British narcotic policy and its medical approach has long been of interest to those concerned with narcotic policy in America. This paper examines the influences which went to form the medical approach in the period 1908–1926. The Hague Convention of 1912 committed Britain to a more extensive system of domestic control than the professional regulation of sale established in the nineteenth century. Yet pre-war discussions of further legislation were limited in their scope. It was the effect of an apparent war time “emergency” in 1916 which brought stricter regulation and more active state intervention.
The early 1920s saw a Home Office attempt to extend this penal approach and to exclude the medical profession from the position it occupied over narcotics. Home Office regulations and government legislation emphasised the non-professional attitude. But the profession, addiction specialists in particular, defended its role; the Home Office found it impossible to operate its policy without medical validation. The 1926 Rolleston Report marked a compromise between two influential elites and a further stage in the incorporation of professional influence in the machinery of government.
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