The
Anslinger Era
A
year of considerable importance to this history is 1930, when Treasury
Secretary Andrew W. Mellon
appointed his niece's husband Commissioner
of the newly created U.S. Narcotics Bureau. Harry J. Anslinger reigned
as Commissioner for three decades. Anslinger was to the inhibition of
Cannabis use what Andrew Comstock had at the turn of the century been
to the inhibition of American sexual freedom. Although not
particularly concerned about marijuana when he took office, he soon
became obsessed with "the evils" of this weed, seeing a
curse for humanity in the leaves and flowers of the Cannabis plant.
Fear
about this largely unknown substance had already been stirred up,
especially in the southwestern states, where it was used mainly by
blacks and Mexicans. Prohibitions against nonmedical usage had been
enacted in California (1915), Texas (1919), Louisiana (1924) and New
York (1927). In the mid-1930s, Anslinger did his best to escalate the
fear into hysteria. Drawing on his experience as a journalist with a
staccato, sensational style, he came out with "Marihuana, the
Assassin of Youth," the first in a series of articles and books
recounting the horrors committed under the weed's influence: murder,
suicide, seduction of schoolchildren by "friendly
strangers." (Several of his examples have since been refuted.)
Once
Anslinger got going, he showed little interest as Commissioner in any
news about the drug unless it could be worked into his atrocity file
on "the Killer Drug," which he claimed was "a powerful
narcotic in which lurks Murder! Insanity! Death!" The nation's
papers loved it. By 1937, forty-six of the forty-eight states had
banned marijuana.
Anslinger
abandoned his earlier hopes for federal prohibition, because even he
had come to doubt the constitutionality of such a law. Someone
suggested that the U.S. might impose a "transfer tax" to be
collected by the U.S. Treasury. Nonpayment of the tax would constitute
a felony. In the ensuing congressional hearings, the Narcotics Bureau
took a firm line; Anslinger even told legislators,
You smoke a
joint and you're likely to kill your brother
In
all the testimony, only one person raised any substantial objection to
the Anslinger proposal. Dr. William Woodward, a legislative counsel
for the American Medical
Association argued that Cannabis in medical
preparations had not been abused and that the new provisions would
cause hardship for doctors. He was quickly hooted down. House hearings
concluded with no significant changes in the proposed bill, which then
sailed through the Senate. In August 1937, FDR, who had come into
office on a platform of repealing Prohibition, signed the Marihuana
Tax Act. In addition to imposing penalties for its use or distribution
were five to twenty years for a first offense, ten to forty for a
second.
The
tax was to be assessed at $1 per ounce for those who registered and
were considered legitimate users; for "illegitimate
transfers," the tax was $100 per ounce. "At that time,"
comments Larry Sloman in his Reefer Madness, "cannabis was going
for thirty-eight cents a pound on the licit market."
The
year before, some twenty firms using hempseed oil in products such as
soap, paint and linoleum had imported more than 30,000 tons of seeds,
which became contraband under the new law because they could be used
to grow plants. The only exception allowed was for sterilized seed for
the birdseed industry, then producing four million pounds annually.
Industry lobbyists maintained that birds deprived of Cannabis seeds
would not sing.
The
Narcotics Bureau hinted originally that special provisions would be
made for medical usage but did not follow through. At the time,
twenty-eight medicinal Cannabis preparations were for sale by
companies such as Parke-Davis, Squibb and Lilly. Packages of marijuana
cigarettes were even being sold as a cure for asthma. The new law put
all of these products out of existence, and in 1941 the drug was
dropped from the American Pharmacopoeia - after about a century of
widespread use.
Much
of Ansligner's efforts then went into eradicating this weed wherever
it was growing. In 1937, more than 10,000 acres in the U.S. were under
hemp cultivation. The plant was hardy and prone to escape into
neighboring fields, making it all the more difficult for Anslinger to
check the natural spread of hemp.
Anslinger
had to give way after the Japanese took over the Manila and the
government became concerned about its supply of rope. In a crash
program in 1943, 146,000 acres in the U.S. were seeded in half a dozen
midwestern states. The Department of Agriculture produced a film about
cultivation entitled Hemp for Victory. Despite great efforts to
eradicate Cannabis traces later, patches remained in Indiana,
Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kentucky and elsewhere. The strains, grown
for rope, produced only small amounts of resin. Marijuana was not
produced for its resin in any quantity in the U.S. until the 1960s.
In
1943, Anslinger turned his attention instead to a campaign against
marijuana-smoking jazz musicians, and his instinct for the sensational
got him all the funding from Congress that he ever requested.
Anslinger may have used personal favors to gain congressional support:
in 1978, Capitol Hill journalist Maxine Cheshire revealed that Senator
Joseph McCarthy was addicted to morphine and regularly obtained it
"through a druggist near the White House, authorized by Anslinger
to fill the prescriptions."
After
retiring from the Narcotics Bureau, the indefatigable Anslinger went
on to head the American delegation to the U.N. concerned with drug
use. By 1961, he managed in this capacity to get sixty nations to sign
a "Uniform Drug Convention," which pledged to end Cannabis
use within twenty-five years. Signing nations ca, however, drop out by
request. Shortly after, serious efforts to legalize marijuana usage
got underway in the West.
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