U.S. Drug Report to League of Nations

  

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 was the first in which figures for grown-in-Japan coca leaves and crude cocaine paste were disclosed--awakening keen interest in the American observer. But that 1927 American report was MOST informative...

The American report for 1927 opened with the merits of a 22JUN1927 law regulating "narcotics" in the formerly freewheeling Virgin Islands, and a 03MAR1927 law establishing yet another prohibition bureau--this one in the Treasury Department. The report commended New York State for its 05APR1927 drug law pursuant to the Hague "Opium" convention--a convention nobody wants to admit was casus belli for WW1. With some hubris the report went on about new U.S. import form regulations beginning at foreign ports were implemented after June. Some idea of how effective these regulations were in stopping exports to the USA leap out of a newspaper report showing that July, 1927 imports from Europe were 90% lower than those of July 1926.(link) Sure enough, on 01SEP1927 heroin-exporting France slapped "prohibitive" tariffs on U.S. exports in a tit-for-tat reprisal.(link)

Certainly the USA had money to burn on narcotics agents. Appropriations were 1.3 million gold dollars, each worth 1.67 grams of gold--over two metric tonnes of gold at 2026 prices, $336,000,000.  Still, the point we need to cover is how much financial havoc that much money can inflict on global finances. According to the U.S. report, that figure was a but a drop in the bucket, because various factors, enumerated in the full report, "combine to render combine to render practically impossible the task of the United States enforcement officers, operating under present laws, to curb effectively the introduction of narcotic drugs into the country." By European lights, narcotics in U.S. verbiage means anything the government does not like, effectively including beer! Here are samples from September 1927 newspapers circulating while the League of Nations was meeting in 1927: 
New Jersey Prohibition Administrator Hanlon on removal of confiscated drugs from government warehouse. NY Times,  21AUG1927 p5c4.
Dry agents attempt warrantless search to close down brewery.(link)
U.S. Official shot in Dresden, Germany.(link)

Dry America had issued warnings in 1926 that its "efforts to control the consumption of dangerous drugs within territory subject to its jurisdiction" (which now included the Philippine Islands, Samoa, Guam, Wake and Hawaii) "were being nullified to an alarming extent by the activities of smugglers who appeared to find little difficulty in acquiring large quantities of the drugs for the purpose of introducing them secretly into the United States." Then came the kicker: "there could be no great improvement in this situation until there was a control in countries other than the United States over the manufacture and export of narcotic drugs which would prevent their sale to any but licensed importers..." To dispel any doubt as to whose problem America was about to make this, the report asserted, with particulars, that: "several large seizures of drugs, presumed to be of European origin" had recently been made. As evidence of U.S. stringency in enforcing a prohibitionist Monroe Doctrine on economically weakened neighbors, NONE of those neighbors were extracting morphine from opium, and only two South American countries manufactured cocaine from coca paste or leaves.

The Big Stick was brandished thus: 93.7% of cases tried resulted in convictions which, laid end to end, added up to 7088 survivor years in prison. Fines and "tax" settlements for 1926 & 1927 added up to 798,000 gold dollars worth 3,990,125 gold Swiss francs. Rockefeller gifts to the League in 1926 amounted to nearly 99000 francs, and outlays for Opium Advisory Committee sessions, printing, cables and telegrams were but 28,500 gold francs. American penalties revenue alone was 70 times as much as the yearly cost to the League for Opium Advisory committee activities--including papering them over with sanctimonious guff about traffic in women and children! At year's end 1926, the League cash account stood at 1.201,189.65 gold francs or just over 240,000 gold dollars. From 1920 through 1926 the League could not collect $1.6 million in member dues from countries whose economies had been wrecked or weakened by war and prohibition laws--according to the League Official Journal. China was over a million dollars in arrears and Peru another $281,000 gold--BEFORE new U.S. "dope" regulations knocked 90% off European exports to Dry America. Given Europe's crisis condition, is it any surprise the U.S. wasted no time in infiltrating and taking control of the League of Nations? 

