Responding to pressures from the anti-opium movement in the US, in 1903 the colonial regime appoints the Episcopal missionary Bishop Charles Brent and two medical doctors to an investigative opium committee that recommends total prohibition.

Between 1906 and 1908, the U.S. regime bans opium smoking in the Philippines, becoming the first American government to outlaw narcotic drugs.

The Philippine ban launches America's attempts at domestic suppression and drug diplomacy.

Aware that opium smuggling from China is sabotaging the Philippine prohibition, Bishop Brent convinces President Theodore Roosevelt to organize the first international opium commission.
(Source: The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade)