Prohibition as a Moral Framework: The United States' Opium Policy, 1898-1914

Abstract

This study explores the creation of American prohibition policy towards drugs and drug trafficking. It examines the United States’ opium policy in the first decade of the twentieth century as the first example of drug prohibition and locates the impetus for drug prohibition in the American acquisition of the Philippines Islands in 1898. This work shows how prohibition in the early twentieth century was based on a moral understanding of drug policy. This study also briefly looks at how drug prohibition continues today with the modern War on Drugs policy. The War on Drugs in this framework is an expansion of an earlier failed policy. By revisiting the first example of drug prohibition and thereby historicizing the current debates about drug policy, this thesis argues history does not provide reasons to expect that the prohibition of drug use and trafficking will prove effective.