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The Drug War in a Land Without Drugs: East Germany and the Socialist Embrace of International Narcotics Law

The Drug War in a Land Without Drugs: East Germany and the Socialist Embrace of International... AbstractThis 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. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit international Brill

The Drug War in a Land Without Drugs: East Germany and the Socialist Embrace of International Narcotics Law

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References (29)

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
Copyright © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
1388-199X
eISSN
1571-8050
DOI
10.1163/15718050-12340116
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractThis 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.

Journal

Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit internationalBrill

Published: Jun 27, 2019

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