Posts

The 1927 French Tariff versus Codeine Prohibition

Image
  1927: The U.S. had been collaborating with China to ban all manner of drugs for 22 years. So France exported a shipment of codeine-laced cough syrup U.S. customs grabbed in New York about the middle of August.  Out of nowhere came the September 9 news story that France had slapped a 400% tariff on a wide range of American exports already enroute to France .  Word of the cough syrup shipment seizure leaked out in a small newspaper ( link ) while the League of Nations was in one of its dope temperance conventions in Geneva, Switzerland. American infiltrators were lobbying for explicit international export-import controls to be applied to codeine --a morphine product similar to heroin which the United States shifted to after banning manufacture of heroin itself. Precisely because of those restrictions, many European pharmaceutical companies had switched to producing codeine for the more laissez-faire regulatory treatment this novel morphine derivative enjoyed.  Fre...

U.S. Drug Report to League of Nations

Image
   Of the nearly 3 tonnes of dope seized worldwide in 1927, 89% were opium, 7% hemp, 3.6% morphine and 0.4% cocaine While New Yorkers slept in the wee hours of 19JAN1929, the Opium Advisory Committee assembled at Geneva, Switzerland for the 5th Meeting of its 12th Session to examine drug trade reports for the year 1927. The delay was mostly for foot-dragging by weak nations curious to find out what sort of coercion was planned for them, while concealing details of their own drug dealings. Fourth on the Agenda was the USA, and the Committee Chairman recalled that the summary of this report had been considered at the close of the last Session--meaning 1928 . Speaking for the United States, Mr John Kenneth Caldwell briskly offered to distribute copies of the 1928 report within 2 to 3 days. The Chairman was diplomatically dismissive and turned to the business of Formosa--a protectorate of Japan at the time which nowadays answers to Taiwan. Mr Sato explained that this 1927 report ...

Tax Day Nostalgia!

Image
  Rate This It seems like it  has to  be fiction, right? Wrong! ( link ) Since I first posted this during the Biden Prohibitionist Administration, the Federal Government's memory site to the Congressional Record above has been stricken with Alzheimer's Disease. Newspaper records on Google News Archives are also oddly disappearing.  Spooner wrote:  Go to A….. B……, and say to him that “the government” has need of money to meet the expenses of protecting him and his property.  If he presumes to say that he has never contracted with us to protect him, and that he wants none of our protection, say to him that that is our business, and not his; that we  choose  to protect him, whether he desires us to do so or not; and that we demand pay, too, for protecting him.  If he dares to inquire who the individuals are, who have thus taken upon themselves the title of “the government,” and who assume to protect him, and demand payment of him, without his ha...