or India has held a leading position in the international civil service; and that no French person has been a leading figure in the WHO Expert Committee.*

* It is interesting to note in this connection that the U.K. has consistently had more nationals occupying positions in WHO's professional secretariat than any other country (Cox and Jacobson, 1973: 211).

An attempt was made to gather information on these seventy persons in terms of previous occupation and training or disciplinary background. Our sources of information on the individuals concerned are given in Appendix E. Because of lacunae in the data, any interpretation of the figures given below must be subject to the following reservations. The first of these is that data on persons serving on WHO expert committees and the Board are more complete than those on Commission representatives. This may have inflated the ratio of pharmacologists/ chemists to other categories in the breakdown of persons by disciplinary background. Second, as the personal information provided by the official reports is itself selected (see chapter 6), using them as sources may have lent a slight distortion to the results. Third, it was not possible to analyze the professional training of some persons simply because they appear to have had no higher education. This was true of some of the international civil servants. As was pointed out by the Bertrand study on UN personnel questions (Bertrand, 1971), the practice of promoting general-service staff nearing the end of their careers to the professional category has led to the exclusion of university graduates from the professional ranks, and is a major factor in the aging of the Secretariat.

The distribution of key persons by their occupations in their respective home countries when they entered the international drug control scene is given below.

Information on training and disciplinary background was available for just under two-thirds of the group. The breakdown is as follows:

* Some pharmacologists are also doctors of medicine but are placed in the pharmacology category if this is their field of specialization and main activity.

The first category, "health and welfare," covers all those working in the field of public health, including civil servants employed by ministries or departments of health. The category "university and research" includes all academic positions. In the last category are placed those civil servants whom we were unable to assign to any particular category. Even given the reservations mentioned earlier, the preponderance of pharmacologists is striking. They account for the bulk of the "university and research" category in the previous listing.

In an earlier chapter we referred to a "gentlemen's club" of nations, nations which have had a long-standing stake in the system. But we have been told also of the informal existence of a gentlemen's club made up of persons. Our attention has been directed to the fact that, prior to the official opening of a Commission session, a small group of such persons meets in Geneva to settle, in advance, some of the issues which are expected to crop up at the coming session.

Can the membership list of a club such as this be established? To do so one would need a more rigorous definition of key people. We therefore required that fifteen years of activity in the Committee/Commission, the Board, or WHO be a minimum condition of inclusion in the key person category, while retaining in that category all the civil servants and those who have occupied a combination of positions. Two persons (Chodzko and Carrière) were borderline cases, but their eligibility for the category is enhanced by the fact that they were also prominent members of the Health Committee, in spite of the omission of this body from key-country considerations and in spite of its not being systematically subjected to the key-person tests. In figure 9.1, the service span of those who satisfied the above conditions is charted. The names are arranged in groups by country. We observe from the chart that six of the names thus derived belong to the U.S., five to the U.K., four to Switzerland, three each to France, India, and Germany, and two to Yugoslavia, all other countries having claim to only one name each. Of the eight key countries, only Turkey, by this measure, has no key person.

A pattern emerges. During the 1920s, Delevingne, the British assistant under-secretary of state, and Bourgois, the French diplomat, were clearly the leading personalities. Dame Rachel Crowdy was also from the U.K. This is consistent with the fact that the League was predominantly English-French. Campbell, an official of the Indian civil service, and Van Wettum, head of the Opium Monopoly of the Netherlands Indies, were also leading figures, while Carrière, director of the Swiss Federal Health Service and Chodzko, former Polish minister of health, were important in connection with the Health Committee.

Beginning in the 1930s, the U.S. presence began to be increasingly felt. It was felt through two of its citizens, Herbert May, who succeeded Lyall as president of the Board, and through Harry Anslinger, who appeared in the Advisory Committee in 1933.
Anslinger is generally acknowledged to have been the most dominant figure in the Commission for many years after World War II. He had the support of Nathan Eddy, a major contributor to the recommendations of the Expert Committee on Dependence-producing Drugs, with which Eddy had an unbroken association, having served as a member, and often as chairman, at all of its nineteen sessions, until his death in March 1973 (UN Information Letter, 1973: 5). Eddy was also drawn into the Commission's work on a number of occasions in the capacity of a consultant. In the U.S., he was associated with Anslinger through his work on the Committee on Problems of Drug Dependence of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, a body responsible for making recommendations on controls to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), of which Anslinger was head. The head of the WHO Drug Dependence Unit, Dale Cameron, was recruited from the same group in the Academy; indeed, he had once been chairman of the Committee. An earlier chief of the WHO Drug Dependence Unit, Pablo Wolff, was also a close associate of Anslinger, and the congruence of their views is evidenced by the preface that Anslinger wrote to a book on cannabis authored by Wolff (1949). This was translated into English as a countermove against the publication of the La Guardia Report on the "Marihuana Problem in the City of New York" (1944) which had found, in contrast to Anslinger and Wolff's opinion, that the use of marihuana did not lead to mental and moral degeneration (see chapter 13).

