* At least until the end of 1935.

Corn-removers and Pact of Steel

In May 1939, at its 30th session, the Health Committee agreed on maintaining the conclusions from the first CEP review, this time clearly “declaring however that these conclusions do not target those of these preparations that can only be used externally” (LoN, 1939a, p. 5; Preparations exempted…, 1951). The Council of the LoN ratified the move at its 105th session, on 23 May 1939 –one day after Hitler and Mussolini signed the Pact of Steel– and communicated to State Parties on 12 July a Circular Letter titled “Application of Article 10 of the Geneva Convention of 1925 to preparations based on Indian hemp Extract or Tincture under reserve of certain exemptions” (LoN, 1939a) –the one from 1936 did not made that precision (LoN, 1936). Shortly after,
“with the outbreak of the Second World War and the occupation of Paris, the OIHP was not able to function as intended and could not fulfil its international health functions” (UN, s.d.).
Although its headquarters were occupied in 1940 (Tworek, 2019), part of the OIHP staff had managed to escape to Southern France, with documents and archives.
In Geneva, the LoN had already started reducing activities in 1938 (Magliveras, 1999, p. 31; LoN, 1938a), and drastically after the expulsion of the USSR in December 1939 (LoN, 1939c). “By June 1940, the staff of the Health Section had been so depleted by resignations and departures for national service that it included only two medically qualified members” (Howard-Jones, 1950) and almost all activities of the LoN had been phased out (Le Monde, 1946) except a few programmes that passed on to be carried on by the Secretariat, among which was the “protection of public health and control of the manufacture of and illicit traffic in narcotic drugs” (Magliveras, 1999, p. 31), carried on throughout WWII and the immediate post-war period (LoN, 1945c; Tworek, 2019); the Permanent Central Opium Board and Drug Supervisory Body also reduced, but maintained activities (Dangerous drugs…, 1946, p. 175; May, 1948, pp. 342–345; McAllister, 2000, pp. 134–141).
The last action of the LoN related to Cannabis and its 1935/1938 CEP assessments had taken place on 31 December 1939 (Table 3) when, in an attempt of normality, the Secretariat issued a revised list of drugs, preparations, and medicines under international control (drawn-up by the Sub-Committee to the List), which confusingly acknowledged the placement of “preparations made of extract and tincture of Indian hemp” under international control, with a footnote reading:
“This clause applies to countries which have adopted the recommendation of the Health Committee of the League of Nations to place these products under control […]. The Health Committee […] stated that their conclusions, however, do not apply to those of the said preparations which are capable only of external use” (LoN, 1939d, p. 28)

After the War

The LoN was dissolved in 1946, its mandates transferred to the UN (Myers, 1948; WHO, 1947b). That same year, the penultimate meeting of OIHP’s Comité Permanent meeting was held: it discharged its mandates to an interim commission tasked with establishing the WHO (1950a), and suspended the publication of its landmark Monthly Bulletin (WHO, 1958, p. 430). By February 1948, the WHO “had absorbed all the OIHP’s obligations towards the States parties” (WHO, 1958, p. 56; Fig. 3) including drug assessment under the C25.
Governments had agreed, in 1946, on a plan for the denunciation of the 1907 Rome Agreement (OIHP’s constitution) and termination of the Office by 15 November 1949 (UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, 1943; WHO, 1948a, add.1; 1950a, p. 2). The decision was unpleasant to France, which feared losing its influence on international health matters (Paillette, 2021); others also continued defending the active role of the Office amidst its liquidation: in September 1947 Dr Morgan, chairman of the Comité Permanent, argued that as long as the Office was not effectively terminated,
“the consultative opinion of the latter, in pursuance of Articles 8 and 10 of the 1925 Geneva Convention, would be required to give legal authority to the recommendations of the [WHO] experts” (WHO, 1947b).
The LoN was liquidated in effect in July 1947, 15 months after the decision to terminate it (Myers, 1948). But the OIHP was a different story. It continued functioning even after its programmed death: an obscure-motivated refusal of Spain to denounce OIHP’s funding Agreement, added to legal uncertainties surrounding its termination by the non-self-governed occupied territories of Germany, Japan, and Libya, and by newly-independent countries (WHO, 1949, pp. 2–3) had made “apparent that the Office must continue” (WHO, 1949, p. 4). On 15 November 1950, the last few remaining activities of epidemiological monitoring carried out by the OIHP ceased –one year after the deadline set, and mostly because of a cruel lack of resources (WHO, 1950a; 1950b). Nevertheless, an empty OIHP continued existing de jure until 1952 when, finally, the denunciation of the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, and Spain ended its long agony (WHO, 1950a; 1952a, p. 30).

Early work of the WHO on Cannabis

The inception of WHO did not look particularly promising forCannabis medicines: as early as 1947, the three monographs ofCannabis were withdrawn from the International Pharmacopoeia, the management of which WHO had just taken over –although countless other medicines were deleted, particularly herbal ones (WHO, 1947a).
The WHO however really engaged with the drug control aspect ofCannabis products in 1952, at the third ECDD meeting –initially named the Expert Committee on Narcotic Drugs (WHO, 1948b), this body created to carry on the scientific tasks previously assumed by OIHP’s CEP changed titles several times, until being named ECDD in 1968 (Danenberg et al, 2013). At its 1952 meeting, “the question of justification of the use of cannabis preparations for medical purposes” was discussed, and the committee declared that
“cannabis preparations are practically obsolete. So far as [the Committee] can see, there is no justification for the medical use of cannabis preparations.” (WHO, 1952b)
An opinion reiterated at subsequent meetings (Krawitz and Riboulet-Zemouli, 2018; Riboulet-Zemouli, 2018).

Oblivion

There is no trace of any inputs from any pre-WWII meetings, decisions, or documentation in 1950s ECDD meetings, let alone of the 1935/1938 episode. The never-ending termination of the OIHP, in conflict with WHO, might not have facilitated knowledge-sharing.
In 1962, an article reported that all Cannabis preparations were under control, with the exception of topical preparations and “a medicinal cigarette called ‘Indian Cigarettes of Grimault’ […] exempted from control” (The cannabis problem…, 1962),[11] but Parke-Davis medicines of the 1935 list were still produced in the late 1940s (Museum of Healthcare at Kingston, 2022a) and in the 1950s “some Governments had reported that there still existed an appreciable use of cannabis drugs in medical practice” (CND, 1955). In an analysis of “The position of preparations of narcotic drugs under the narcotics treaties…” (1959), the scope of the 1935/1938 decisions was considered “to be a matter of doubt.”
Secretary-General’s note on “The Question of Cannabis” (CND, 1960) ignores the issue, and its compilation of 1,860 references onCannabis incidentally mentions OIHP, only once, and unrelated to the 1935 assessment (CND, 1965, p. 45). The list of drugs under international control edited by the CND (1961) during the negotiation of the Single Convention only mentions: “Relevant articles of the 1925 Convention which are applicable to Cannabis and its resin, and to galenical preparations of Cannabis” –without mentioning anything about preparations, ignoring the last list of drugs under control of the LoN in December 1939, omitting the entire 1935/1938 episode.