Talk:International Opium Convention (1925)

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Page scope

International Opium Convention (1925) covers the International Opium Convention signed at Geneva on 19 February 1925 by the Second Opium Conference of the League of Nations: its provisions on Indian hemp, how cannabis came onto the conference's agenda, and the debates that shaped chapter IV. The International Opium Convention signed at The Hague on 23 January 1912 is a separate treaty with the same title and is not covered here.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and unresolved identifications here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

How the sources were read

The convention was read in the scan of the League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. 81, published by the United Nations Treaty Collection, which has a text layer. The English text was read in full (pp. 319–357, odd pages), and the French text where the English page carries no closing clause (p. 350). The volume's contents list No. 1845 at p. 317 and No. 1846 at p. 359, so the convention and its Protocol run to p. 358; some citations elsewhere give pp. 317–359.

The Records of the Second Opium Conference (C.760.M.260.1924.XI, Geneva, August 1925) were read in the scans published by the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics: Volume I, the plenary debates, and Volume II, the committees and sub-committees. Both have a text layer. Every passage on hashish or Indian hemp found through the volumes' indexes and a text search was read, and every passage quoted in the article was checked on the page image. In Volume I the scan's image numbers and the printed page numbers do not run in step, so page references follow the folio printed on each page.

Willoughby's Opium as an International Problem (1925) was read in the Gokhale Institute's scan of the Johns Hopkins Press edition, which has no text layer: the title page, the index, p. 251 and chapter XIX ("Indian Hemp (Hashish)", pp. 374–381) were put through OCR and the passages used were checked on the page images. The Internet Archive copy named in the citation could not be opened from the network used.

The Transnational Institute's 2014 report was read in its chapter 1 PDF, pp. 9–13.

The 1912 and 1925 conventions

Both treaties are titled "International Opium Convention". The Hague convention of 23 January 1912 did not apply to hashish; a paragraph in its protocol called for the question to be studied. Accounts of events before 1925, such as Jamaica's law of 1913 against the import and cultivation of ganja, concern the 1912 convention. English Wikipedia's article on it is titled "First International Opium Convention", and its bare title "International Opium Convention" is a disambiguation page.

Where the sources differ

• The vote on the resin. Bewley-Taylor, Blickman and Jelsma (2014, p. 11) write that the United Kingdom, India and the Netherlands "opposed" the sub-committee's step. The minutes of Sub-Committee F (vol. II, p. 298) record that the British, Dutch and Indian members abstained on the vote for the absolute prohibition of the use of the resin, and that the British delegation entered a reservation, with which the Indian member associated himself. The article follows the minutes.
• Who drafted the experts' text. The same report (p. 11) says that El Guindy "introduced the proviso" on medical and scientific use in the sub-committee. The minutes (vol. II, pp. 297–298) and the report of Sub-Committee F (vol. II, p. 318) show the text drafted by the group on hashish under Professor Perrot as rapporteur, of which Egypt was a member. The article attributes the text to the experts' group.
• El Guindy's insanity figure. The plenary record (vol. I, p. 134) prints El Guindy's estimate as "from 30 to 60 per cent" of cases of insanity in Egypt. Willoughby's reprint of the memorandum (p. 379) prints "from 3 to 60 per cent". The 2014 report gives 30 to 60. The article quotes the official record.

Sources not used

• R. E. Kendell, "Cannabis condemned: the proscription of Indian hemp", Addiction 98 (2003): 143–151, and L. Kozma, "The League of Nations and the debate over cannabis prohibition", History Compass 9 (2011): 61–70, were not read in full. The figures for the Abbasiya asylum that the article reports from the 2014 report come, by that report's note 66, from Kendell.
• The two Egyptian memoranda on hashish circulated to the conference, by El Guindy (O.D.C. 38) and by Dr A. H. Mahfooz Bey (O.D.C. 55), were not read.
• The tables of hashish seized in Egypt in 1919–1924 that El Guindy read to the conference (vol. I, pp. 133–134) are not reproduced: the printed separators leave their magnitude unclear.