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League of Nations Conflict 18JAN1929

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  The Fourth 1929 Meeting of the League of Nations Opium Advisory Committee began the afternoon of 18JAN1929 with secret jockeying for places by the European Opium Advisory Committee and the U.S.-organized Central Opium Board. Their combined eloquence failed to convince Japan's representative that the two organizations ought to mingle their powers . Part of the problem was that the U.S.-managed 1925 Geneva Convention, did not focus on opium—the standard addictive narcotic already dealt with in ratified conventions. The American Delegation sought to extend unto Europe and Asia violent repression of derivative narcotics such as morphine, heroin... plus things known to be harmless compared to cigarettes.  After all, before the Volstead Act became enforceable , the strongest liquor in America was 43% alcohol. Under Volsteadism, 200-proof ethanol became readily obtainable--to the surprise of dry zealots.  Beyond that, the U.S. delegation—packed with many anti-everything Volst...

League Drug Power Play Background

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  Americans exported prohibition until collapse and war resulted, then doubled down after the disasters.  League of Nations financials  had painted a bleak picture in 1926. Drug-crop countries shoved into joining were nearly 10 million gold francs in arrears (roughly $2 million, at 5 to 1 exchange rate). By year's end they were barely $280,000 ahead. March 1927 brought the Nanking Incident ( link ), a UK-Soviet war scare followed in May, the month the Manly Sullivan Supreme Court decision made dope and liquor profits taxable. German markets tumbled without recovery . The French frank crashed and U.S. tourists there were importuned for police ID cards, yet French stock prices still held strong.( link ) Now, January 1929, was the perfect time for U.S. prohibitionists already infiltrating the League with a Permanent Opium Board to exert unrelenting prohibitionist pressure crowding the Opium Advisory Committee to endorse deadlier laws against production and trade worldwide....

Americans v League of Nations, 2nd Meeting JAN1929

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  17JAN1929 marked 25days since the large seizure of addictive opiates and non-habit-forming cocaine at New York.( link ) League medical experts at the 2nd Opium Advisory meeting quibbled over U.S. insistence on adding benzylmorphine to the index of drugs singled out for stringent regulation same as benzyolmorphine with the extra "o." A Swiss M.D. asserted the former was non-habit-forming . One of the U.S. allies seated on the Permanent Central Opium Committee auditing Opium Advisory Committee meetings pointed out that the concoction included more than 2% morphine. This U.S.-dominated committee had been meeting for close to two weeks already. Already the vagueness of terms like "habit" and "addiction" were being exploited by Americans. U.S. laws back then banned sauerkraut for containing 0.5% alcohol as a result of natural fermentation. Future President Ronald Reagan--18 years old when League partisans tried to palm off certain opiates as non-habit-form...

League Opium Committee under U.S. management, JAN1929

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  This agreement, like the Anglo-Chinese deal of 1907 is concealed. Another version, 8 days later, attracted 27 additional signatures. Of the first seven, four produced morphine, two cocaine, and all but Siam, opium. Additional producers appeared at the second "séance".  The first meeting of the Opium Advisory Committee's 12th Session opened 17JAN1929. Early plans to open and search personal letters and packages made it clear "higher-ups" and kingpins were not a concern. The other item concerned the Permanent Central (Opium) Board invented by Americans at the 1925 Geneva Convention to infiltrate and keep tabs on the Opium Advisory Committee--staffed by a Dutch coke trader, an agent of Serbia, producer of the world's strongest opium, an excitable Chinese gentleman nervous over the 1/8 of China's opium that is imported. The other 7/8 of opium, actually grown in China, not as troubling. France, Germany, Great Britain and India had their experienced deal ma...