As might be expected, the earlier experiences and careers of many of the leading figures had a direct bearing on their subsequent activity in the drug control field. Understanding of the system would benefit from more intimate knowledge of these figures rather than mere acquaintance with their nationality, professional background, and previous occupation. It is significant, for example, that Don Ugo Theodoli, secretary of the Board in the 1930s, was an "old China hand," while Lyall, prior to his retirement in Geneva and his appointment to the Board, served for forty-one years in the Chinese maritime customs. One can assume that their experiences gave them added insight into the Chinese drug problem and the Chinese point of view. It is also likely that their earlier experiences made them more appreciative of -the difficulties arising from cultural differences between countries. It is beyond the scope of this study to give detailed information on all the leading personalities, but to illustrate the usefulness of such information we give below a selected sample of biographical sketches.

Otto Anselmino (1873-1955) studied pharmacology and food chemistry at the University of Heidelberg, and taught at the Universities of Greifswald and Berlin. From 1908, he was a scientific assistant at the Imperial Health Office (Kaiserliches Gesundheitsamt) in Berlin. Later, he was appointed senior government counselor in the Health Department of the Reich. He was dismissed in 1934 and from that year onwards, until 1938, worked in the pharmaceutical firm of Goekecke in Berlin. He was an active participant in the work of the Advisory Opium Committee between 1922 and 1934, and one of his more important contributions was the writing of a document entitled ABC of Narcotic Drugs much consulted by the Committee.

Harry J. Anslinger was born in 1892 in Altoona, Pennsylvania. The earlier years of his career were spent in the State Department, working in consular posts in Holland, Germany, Venezuela, and the Bahamas. He was assigned to the latter to find a way of stopping the smuggling of rum into the U.S. In 1926 he became chief of the Foreign Control Section of the Alcohol Prohibition Unit in the Department of the Treasury and in the same year represented the U.S. at international conferences on smuggling. In 1929 he became an assistant commissioner for prohibition—"a thankless and impossible assignment," as he later put it (Anslinger and Oursler, 1961). When Levi Nutt, the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics lost his job (members of his family were found to have dubious connections with a liquor and narcotics racketeer), Anslinger was promoted to head the Narcotics Division temporarily. Within a few months he was appointed the first Federal Commissioner of Narcotics. The prevailing climate being intensely hostile to opiate addiction and pushers at the time, Anslinger enjoyed much political and public support during his tenure in this office.

Gaston Bourgois (1874-1955) was educated at the École Polytechnique in France. He was successively an officer in the artillery and the navy, an interpreter of Far Eastern languages, and finally settled for a career in the French diplomatic service. His interest in mathematics, coupled with his knowledge of Japanese (which he presumably perfected during his tenure as naval attaché in Japan), allowed him to become a specialist in Japanese mathematics. Unlike the other figures whose biographies are sketched here, Bourgois's earlier experiences were in fields remote-from drug control. However, he was obviously a man of diverse interests and took to narcotics control work, it would appear, with as much ease as he had to the navy and Japanese mathematics.

Herbert May (1877-1966) was born in Philadelphia and obtained his LL.B. from the New York Law School. His father, according to Anslinger (Bulletin on Narcotics 15,2 [1963]:1-7), had started a "highly successful business venture in the drug trade"; by 1928 the "May building in Pittsburgh was the executive center for a number of drugstores." When he returned to the U.S. after traveling abroad in Europe for two years, May went into partnership in the family drug business and remained there for eighteen years, dealing with legal matters and public relations. He held a number of public appointments, including that of deputy food administrator for Western Pennsylvania in 1917. After retirement at the early age of forty-five he became active in the Foreign Policy Association, particularly in its Opium Research Committee. Because of the U.S.'s dissatisfaction with the 1925 Conference, the Committee had wanted a study carried out to clarify the situation, and May had been chosen to do the study. He spent several months in the Middle East and the Far East doing this, and when his report was published, it "created a great stir." One of the suggestions it contained was for "the limitation and control of opium production as basis for the abolition of opium smoking."

