Suchergebnisse

The fact is not very widely known that the League of Nations and governments acting in coöperation during a period of just over twenty years between the two world wars have built up an effective international drug administration spanning the entire world. It may perhaps be said that the general public has come to realize that a useful piece of work has been and is being done with good results, but only a few specialists know the main principles on which international coöperation in regard to narcotic drugs is based; and perhaps still fewer have any knowledge of the fact that to make possible effective control of narcotics it was necessary to create special international machinery with wide powers of supervision, regulation, and even sanctions. It should be mentioned at the outset that this international administration has survived the onslaught of the present world crisis which proved fatal to many other efforts in international coöperation. This signifies that the governments of countries of the free peoples of the world have maintained national control of drugs and have continued their coöperation with each other and with the League of Nations and the international drug organs. A proof of this is the fact that in January, 1943, one of these organs—the Supervisory Body—had received from governments of all the free countries in the world except one, Liberia, the estimates of the drug requirements for 1943 which governments are required to furnish under the terms of one of the drug conventions.