History

Chinese authorities issued edicts against opium smoking in 1729, 1796 and 1800. The West prohibited addictive drugs throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the early 19th century, an illegal drug trade in China emerged. As a result, by 1838 the number of Chinese opium-addicts had grown to between four and twelve million. The Chinese government responded by enforcing a ban on the import of opium; this led to the First Opium War (1839-1842) between the United Kingdom and Qing-dynasty China. The United Kingdom won and forced China to allow British merchants to sell Indian-grown opium. Trading in opium was lucrative, and smoking it had become common for the Chinese in the 19th century, so British merchants increased trade with the Chinese. The Second Opium War broke out in 1856, with the British joined this time by the French. After the two Opium Wars, the British Crown, via the treaties of Nanking (1842), and Tianjin (1858), obligated the Chinese government to pay large sums of money for opium they had seized and destroyed, which were referred toby whom? as "reparations".

In 1868, as a result of the increased use of opium, the UK restricted the sale of opium in Britain by implementing the 1868 Pharmacy Act. In the United States, control of opium remained under the control of individual US states until the introduction of the Harrison Act in 1914, after 12 international powers signed the International Opium Convention in 1912.

Between 1920 and around 1933 the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution banned alcohol in the United States. Prohibition proved almost impossible to enforce and resulted in the rise of organized crime, including the modern American Mafia, which identified enormous business opportunities in the manufacturing, smuggling and sale of illicit liquor.

The beginning of the 21st century saw drug use increase in North America and Europe, with a particularly increased demand for marijuana and cocaine. As a result, international organized crime syndicates such as the Sinaloa Cartel and 'Ndrangheta have increased cooperation among each other in order to facilitate trans-Atlantic drug-trafficking. Use of another illicit drug, hashish, has also increased in Europe.

Drug trafficking is widely regarded by lawmakers as a serious offense around the world. Penalties often depend on the type of drug (and its classification in the country into which it is being trafficked), the quantity trafficked, where the drugs are sold and how they are distributed. If the drugs are sold to underage people, then the penalties for trafficking may be harsher than in other circumstances.

Drug smuggling carries severe penalties in many countries. Sentencing may include lengthy periods of incarceration, flogging and even the death penalty (in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere). In December 2005, Van Tuong Nguyen, a 25-year-old Australian drug smuggler, was hanged in Singapore after being convicted in March 2004. In 2010, two people were sentenced to death in Malaysia for trafficking 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of cannabis into the country. Execution is mostly used as a deterrent, and many have called upon much more effective measures to be taken by countries to tackle drug trafficking; for example, targeting specific criminal organisations that are often also active in the smuggling of other goods (i.e. wildlife) and even people. In many cases, links between politicians and the criminal organisations have been proven to exist.