In the earlier years, U.S. and League relations had been poor.

The U.S. had, for instance, refused to participate in the nominations for the Board. But although the League's invitation had been sharply rebuffed by Secretary Kellogg in 1928, this did not deter the League from electing an American—May himself—to the Board (Fleming, 1938:229). May had been nominated by the New Zealand government, which had been asked to do so—so as to circumvent the obstacle posed by the nonmembership of the U.S. in the League—by a group of "public spirited Americans who were anxious to have one of their countrymen on the Board."

One of May's foremost contributions, according to Anslinger, was the original proposal to place under control in advance all substances which might, because of their chemical structure, be suspected of addiction liability. As May himself had put it: "the accused should not be acquitted unless proven innocent." These ideas came to be embodied in article 11 of the 1931 Convention.

Colonel C. H. L. Sharman was born in 1881 in England. We are told by Anslinger (Bulletin on Narcotics 11,4 [1959]:1-4), that Sharman, when watching Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, was so captivated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that in 1898 he left England for Canada and joined the Mounties at Regina, Saskatchewan. He later fought in the Boer War and in the First World War. After his return to civilian life, he joined the Canadian Narcotics Service and was appointed its chief in 1927. Sharman was one of Anslinger's staunchest supporters: in fact, he and Anslinger "saw eye to eye in most problems and collaborated very closely both in and outside the [Advisory Opium] Comm,,ittee and later on the Commission" (Renborg, 1964:10).

Pablo Wolff was born in Berlin in 1894. At the University of Berlin, where he obtained his degrees of Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy, he specialized in pharmacology. He decided to go into exile when the national socialist regime came to power in Germany (Bulletin on Narcotics 10,1 [1958]:39). In Geneva, to which he emigrated, he became a regular contributor to the Journal Suisse de Médecine. He also carried out missions and studies for the League of Nations and for national governments, particularly the U.S. government. In 1939 he went to Argentina on a League mission and remained there until 1948, working in close liaison with the Argentine health authorities. In 1949 he came into WHO and headed the Drug Addiction Unit there until 1954. Wolff had fought in the First World War as an
officer in the German army and had been gassed; thus for years he was a sick man. He died soon after he left WHO, in 1957.

Sir Malcolm Delevingne (1868-1950), the British deputy undersecretary of state, was a classics scholar at Trinity College, Oxford. He entered the British Home Office in 1892 and represented the U.K. at a series of important international conferences. He was one of the main architects of the League system of drug control, particularly as embodied in the conventions of 1925 and 1931. Among the grand old men of the League, Delevingne was, according to Renborg (1964), undoubtedly the most remarkable of all. Renborg recalls him as having "a sharp brain in a small body," and as often being very irritable at meetings, not being a person who suffered fools gladly. The following incident during the 1931 conference has been recounted by Renborg as being typical of the man. When the conference refused to entertain the Advisory Committee's draft providing for a monopoly on_world manufacture for the manufacturing countries under a quota system (which he had a hand in formulating), Delevingne took offence and withdrew from the proceedings. However, he sat through all the meetings hidden behind the London Times. Once when the conference encountered difficulties and turned to him for advice, Delevingne replied with a curt "Certainly not." Immediately afterwards the Canadian delegate, Colonel Sharman, who was sitting behind Delevingne, was heard to say, "Sir Malcolm, your attitude would be much more convincing if you did not read your London Times upside down." After his retirement in 1932, Delevingne held a number of public appointments at home, including membership in the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society and in the Royal Commission on Safety in Coal Mines.

As one might expect from looking at the professional and occupational distribution data, civil servants—whether diplomats, law enforcement officers, or health administrators—are strongly represented in the foregoing sample of biographical sketches. More important to note are the personal friendships of these individuals and their relations to the drug industry.

The primary source of influence is nevertheless nations rather than persons. Only those individuals who are acceptable to their governments are chosen to represent them, and individuals often become influential because they represent influential governments.

The Standpoints of Key Countries and Persons

Many an international decision is the result of negotiations between countries on different levels of power and asserting different viewpoints. We will briefly consider the kind of standpoints and beliefs which characterize our key countries and persons.

