Abstract:

Heroin, manufactured by the German pharmaceutical firm Bayer, entered the market as a “nonaddictive substitute for morphine” and a potent cough-suppressing “wonder drug, ” only to end up classified as the “most dangerous opium derivative” and the “most dangerous addictive drug” regulated under international conventions. Heroin’s retreat was both a natural consequence of advances in medical and pharmaceutical science and a sound choice made by the international community after weighing economic interests against human health and well-being; more importantly, however, it was the inevitable outcome of efforts by technocratic organizations. Although the League of Nations and its Opium Advisory Committee sought to fulfill this role in the 1920s and 1930s, the structural tensions between a weak League and powerful states prevented the international community from forging a concerted approach to heroin control. After World War II, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its Expert Committee on Addiction-Producing Drugs used medical knowledge and scientific assessment to foster international consensus through research, initiatives, resolutions, and appeals. In coordination with the United Nations Economic and Social Council and the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, they subsequently established an international regulatory regime centered on the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, bringing the manufacture, import, export, and use of heroin under comprehensive control. This historical process, through which international organizations translated medical knowledge into international policy, offers an important lens for understanding the formation of today’s global drug-governance system and provides a valuable historical reference for responding to emerging addictive substances.

Key words: heroin, League of Nations, World Health Organization, technocratic organizations