Closing observations in the U.S. report went straight to sensitive nerves affecting at least seven countries and colonies: the cocaine yield from Java leaves was approximately twice the yield obtained from Peruvian leaves. Dutch botanists had bred superior coca shrubs on Java, and any coca grown on nearby Japanese possessions was likely twice as strong as South American strains.  More ominously, the US Treasury Department had in September of 1927 sent narcs and snoops to connect with European narcs and snoops to swap information. The Federal narcotics Control Board was obliged to take into consideration the possibility of disturbed political conditions in or around the crude opium-producing countries interfering with shipments to the United States. Such factors concern any national emergency which would cause a sudden increased demand for the drugs for medicinal purposes. Europeans understood all too clearly that this was precisely what had occurred as signatures were gathered in July, 1914 to impose Hague limitations on production and trade worldwide. Small wonder the Committee sought to downplay that stale American report.

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Odd reading: The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, by Douglas Valentine.(link) The small parts I was familiar with seem accurate to me. The rest of it has the ring of communist propaganda but that does not make it necessarily untrue. Just as intellectuals of the communist persuasion regard all non-communists as the other half of a binary blob, whether libertarian, fascist or fanatically religious, so for the sake of simplicity I regard them as half of a non-libertarian blob, the other half being fascists, national socialists and/or religious fanatics dedicated to the initiation of deadly force. The differences among them appear negligible to me. Yet it would not surprise me if the rest of Valentine's story is true. The book does provide insights into the vocabulary and mindset of these spooks and their competitors. 

Cool stuff: Mellow Mood Imports has clothes 'n stuff you can dance in.(link) Charleston, North Carolina was where attorney Manly Sullivan was charged with violating the National Prohibition Act. He appealed and won on the argument that forcing him to declare and pay taxes on illegal income was a violation of the Fifth Amendment. The Charleston promptly became America's signature popular dance. This is a family-owned and operated small business in the spirit of American free enterprise. 

Get the big picture in Prohibition and The Crash on Amazon Kindle in two languages. After this you’ll be able to explain to economists exactly how fanaticism and loss of freedom wrecked the U.S. economy.

Prohibition and The Crash, on Amazon Kindle (link)

ASYLUM APPLICATION FORM i589 INSTRUCTIONS IN PORTUGUESE: INSTRUÇÕES PARA O FORMULÁRIO DE ASILO i589. What we did was make the Political Asylum instructions accessible to and understandable by people accustomed to thinking in Portuguese. This costs one dollar ($1) and you can read it on a cellphone with the Kindle app.(link)

Comment at Libertariantranslator or LIBtranslator, my political economy blog at https://libertrans.blogspot.com/

Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the adventures of a Rio de Janeiro man-about-town and the beautiful daughter of an elderly scientist–touting alcohol prohibition, eugenics and racial collectivism. Go to Amazon.com and look inside America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, cover art by Rene Bueno, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)

I also produce books and articles in Portuguese, using Brazilian historical sources at http://www.expatriotas.blogspot.com or www.amigra.us and in English at http://Libertariantranslator.wordpress.com (link)

My financial history blog, http://www.Libertrans.us, in Portuguese is Expatriotas for Brazilians, readable at www.expatriotas.blogspot.com (link)

Go ahead and comment. 

Do you need to contact a certified Translator or Interpreter?

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Tax Day Nostalgia!

 

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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 having ever made any contract with them, say to him that that, too, is our business, and not his; that we do not choose to make ourselves individually known to him; that we have secretly (by secret ballot) appointed you our agent to give him notice of our demands, and, if he complies with them, to give him, in our name, a receipt that will protect him against any similar demand for the present year. 