France has traditionally been in favor of strict controls. Its leading spokesman, Vaille, believes strongly in the "dangers" of cannabis. The draft resolution which he introduced at the 1971 session of the Commission on "Abuse of Cannabis and Multiple Drug Abuse" exemplifies his view on the subject. The resolution "protested against" the statement that cannabis was not a drug of addiction; it referred to demonstration by scientific research of its association with the use of "other narcotic drugs" and its tendency to lead to the use of hallucinogens and other drugs; and it asked for "forceful application" of control measures by governments. When the U.K. delegate queried the research alluded to, and expressed doubts as to whether he could propose a resolution to ECOSOC which was based on scientific work whose conclusions he was called upon to accept on faith, Vaille said that "the Commission was a technical commission composed of experts; as such, if should be able to take a decision about what it wished to propose to the Council." He proposed that the text should read: "Bearing in mind that apart from the great dangers of the use of cannabis as such, which has been demonstrated in a number of scientific studies . " (E/CN.7/SR.716). He was not averse either, at least where cannabis was concerned, to the predetermination of research findings by notions held beforehand. Alluding to a Commission request to the secretariat to prepare a study on the medico-social aspects of cannabis use, he pointed out that such a study would be an extremely important one, for "it would draw attention to the medical and social dangers of cannabis and would explain the reasons for its having been placed under international control by the narcotics treaties" (E/CN.7/SR.714). On another occasion he observed that "drug addicts are normally both liars and active proselytizers" (E/CONF.63/C.2/SR.6). The French are also noticeably procontrol where "psychotropics" under the Vienna Convention are concerned. Although France is a fairly large exporter of drugs, a significant proportion of its national pharmaceutical output is produced by companies mainly controlled by foreign (American, German, and Swiss) interests. Its pharmaceutical industry has, by tradition, developed from small-scale production in laboratories attached to pharmacies rather than in association with the chemical industry, as was the case in Germany. These structural origins have prevented the industry from becoming a powerful multinational enterprise. Moreover, the attitude of the French government has provoked the following criticism from a committee set up to report to the Ministry of Industrial and Scientific Development and the Ministry of Public Health on problems of the pharmaceutical industry:

Drug manufacture today has all the earmarks of an industry. The Committee is sorry to say that this statement has not yet penetrated all minds and that pharmaceutical issues are dealt with more in terms of social and budgetary concerns than in their industrial and economic aspects (Report, July 1972).

The United Kingdom delegation has, as a reading of the records of discussions will show, usually argued for regulation rather than prohibition. At home, the U.K. has continued to allow the use of heroin by addicts and in medical practice. The British have also shown sympathy for the Indian stand on cannabis, which is tied to its sanction of cannabis use in medicine. India's position on opium has understandably been one of opposition to increased controls over licit production. It has always held, for example, that the drawing up of estimates of cultivation and production was merely an academic exercise, for the vagaries of weather make it impossible to organize opium production to meet predetermined targets. Another facet of India's position is a strong stand against synthetic drugs, which found expression, for instance, in Vienna in 1971, in arguments for control over the "psychotropic substances." Switzerland derives its position from two sources: from being the host country of the European office of the UN and of many of the specialized agencies, and from the importance of its chemical industry. Before the war, it was highly negative towards control; its current position still seems to serve the interests of Swiss drug manufacturers (see chapters 15 and 16). Turkey is a traditional opium producer and a major source of contraband opium; it has come under much discussion in the international forum, but its actual influence is probably less than that of the other countries. The Yugoslavian influence is wielded by two individuals, one of whom —Nikolie—is a veteran in the Commission and noted for his frequent interventions. Opium production is now less important in Yugoslavia than it used to be, economic conditions having diverted the interest in this activity to other modes of employment (see chapter 14). Nevertheless, Yugoslavia often joins countries like India in arguing for controls over the manufacture of synthetic drugs to be as stringent as those over production of raw materials.

One conclusion which can be drawn here is that the drug control system is characterized by widely varying levels of influence and participation. Divergence and conflict in the styles and interests of the different key countries have been touched upon and will be further explored later. But when all is said and done, it remains true that more is invested in the system by way of effort, people, and, as will be seen later, money by the United States than by any other nation in the world community. Its influence is preeminent, and in the next chapter we will explore it in greater detail.