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Insights for Contemporary Drug Policy: A Historical Account of Opium Control in India and Pakistan

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Abstract

Opium, as a tradable commodity, has a long history in the Indian sub-continent. This article offers a history of the production and distribution of both licit and illicit opium from 1773 to the present day in order to explore the lessons that the experiences of Indian and Pakistani can offer to contemporary drug policy. Four insights for contemporary drug control policy are developed from the historical analysis: (1) post-independence Pakistan and India illustrate the difficulties of controlling a regulated, licit, opium industry; (2) the relationship between Chinese and Indian opium production and exports may suggest that competition can be an effective impetus to production suppression; (3) developmental approaches to reducing production can limit the damages caused by opium suppression; (4) effective suppression requires alterations to institutional and structural conditions that facilitate production (i.e. reducing violent conflict, improving civil and criminal justice institutions efficiency or extending transport infrastructures).

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Notes

  1. The collection of essays in Brook and Wakabayashi (2000a) offer a comprehensive history of the Chinese opium trade throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

  2. ‘Malwa opium’ is a generic term used for any opium produced in the independent princely states of central and western India.

  3. By the 1830s there were an estimated two (Yongming 1999) to three million (McCoy 2003) consumers of opium in China.

  4. Deshpande, A. Opium Cultivation and Successful State Intervention Against Illicit Cultivation and Proliferation of Opium in Historical Perspective, 1878–2000 A.D.: A Case Study of India. Unpublished document.

  5. In 1870, after blight eradicated much of the crop, the monopoly paid farmers their fixed price regardless so that they would not be deterred from opium farming in the future (Owen 1934).

  6. Toll prices were based on the market price of Indian opium at Calcutta (M’Laren 1907).

  7. In 1890, an estimated 10% of the Chinese population smoked opium; this may have been as high as 60–80% in some areas (Spence 1975). In 1906, the Chinese Government officially estimated that 30–40% of the population smoked opium (FO 1907). To place this in perspective, in 2008 the country with the largest prevalence rate in the world was Iran; where 2.3% of the population had consumed an illicit opiate (UNODC 2008). While in India in 1909 an estimated 0.4% of the population had consumed opium (Pietschmann et al. 2009).

  8. Several members of the joint teams reported suppression being conducted primarily for their benefit. After 1917, there was a large-scale resurgence in opium production throughout China. This was primarily due to a lack of central control and the existence of conflicting warlord factions who relied upon opium revenue (FO 1917a; 1917b).

  9. A seer is a unit of measurement equivalent to 0.933 kg.

  10. Contraband Indian opium that had been transhipped through third states was found in America, Australia, China and South Africa (Mookerjee 1947).

  11. Some dips in yield may have been accountable to adverse weather conditions.

  12. In November 2010 Rs.1Lakh (100,000 Rupees) was equivalent to US$ 2,201.

  13. During the late-nineteenth century, the British had suppressed attempts at opium production in Pakistan for fear that revenues would facilitate dissent to their rule (Haq 1998).

  14. As of 2010 renamed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

  15. Asad and Harris (2003) offer a more critical analysis, which casts development and law enforcement interventions in a more repressive and corrupt light.

  16. Community involvement became more pronounced in later projects.

  17. USAID administered several crop substitution projects, which usually demanded a more prompt cessation of production (GOA 1988; Williams and Rudel 1988; Qureshi 1982).

  18. Whilst several groups facilitate the smuggling of Afghan opiates (Ahrari 2009; Shelley and Hussain 2009) there is little evidence to suggest systematic involvement in illicit production. However, militant groups could begin supporting production as a means of increasing their rural support base (Felbab-Brown 2009).

  19. Pakistan’s primary drug control agency, the Anti-Narcotics Task Force, currently consists of 1,560 soldiers with aerial and ground enforcement capabilities (Pakistan Army 2010).

  20. For more in-depth analyses of steps being taken to strengthen controls, and recommendations for improving current mechanisms see Smith and Kethineni (2007), and Mansfield (2001).

  21. Now International Council on Security and Development.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Graham Farrell, Sinead Drew and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive comments on early drafts.

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  1. Midlands Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice, Loughborough University,  Loughborough,  UK

    James Windle

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Windle, J. Insights for Contemporary Drug Policy: A Historical Account of Opium Control in India and Pakistan. Asian Criminology 7, 55–74 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-011-9104-0

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