1935: The non-review of Cannabis by the Office International d’Hygiène Publique

In 1933, although seizures of raw Cannabis , mostly imported from Syria, had been cut by half in the 3 previous years (LoN, 1933, p. 12), the Egyptian government sent a notification to LoN’s Health Section (OIHP, 1935, p. 161; Supplemental materials Table S1) alerting of the alleged widespread harms caused by five particular medicines sold by the firm Parke, Davis & Co. (nowadays part of Pfizer, the Detroit-based “Parke-Davis” was then already a global pharmaceutical company; Hoefle, 2000, p. 33; Pfizer, s.d.). Alongside Merck in Germany, Holtmann-La Roche & Co. in Switzerland, Eli Lilly in the USA, and many other important or smaller pharmaceutical manufacturers (Frankhauser, 2002; Hamilton, 1912; Krawitz, 2006; OIHP, 1934b, pp. 104–110), Parke-Davis was proactively marketing two classes of Cannabismedicines (Museum of Healthcare…, 2022b; Parke, Davis & Co., 1911, p. 12):
In a specific booklet dedicated to these medicines, Parke, Davis & Co. (1908, p. 2) claimed that Cannabis
“has been used as an intoxicant in Asiatic countries from time immemorial, and under the name of ‘hashish,’ ‘bhang,’ ‘ganja’ or ‘charas,’ is habitually consumed by upwards of two hundred millions of human beings.”
The five preparations that Egypt notified did contain extracts ofCannabis , but, compared to so many other popular medicines at the time, contained relatively minor amounts of Cannabis extract but instead copious amounts of other particularly notable sedatives or harmful substances[8] (Table 1; Fig. 4). As noted by the OIHP (1934b, pp. 106–110), if someone wanted to get high with these preparations, the lethal dose of strychnine would most likely be reached much before any narcotic effect could be felt.
Because they were not “pure” extracts of Cannabis , however, these preparations did not fall under the terms of C25. Pursuing its agenda started in 1925, Egypt saw this as something convenient to object to. The reasons for the particular attention given to Parke-Davis medicines, however, remain unclear, particularly since “the only among these [preparations] that [was] being exported in appreciable quantities to Egypt [was] the one called Compounded Damiana Tablets,” which was only supplied on medical prescription (OIHP, 1934b, p. 106).
As a matter of fact, the intention of Egypt was to extend international controls “not only to the five preparations mentioned earlier, but all preparations containing an extract or tincture of indian hemp” (OIHP, 1935, p. 162, author’s translation ) or at least to preparations containing above a certain percent of Cannabis extract (OIHP, 1934, p. 23). On 12 June 1934 (OIHP, 1934, pp. 23–24) the Health Committee of the LoN triggered the mechanism of Article 10, C25, allowing the OIHP to convene its CEP, towards eventually “recommend[ing] that the provisions of [C25] be applied to such drug” in case it “is liable to similar abuse and productive of similar ill-effects as the substances to which this Chapter of the Convention applies” (LoN, 1925).