By Brian Houlihan

Michael MacWhite (1883–1958)

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The 1925 Opium Convention was one of the first international conferences Ireland participated in. It was also a conference which helped shape international cannabis policy for the next century.

The 1920’s was a turbulent time in Ireland as the War of Independence (1919–1921) and the Irish Civil War (1922–1923) lead to independence and the establishment of the Irish State. These seismic events occurred just a few short years after the 1916 Rising which was the catalyst for everything that followed.

Unsurprisingly throughout the 1920’s much of the political focus was on stabilising the state and affirming independence from Britain. Thus the Irish Free State regarded organisations like the League of Nations as way of asserting itself on the international stage. Interestingly one of the first international conferences Ireland participated in was focused on drug policy.

The International Opium Conference was a series of meetings which took place in Geneva from November 1924 to February 1925. Similar meetings had taken place at the beginning of the 20th century, resulting in the 1912 Hague Convention which regulated opium. But this 1925 conference was the first series of such meetings which involved the Irish Free State.

In October 1924 a letter was sent to Sir Eric Drummond, Secretary-General of the League of Nations, authorising Michael MacWhite as the representative of the Irish Free State at the Opium Conference. According to some biographers MacWhite was largely left without instructions when the conference commenced.

Figures provided to the League of Nations revealed that very little opium was being imported or exported into the state. During is first address to the conference Michael MacWhite stated “The traffic in narcotics is practically unknown in Ireland. The amount of raw opium imported into the Irish Free State in 1922 and 1923 did not exceed half a pound.”

Likewise from the Dáil (parliament) debates at the time its clear few in Irish politics regarded drugs (aside from alcohol) as an issue but they saw participation in such international treaties as vital. In reality drugs didn’t become a political topic until the 1960’s when the first drug arrests occurred.

Delegates at the conference

Throughout the conference the American, Japanese and Chinese delegations pushed for a prohibitive outcome while the French and British were opposed to constraints on opium production and use. This was in part due to the income both countries made from opium sales, especially Britain.

While other commonwealth countries aligned with Britain the Irish opted to side with the American delegation. MacWhite’s stance throughout negotiations was to distance the Free State from the Commonwealth group and to prevent moves to exclude the dominions from the terms agreed which the British was calling for.

Tensions rose between the Irish and British delegates when MacWhite leaked figures to the Chicago Tribune newspaper revealing how much revenue the British earned from the opium trade in Hong Kong, Malaysia and India. MacWhite was later reprimanded for some of his actions at the convention including this stoking of tensions.

It was during the Opium Conference that cannabis first got caught up in international law. Although cannabis was not on the original agenda, a claim by the Egyptian delegation that it was as dangerous as opium, and should be subject to the same international controls, was supported by several other countries including China and the USA.

No formal evidence was produced and conference delegates had not been briefed about cannabis being on the agenda. Objections came from Britain and other colonial powers. They did not dispute the claim that cannabis was comparable to opium, but they wanted to avoid a commitment to eliminating its use in their Asian and African territories.

The events at the conference which saw cannabis added to the convention have long been a source of speculation and conspiracy theories. However it’s worth noting that the opium convention wasn’t the first time cannabis was raised on the international stage and some of the other factors involved in Egypt raising the topic.

In 1923 the South African government had told the League of Nations that cannabis should be treated as a habit-forming drug and be brought within the scope of the Hague Convention. The matter was referred to committee before being brought up again by Egypt at the Opium Convention in 1925.

At the time Egyptian officials had long regarded cannabis as dangerous substance and had been placing restrictions on cannabis since the 1880’. In the proceeding and subsequent years many reports had blamed cannabis for some of the social woes facing the country. Although some of the claims seem to be wildly exaggerated.

During the convention a compromise was reached that saw some restrictions on importing and exporting to countries which banned cannabis. Countries importing or exporting were also expected to keep records of every transaction. However some leeway within the convention meant the use and production of cannabis, and also internal trade of it, was not outlawed.

When the overall convention was eventually put to vote MacWhite was the only delegate to vote against a last minute amendment to weaken its implementation. By this point the Americans and Chinese had withdrawn from discussions in protest at the watering down of American proposals for further restrictions on opium.

Ireland didn’t actually ratify the convention until September 1931, almost six years after its agreement. Eventually The Opium Convention was later replaced by the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs which still shapes international policy to this day.

While cannabis was not a substance of choice in the 1920’s by the 1960’s that had begun to change. But more on that in a future blog.

Brian Houlihan is the curator of the Dublin Hemp Museum and regularly writes about hemp. Follow him on Twitter at @dubhempmuseum and @houlihanbrian. You can also find us on Facebook.