The original law passed by Republicans reads:  “I, A.B., do swear, or affirm, (as the case may be,) that I will, to the best of my knowledge, skill and judgment, diligently and faithfully execute the office and duties of assessor for, (naming the assessment district,) without favor or partiality, and that I will do equal right and justice in every case in which I shall act as assessor.” And a certificate of such oath or affirmation shall be delivered to the collector of the district for which such assessor or assistant assessor shall be appointed. And every assessor or assistant assessor acting in the said office without having taken the said oath or affirmation shall forfeit and pay $100, one moiety thereof to the use of the United States, and the other moiety thereof to him who shall first sue for the same; to be recovered, with costs of suit, in any court having competent jurisdiction.

Section 12. And be it further enacted, That the Secretary of the Treasury shall establish regulations suitable and necessary for carrying this act into effect; which regulation shall be binding on each assessor and his assistance in the performance of the duties enjoined by or under this act, and shall also frame instructions for the said assessors and their assistance; pursuant to which instructions the said assessors shall, on the first day of March next, direct and cause the several assistant assessor’s in the district to inquire after and concerning all lands, lots of ground, with their improvements, buildings, and dwelling houses, made liable to taxation under this act by reference as well as to any lists of assessment or collection taken under the laws of the respective States, as to any other records or documents, and by all other lawful ways and means, and to value and enumerate the said objects of taxation in the manner prescribed by this act, and in conformity with the regulations and instructions above-mentioned.…

The second part or the original law reads:

Section 52. And be it further enacted, that should any of the people of any of the States or Territories of the United States, or the District of Columbia be in actual rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States at the time this act goes into operation, so that the laws of the United States cannot be executed therein, it shall be the duty of the president, and he is hereby authorized, to proceed to execute the provisions of this act within the limits of such State or Territory, or District of Columbia, so soon as the authority of the United States therein is reestablished, and to collect the sums which would have been due from the persons residing or holding property or stocks therein, with the interest due, at the rate of 6% (him thereon until paid in the manner and under the regulations prescribed in the foregoing in the foregoing sections of this act. 

This Spooner translated from vague, political legalese to the vernacular:

If he refuses to comply, seize and sell enough of his property to pay not only our demands, but all your own expenses and trouble beside.  If he resists the seizure of his property, call upon the bystanders to help you (doubtless some of them will prove to be members of our band).  If, in defending his property, he should kill any of our band who are assisting you, capture him at all hazards; charge him (in one of our courts) with murder, convict him, and hang him.  If he should call upon his neighbors, or any others who, like him, may be disposed to resist our demands, and they should come in large numbers to his assistance, cry out that they are all rebels and traitors; that “our country” is in danger; call upon the commander of our hired murderers; tell him to quell the rebellion and “save the country,” cost what it may.  Tell him to kill all who resist, though they should be hundreds of thousands, and thus strike terror into all others similarly disposed.  See that the work of murder is thoroughly done; that we may have no further trouble of this kind hereafter.  When these traitors shall have thus been taught our strength and our determination, they will be good loyal citizens for many years, and pay their taxes without a why or a wherefore.  

These were the exigencies of the war to preserve the Customs Union so that a Protective Tariff could smother competition from European or Canadian makers of plows, scythes, hoes, chains, knives, rope, bridles, bits and farm implements in general and allow Yankee manufacturers to set prices without fear of being undercut. Slavery had nothing to do with it except to preserve the backward colonial hub of the metropole-colony engine for enriching the nouveau Metropole of New England. The first Tariff of Abominations brought the threat of secession and federal coercion. The Morrill Tariff of 1860 made it reality and sparked the War Between The States.

***

Cool stuff: Mellow Mood Imports has clothes 'n stuff you can dance in.(link) Charleston, North Carolina was where attorney Manly Sullivan was charged with violating the National Prohibition Act. He appealed and won on the argument that forcing him to declare and pay taxes on illegal income was a violation of the Fifth Amendment. The Charleston promptly became America's signature popular dance. This is a family-owned and operated small business in the spirit of American free enterprise. 

Get the big picture in Prohibition and The Crash on Amazon Kindle in two languages. After this you’ll be able to explain to economists exactly how fanaticism and loss of freedom wrecked the U.S. economy.

