Opium auf den Philippinen
Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bemühten sich westliche Missionare in China unterstützt von der öffentlichen Meinung um die Ausmerzung des Opiumlasters - und um die Beendigung des Handels mit Rauchopium, der hauptsächlich von dem von Großbritannien beherrschten Indien ("Calcutta Sales") ausging. Diese Frontstellung gegenüber dem britischen Weltreich und seiner als unmoralisch angesehenen Opiumpolitik wurde nach 1898 besonders akut, als die USA mit der Übernahme der Philippinen zur pazifischen Macht aufstiegen und sich dort auch militärisch in größerem Umfang engagierten. Das Opiumproblem schien sie auf einmal direkt zu betreffen. Aus der Hauptstadt der Philippinen gelangten besorgte Berichte nach Washington: US-Soldaten seien besonders in den Chinesen-Vierteln von Manila den Verlockungen opiumrauchender Prostituierter - in der Regel chinesischer Abstammung - ausgesetzt.
Tatsächlich hatten schon die Spanier ein Lizenzsystem für chinesische Betreiber von öffentlichen Opium-Kneipen (fumaderos públicos) eingeführt, das dem doppelten Zweck diente, einerseits den Opiumhandel zu kanalisieren und auf gewisse Gebiete und Konsumenten zu beschränken und andererseits ein gewisses Abgabenaufkommen zu garantieren. Dieses Lizenzsystem war im Laufe der politischen Unruhen vorübergehend in Turbulenzen geraten, dann aber mit einem Dekret Emilio Aguinnaldos vom 20.11.1898, das drei chinesischen Geschäftsleuten in Manila die Lizenz zum Betreiben solcher Fumaderos erteilte, wieder aktiviert worden (Ocampo 2006).
Zunächst hatte William Howard Taft als Gouverneur der Philippinen dieses System weiterführen wollen. Er wäre damit vor allem der Empfehlung der Zollbehörde gefolgt, die den doppelten Vorteil betont hatte, dass dadurch einerseits Einnahmen zu generieren seien und andererseits teure Maßnahmen gegen den sonst zu erwartenden Schmuggel von Opium entfielen.
Doch zwei Wochen, bevor dieser Vorschlag endgültig abgesegnet werden sollte, sollte eine Last-Minute-Kampagne der in Manila stationierten Missionare den Lauf der Dinge grundlegend verändern. Mit dem moralischen Vorwurf, dass der Staat sich mitschuldig mache, wenn er mit dem Laster Geld verdiene, wandten sie sich am 31.05.1903 an Wilbur Crafts, den Präsidenten des International Reform Bureau, einer prohibitionistisch eingestellten Lobby der Missionsgesellschaften, in Washington, D.C. Crafts seinerseits verschickte nicht weniger als 2000 telegrafische Petitionen an prominente Unterstützer mit der Bitte, bei Präsident Roosevelt zu intervenieren. Und tatsächlich: Theodore Roosevelt war von diesem Ausbruch moralischer Empörung beeindruckt und legte sein Veto gegen die Entscheidung für das Lizenzsystem ein.
Er ordnete die Rücknahme des Gesetzentwurfs zwecks weiterer Beratungen an. Gouverneur Taft berief eine aus drei Männern bestehende Kommission, das Philippine Opium Committee, dessen wichtigstes Mitglied der Charles Brent sein sollte, Bischof der Episkopalischen Kirche von Manila. Er sollte das Schicksal der amerikanischen und der globalen Drogenpolitik noch lange Zeit beeinflussen.
Dale Gieringer (2005) berichtet, was dann folgte:
The committee began by investigating the opium situation in other Asian countries. It then issued a muddled report based less on the empirical evidence, whose policy implications were at best equivocal, than on a clear ideological commitment to prohibition. Brent concluded by recommending a policy of "progressive prohibition," in which opium would at first be strictly limited to confirmed addicts, then totally banned (except for medical use) after a three-year transition period. The plan was modeled on the Japanese policy in their Formosan colony, which, however, envisaged a much longer transition period of 30 years. The Committee's report was submitted in August, 1904, but not published until 14 months later.
By that time, the Congress had already adopted its recommendations. On March 3, 1905, it passed "An act to revise and amend the tariff laws of the Philippine Islands, and for other purposes," empowering the Philippine colonial government to "prohibit absolutely the importation or sale of opium, or to limit or restrict its importation and sale, or adopt such other measures as may be required for the suppression of the evils resulting from the sale and use of the drug: and provided, further, that after March 1, 1908, it shall be unlawful to import into the Philippine Islands opium, in whatever form, except by the government, and for medicinal purposes only, and at no time shall it be lawful to sell opium to any native of the Philippine Islands except for medicinal purposes" [Washington Post, "Filipinos Stop Opium, March 10, 1906].
The opium prohibition law had not yet taken effect in the Philippines when Bishop Brent sought to expand its compass. In June, 1906, Brent wrote to President Roosevelt asking the U.S. to call an international conference to support anti-opium efforts in China. Roosevelt concurred, viewing it as a good opportunity for the U.S. to curry favor with the Chinese government, which had been resentful of European meddling in its affairs and had recently launched an anti-opium campaign of its own with crucial assistance from American missionaries. A conference was scheduled in Shanghai, and the State Department appointed three commissioners to represent the U.S. They included Bishop Brent, Dr. Charles Tenney, an ex-missionary and anti-opium advocate, and Dr. Hamilton Wright, an irrepressible and vocal, budding narcocrat who was to become a leading architect of national prohibition. The Shanghai Opium Commission convened in February, 1909, with representatives from China, Britain, the U.S., and other powers with Far East interests. Though lacking treaty authority, it produced a broad consensus among the major powers to limit the opium trade.
