"Where did the regulatory underpinnings for the global drug wars come from? This book looks to answer this question. Most popular conceptions point to Richard Nixon declaring a 'war on drugs' to the Whitehouse Press Corps in June 1971. Thus began, for most contemporary analyses, a now five-decade, counterproductive and institutionally racist drug war at home and abroad. The modern drug wars, for there are many across the world, did not in fact begin with Richard Nixon. Instead, one must first look to the legal-institutional foundations laid in the United Nations (UN) and its predecessor international treaties. This book will serve as the first fully focused history of the UN 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the bedrock of the modern multilateral drug control system and the focal point of global drug regulations and prohibitions. Although far from the propagator of the drug wars, the UN at least enabled the creation of a uniform global legal framework to effectively legalise, or regulate, their pursuit. This book thereby answers the question of where the international legal framework for drug control came from, what state interests informed its development and how complex diplomatic negotiations resulted in the current regulatory system, binding states into some degree of global policy uniformity"-- Provided by publisher.