Prohibition and The Crash, on Amazon Kindle (link)

ASYLUM APPLICATION FORM i589 INSTRUCTIONS IN PORTUGUESE: INSTRUÇÕES PARA O FORMULÁRIO DE ASILO i589. What we did was make the Political Asylum instructions accessible to and understandable by people accustomed to thinking in Portuguese. This costs one dollar ($1) and you can read it on a cellphone with the Kindle app.(link)

Comment at Libertariantranslator or LIBtranslator, my political economy blog at https://libertrans.blogspot.com/

Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the adventures of a Rio de Janeiro man-about-town and the beautiful daughter of an elderly scientist–touting alcohol prohibition, eugenics and racial collectivism. Go to Amazon.com and look inside America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, cover art by Rene Bueno, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)

I also produce books and articles in Portuguese, using Brazilian historical sources at http://www.expatriotas.blogspot.com or www.amigra.us and in English at http://Libertariantranslator.wordpress.com (link)

My financial history blog, http://www.Libertrans.us, in Portuguese is Expatriotas for Brazilians, readable at www.expatriotas.blogspot.com (link)

Go ahead and comment. 

Do you need to contact a certified Translator or Interpreter?

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USA and League Prohibition plans--18JAN1929

 

Of the nearly 3 tonnes of dope seized in 1927, 89% were opium, 7% hemp, 3.6% morphine and 0.4% cocaine,
the light blue trace between green and dark blue. 

As the Opium Advisory committee members returned from their 3-4th Meeting lunch break in Geneva, Americans were opening their 18JAN1929 morning papers to stories like...
Senator Tydings moves to curb American loans abroad. (Germany was borrowing to pay reparations) 
Yugoslav king takes first step to end dictatorship. (The OAC meeting chairman is from Serbia) 
$20M gold earmarked here, presumably f/ French account. (Sound familiar? Like April 2026?)
Loans to brokers rise $71M in week... (Stock Market call money instability)

Talk of Relations between the U.S.-backed Permanent Central Board and the Advisory Committee were again taken up and the remainder of the meeting went into public session. Draft articles hammered out in 16FEB1923 sessions included plans for the Central Opium Board. This, the USA and China insisted, was needed even though the Opium Advisory Board was gathering statistics worldwide--albeit with a shorter list of things to do with that information. A Swiss participant understood draft Article 27 as requiring the Board to take all necessary measures to prevent such information from being published or brought to the knowledge of speculators who might use it for purposes of filthy lucre. The requirement posed a dilemma. U.S. insistence that a lengthy list of drugs be curbed met objections. Experience proved that throttling opium alone--itself 9/10ths of all drugs other than alcohol and tobacco--destabilized entire regional economies that not only exported but also monopolized and taxed drugs for revenue. American zeal, affronted by such venal pusillanimity, led her delegates to insist that economic considerations be ignored given the pressing moral reasons for banning and regulating drugs. War-torn China and Dry America's moral outrage mattered.  Both statistical teams were told to get with the program. Japan's delegate could object to the Advisory Committee dealing with statistics, but that was part of its duties. 

Mr Lyall of the Opium Board sought to smooth ruffled feathers by admitting the Central Opium Board was new, still didn't even have a secretary, and intended to urge States party to the 1925 Convention to hold off on sending statistics until after a session planned for April. For now the Board merely wanted to rubberneck League Advisory Council meetings and "gain experience." Portugal's representative was cheerfully eager to change the subject, yet France's man went back to some secrecy requirements of Article 27 of the Sino-U.S. Geneva convention. This again presented the danger of dwelling on economic and financial impacts of prohibition that both U.S. and Chinese delegates were struggling to evade acknowledging. Italy's Senator and Britain's representative argued that no speculators or business rivals had profited from statistics furnished previously to the Advisory Committee, whose work was exempt from Geneva Article 27 restrictions. This worried the Dutch representative on account of a possibility the Advisory Committee might be cut out of the loop entirely because of data secrecy concerns. Serbia's representative and Chairman considered the subject practically exhausted, and attention turned to examination of country reports. Germany quickly moved to the top of the pile. 

