Drugs Through Time
While this chronology deals primarily with drugs and the laws that attempt to control them in the context of the United Kingdom, it should be borne in mind that the UK legislation is formed within the framework of international treaties, to which the HM Government has signed up and which impose various obligations on UK drug law and policy. In addition, the drug trade has always been and remains a global network, in which the interconnection and interdependence of countries and their populations are most apparent. In terms of the period covered, the timeline focuses on the modern period, as historians use the term—roughly the last 500 years. Although humans have always used drugs, and there is evidence of use going back to the Neolithic age, the present drug situation is unlike any other that has existed. It is one of the results of the development of modern societies—societies which are globally interconnected, where individuals are geographically and socially mobile, and the cultures that were once confined by place and tradition are now opened to one another, and to the diverse products of advanced technologies.
One of the defining features of the modern age has been the ever-expanding menu of psychoactive drugs. This menu is available in a range and intensity undreamed of in previous centuries, as drug plants from across the planet have entered the global trading networks, with technology both enhancing extracts from the plants and developing entirely new synthetic substances. The great modern drug menu has brought with it new pleasures and states of mind, as well as new problems of governance and dilemmas for policies of regulation and control. From morning coffee and afternoon tea to the weekend’s alcoholic drinks and dance drugs, the growth and elaboration of the drugs trade has fundamentally changed the texture of human experience and cultural life across much of the world.