As a demonstration of American cooperation, the Congress concurrently enacted a landmark piece of legislation, the Opium Exclusion Act, totally prohibiting the importation of smoking opium into the U.S. The Act, which took effect on April 1, 1909, marked the true beginning of national drug prohibition. From that point on, the U.S. government became progressively involved in the business of suppressing illicit substances. There ensued an escalating government policy of seizures, raids, prosecution, imprisonment, and progressive criminalization. One immediate consequence of the Opium Exclusion Act was a rapid shift in the drug market from smoking opium to morphine, heroin, and other drugs that were still not regulated.
Efforts to pass more comprehensive narcotics legislation bogged down in Congress for the next couple of years, due in large part to objections from the pharmaceutical industry. However, developments proceeded faster in many states, which, unlike Congress in that bygone era, were unencumbered by quaint constitutional limitations on their powers. In 1903, the American Pharmaceutical Association had proposed a model pharmacy bill outlawing sales of cocaine, opiates and chloral hydrate except on prescription, and restricting prescriptions to addicts. Congress followed this suggestion by adopting the APhA pharmacy bill in the District of Columbia in 1906. Fired by Progressive-Era enthusiasm for moral reform, numerous states followed suit. Among the most enthusiastic was California, birthplace of the nation's first anti-drug law, a San Francisco ordinance outlawing opium dens (1875). At the behest of the state board of pharmacy, the California legislature amended the state's poison act in 1907 to prohibit non-medical sales of opium and cocaine. The Board then launched an aggressive campaign, in which it pioneered many of the techniques of modern drug enforcement: hiring undercover agents and informants, entrapping pharmacists into illegal sales, launching sweeps of Chinatown opium dens, seizing contraband in highly publicized raids, pushing legislation to criminalize users and outlaw paraphernalia, and incidentally embroiling itself in corruption and scandal.
The movement for national drug prohibition steamed ahead under Wright's leadership as the State Department pressed for another international conference at the Hague in 1911-2. The U.S. delegation included Wright, Bishop Brent and Henry Finger, who had engineered the California Board of Pharmacy's anti-drug crusade. The Hague Convention, signed Jan. 23, 1912, committed its signatories to restrictions against opium and cocaine. Finger and Wright pressed to have cannabis included as well, but were rebuffed. Congress subsequently went on to pass the Harrison Act, restricting all forms of opium as well as cocaine to prescription use only. Because the federal government lacked clear constitutional authority to regulate non-interstate drug use, Congress adopted the constitutional subterfuge of a tax to regulate drug transactions. The Harrison Act was signed by President Wilson on December 17, 1914, and became effective March 1, 1915. Despite efforts by Wright and Finger, cannabis was not included in the federal law, but was outlawed by many local jurisdictions, such as Massachusetts (1911), California (1913), New York City (1914), et al..
The immediate impact of the drug laws was much as intended; pharmacists and physicians were soon brought into line by a wave of federal arrests. The drug market was further decimated by the onset of World War I, which disrupted international trade routes and sent many prospective young consumers to the trenches. But after the war, drug use rebounded in the heady prosperity of the Jazz Age, while an international criminal market usurped the place of the legally regulated market of pharmacies.
As for the Philippines, the efficacy of the anti-opium law was less than obvious. Predictably, Bishop Brent told the Shanghai Commission that the law was a success, but he failed to present solid evidence. The Philippines Commission asked to reconsider the absolute prohibition deadline of 1908, arguing that the Chinese addict population would eventually die out, but Congress declined. In 1926, H.L. May of the Opium Board of the League of Nations reported that opium was cheap and readily available in the Philippines, and that enforcement was lax and corrupt.
In the end, the drug laws were the work of a handful of lobbyists ≠ missionaries, prohibitionists, Progressive era bureaucrats and pharmacy boards ≠ working behind the scenes. Press coverage of their efforts was remarkably scant and generally occurred after the fact. Anti-narcotics bills were approved with little public debate or dissent, and with remarkably little serious consideration to potential adverse effects of prohibition, such as creation of a criminal black market, increased enforcement costs, crime and violence, etc. Such evils would not be widely appreciated until the advent of alcohol prohibition in the 1920s.
Assessed by its results, America's one hundred years' war on drugs ranks as one of the man-made disasters of the 20th century. A century ago, narcotics were a minor problem, rarely discussed as an issue of public concern. Today, drugs have become a major problem with a $40 billion enforcement budget. In the era when drugs were sold over-the-counter, the addiction rate ranged from 0.4% to 1.2% of the adult population. Today, after 100 years of prohibition, the figures range from 1% to 2%. In the days of the free market, drug crime was unknown, aside from occasional illicit opium dens and smugglers. Today, drug criminals comprise over half of federal prisoners, and nearly one-quarter of state criminal offenders. The total number of drug offenders in the prison system is now on the order of half a million, as large as the entire addict population of 1900. Every year, some 20 million Americans commit drug crimes, and nearly half have done so sometime in their lifetime. In sum, the war on drugs ranks as the nation's number one crime-creation program.
The centenary of prohibition is a fit occasion for 21st-century drug reformers to ponder the task ahead. Unlike the movements for alcohol prohibition, women's suffrage, or civil rights, the narcotics control movement never figured centrally in U.S. politics. Prohibition was not the result of a democratic mass movement, but the adoption of new public policy values by influential elites. It remains to be seen how and when drug reformers might effect such a transformation again. One thing is clear, though: success will not come overnight. From the first rumblings of the Philippine missionaries to the final passage of the Harrison Act required a full decade. Prohibition was not made in a day, and will not be unmade quickly. But reformers can take heart from the lesson of one hundred years ago, that a small band of dedicated reformers acting at the propitious moment can make a crucial difference.
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