The Reichstag Committee studying the penal code noticed an increase in the number of drug addicts reported by Germany's Health Office for recent years, and so had passed a resolution to limit manufactures to national medical requirements. Great Britain's representative coyly asked whether the German representative cared to comment, and that worthy--keenly aware of competitors in the room--would later share information expected to flow from a future Reichstag plenary meeting. Britain's man asked why nearly 3/4 tonne of crude cocaine had been shipped from Germany to Russia and Germany's Dr Kahler volunteered to make inquiries. Regarding the report for Chosen (now Korea), Mr Sato wanted a postponement so he could prepare explanations for Japanese government plans to monopolize morphine manufactures on that island. The meeting adjourned with an uneasy truce struck between European smooth operators and the new insurgents. All participants were looking forward to dissecting and haggling over drug control reports from the U.S., Formosa, France, Great Britain and Hong-Kong at the Saturday meeting.

New York papers reported that former governor and defeated presidential hopeful Al Smith had hired on as a banker on the board of the County Trust Company--with James J Riordan. In Berlin, potash magnate Arnold Rechberg was lobbying for an alliance of Germany, France and England against the United States to settle war loans and reparations issues.(link) Alien property custodian Howard Sutherland--in charge of huge holdings of equity confiscated from Germany in the war--assigned proxies for 12400 shares to John D Rockfeller Jr. then in a struggle for control of Standard Oil of Indiana.(link) Herbert Hoover was back from "Winning the Southern Cross" in South America. A shocked southerner in New York complained to newspapers that "two negro girls" had sat next to him at the picture show--this while the multiracial talkie Gang War was playing nearby. He got little sympathy.

Good reading: The Star Dwellers, by James Blish. I had not heard of the book before reading the review at Michael Grossberg's Libertarian Futurist Society. This early sixties boy-meets-aliens space opera features FTL travel to a very distant destination peopled by energy critters reminiscent of something Fred Hoyle dreamed up for one of his witty adventures. Blish focuses on diplomatic negotiations between radically dissimilar entities. Not his best work, but enjoyable.

Cool stuff: Mellow Mood Imports has clothes 'n stuff you can dance in.(link) Charleston, North Carolina was where attorney Manly Sullivan was charged with violating the National Prohibition Act. He appealed and won on the argument that forcing him to declare and pay taxes on illegal income was a violation of the Fifth Amendment. The Charleston promptly became America's signature popular dance. This is a family-owned and operated small business in the spirit of American free enterprise. 

Get the big picture in Prohibition and The Crash on Amazon Kindle in two languages. After this you’ll be able to explain to economists exactly how fanaticism and loss of freedom wrecked the U.S. economy.

Prohibition and The Crash, on Amazon Kindle (link)

ASYLUM APPLICATION FORM i589 INSTRUCTIONS IN PORTUGUESE: INSTRUÇÕES PARA O FORMULÁRIO DE ASILO i589. What we did was make the Political Asylum instructions accessible to and understandable by people accustomed to thinking in Portuguese. This costs one dollar ($1) and you can read it on a cellphone with the Kindle app.(link)

Comment at Libertariantranslator or LIBtranslator, my political economy blog at https://libertrans.blogspot.com/

Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the adventures of a Rio de Janeiro man-about-town and the beautiful daughter of an elderly scientist–touting alcohol prohibition, eugenics and racial collectivism. Go to Amazon.com and look inside America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, cover art by Rene Bueno, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)

I also produce books and articles in Portuguese, using Brazilian historical sources at http://www.expatriotas.blogspot.com or www.amigra.us and in English at http://Libertariantranslator.wordpress.com (link)

My financial history blog, http://www.Libertrans.us, in Portuguese is Expatriotas for Brazilians, readable at www.expatriotas.blogspot.com (link)

Go ahead and comment. 

Do you need to contact a certified Translator or Interpreter?

Está procurando tradutor ou intérprete credenciado?