Abstract
The article compares attitudes towards and laws regulating the use of alcohol and opium in the United States (US) colonial possession of the Philippines. Forces within the United States and missionary groups in the field in the Philippines fought to have the supply of alcohol to American troops restricted by abolition of the military canteen system, and to eliminate use of alcohol among the indigenous population. To achieve these aims, they developed highly skilled networks of political lobbying led by Wilbur Craft's International Reform Bureau. Temperance, church and missionary groups differed among themselves over the relative seriousness of the two drugs’ impact in the Philippines, but skillfully adapted their tactics in the light of experience in the colony to focus on opium. They developed a tacit coalition with the US government, using the Philippines opium policy to distinguish the United States as a morally superior colonial ruler. By lobbying the government to oppose opium use in the East Asia region, they served to promote an American regional hegemony, and provided an important departure point for modern US drug poalicies.
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