The Drug War in a Land Without Drugs: East Germany and the Socialist Embrace of International Narcotics Law
In: Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit internationalSearch for other papers by Ned Richardson-Little in
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Abstract
This article examines how the German Democratic Republic (GDR) engaged with the problem of international anti-narcotics law and how it came to embrace the global drug war. The international anti-narcotics system provided a means of signalling the GDR’s normalcy to the international community and allowed East Germany to highlight its absence of drug abuse at home as a demonstration of socialism’s superiority in comparison with the narcotics abuse crisis of the capitalist world. By the 1980s, however, the GDR’s support for the international prohibition of drug trafficking shifted from one of competition with the West to that of collaboration. Through cooperation between international experts from both East and West, GDR elites abandoned earlier concerns about state sovereignty to endorse the global harmonization of drug laws as part of the 1988 Vienna Narcotics Convention.
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The Drug War in a Land Without Drugs: East Germany and the Socialist Embrace of International Narcotics Law
In: Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit internationalSearch for other papers by Ned Richardson-Little in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article examines how the German Democratic Republic (GDR) engaged with the problem of international anti-narcotics law and how it came to embrace the global drug war. The international anti-narcotics system provided a means of signalling the GDR’s normalcy to the international community and allowed East Germany to highlight its absence of drug abuse at home as a demonstration of socialism’s superiority in comparison with the narcotics abuse crisis of the capitalist world. By the 1980s, however, the GDR’s support for the international prohibition of drug trafficking shifted from one of competition with the West to that of collaboration. Through cooperation between international experts from both East and West, GDR elites abandoned earlier concerns about state sovereignty to endorse the global harmonization of drug laws as part of the 1988 Vienna Narcotics Convention.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 2519 | 249 | 23 |
| Full Text Views | 102 | 5 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 160 | 13 | 0 |