Thus, in the Hague Convention of 1899, a large group of states agreed "to abstain from the use of projectiles the sole objective of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases".
After seeing the gas attacks of the war, the general public overwhelmingly supported provisions that strongly regulated chemical weapons.
In one survey of Americans, 367,000 favored banning chemical warfare while 19 supported its continuation in the future.
[8] These efforts led to several agreements in the years before World War II, including the Geneva Protocol.
[10] In the immediate aftermath of the war, arms control efforts focused primarily on nuclear weapons given their immense destructive power, and chemical disarmament was not a priority.