An MP in India, Dharamvira Gandhi, has put forward a bill to legalise cannabis and opium. While movements to decriminalise or regulate cannabis are gaining momentum around the world, politicians’ support for the regulation of opium – the drug from which morphine and heroin are derived – is comparatively very rare.
Although Gandhi’s proposal seems radical, it seems less surprising when viewed within the history of opium in India. Click through the timeline below to find out more.
All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.https://commons.wikimedia.org/
Sources:
UNODC – The Cultivation of the Opium Poppy in India
Opium and the British Indian Empire: The Royal Commission of 1895
Drug Law Reform in East and Southeast Asia
Illegal Opium Production in the Mishmi Hills of Arunachal Pradesh, India
Government of India – Central Bureau of Narcotics – Opium through History
The Abolition by Gornwallis of the Forced Cultivation of Opium in Bihar
Illegal Drug Trade: The War on Drugs
The Genesis of International Narcotic Control
UNODC – The abolition of opium smoking in India
The International Opium Convention, 1912
The Dangerous Drugs Act (1930)
Government of India – Overview – Narcotic Drugs & Psychotropic Substances
Why patients in pain cannot get “God's own medicine?”
Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961)
The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (1985)
BBC News – Morphine: The cheap, effective pain-relief drug denied to millions
Hindustan Times – World AIDS Day
HIV epidemic in Punjab, India: time trends over a decade
INCB – Comments on Reported Statistics on Narcotic Drugs
Hindustan Times – Bill to legalise opium, marijuana cleared for tabling in Parliament
