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The Online Reefer Madness Teaching Museum
Marijuana Is Outlawed
Marijuana is outlawed
Following the legalization of weak beer in 1933 and the return of hard liquor
the following year, the modest, localized popularity of marijuana during the
Prohibition years might have declined further. But additional legal developments
intervened.
On January 1, 1932, the newly established Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a unit
in the Treasury Department, took over from the Alcohol Unit of the department
the enforcement of the federal antiopiate and anti-cocaine laws; and former
Assistant Prohibition Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger took over as commissioner
of narcotics. Commissioner Anslinger had no legal jurisdiction over marijuana,
but his interest in it was intense. The Bureau's first Annual Report under his
aegis warned that marijuana, dismissed as a minor problem by the Treasury one
year earlier, had now "come into wide and increasing abuse in many states,
and the Bureau of Narcotics has therefore been endeavoring to impress on the
various States the urgent need for vigorous enforcement of the local cannabis
laws." 1
During his first year as commissioner of narcotics, Mr. Anslinger secured
from the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform Drug Laws the draft of
a "Uniform Anti-Narcotics Act," designed for adoption by state
legislatures. The conference failed to include a ban on marijuana in the main
text of this model law; but it did supply to the states an "optional text
applying to the restriction of traffic in Indian hemp."2 Commissioner
Anslinger and his bureau urged on the states the adoption of this "optional
text" as well as the basic act; and state after state complied.
Commissioner Anslinger's report for 1935 noted: "In the absence of
Federal legislation on the subject, the States and cities should rightfully
assume the responsibility for providing vigorous measures for the extinction of
this lethal weed, and it is therefore hoped that all public-spirited citizens
will earnestly enlist in the movement urged by the Treasury Department to adjure
intensified enforcement of marijuana laws."3
By 1937, forty-six of the forty-eight states as well as the District of
Columbia had laws against marijuana.4 Under most of these state laws, marijuana
was subject to the same rigorous penalties applicable to morphine, heroin, and
cocaine,5 and was often erroneously designated a narcotic.
Commissioner Anslinger's next campaign was for a federal marijuana law.
Professor Howard S. Becker, a sociologist now at Northwestern University, has
documented in detail the magazine phase of this campaign. The Readers' Guide to
Periodical Literature, Professor Becker notes, failed to list a single article
on marijuana from January 1925 through June 1935.6 Four such national magazine
articles, however, were indexed for the period July 1935 through June 1937, and
seventeen more were indexed between July 1937 and June 1939. The production of
anti-marijuana articles then tapered off again to four between July 1939 and
June 1941, with one lone article indexed in the period July 1941 to June 1943.
Of the seventeen articles during the peak of the drive, Professor Becker
continues, "ten either explicitly acknowledged the help of the Bureau in
furnishing facts and figures or gave implicit evidence of having received help
by using facts and figures that had appeared earlier, either in Bureau
publications or in testimony before the Congress. . . ." 7
Typical of the articles in this magazine campaign was one signed by
Commissioner Anslinger himself, in collaboration with Courtney Ryley Cooper,
which appeared in the American Magazine for July 1937. It contained such
atrocity stories as the following:
An entire family was murdered by a youthful [marihuana] addict in Florida.
When officers arrived at the home they found the youth staggering about in a
human slaughterhouse. With an ax he had killed his father, mother, two
brothers, and a sister. He seemed to be in a daze. . . . He had no
recollection of having committed the multiple crime. The officers knew him
ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man; now be was pitifully crazed.
They sought the reason. The boy said he had been in the habit of smoking
something which youthful friends called "muggles," a childish name
for marihuana.8
Four of the sixteen other articles indexed in Readers' Guide for the peak
period contained this same story.
Many readers in the 1970s, familiar with the mild, often calming effect of
marijuana on young people in their own neighborhoods, will dismiss these
accounts of wild crimes of violence committed under the influence of the drug as
sheer nonsense or malicious propaganda-but this is far from certain. LSD, it
will be recalled, was converted as a result of anti LSD publicity from a
relatively bland drug before 1962 to a drug that evoked the most bizarre
behavior after that date. It is quite possible that marijuana effects were
similarly altered during the 1920s and 1930sthat some children solemnly warned
in advance that marijuana would madden them and cause them to commit the most
awful crimes, including crimes of violence, really did lose self-control and
commit such crimes thereafter when they smoked marijuana. Whether or not there
was some truth in the antimarijuana stories, however, the were certainly
exaggerated-as one of the cases reported in a 1937 bulletin of the Foreign
Policy Association demonstrates.
The cases presented in the bulletin were described as "culled at random
from the files of the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics."9 One such story concerned
a young man identified as "J. O.," who was said to have confessed that
he murdered a friend and put his body in a trunk "while under the influence
of marijuana." 10
The story turned out to be partly true. Dr. Walter Bromberg,
psychiatrist-in-charge at the Psychiatric Clinic, New York County Court of
General Sessions, described the case of J. O. in greater detail in a 1939 issue
of the Journal of the American Medical Association. No doubt J. O. really had
murdered a friend and stuffed his body into a trunk. But the remaining details
differed notably from the bureau's version. "J. O. was examined in this
clinic," Dr. Bromberg reported; "although he was a psychopathic liar
and possibly homosexual, there was no indication in the examination or history
of the use of any drug. The investigation by the probation department failed to
indicate use of the drug marijuana." 11 The only known relationship of the
crime to drugs was that the victim was a heroin addict.
Dr. Bromberg's debunking of the story of J. O., however, did not retire that
story from circulation. It bobbed up again, with additional verisimilitudinous
details, in the United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics for April-June 1966, in an
article by Dr. James C. Munch, identified as "Member, Advisory Committee,
U.S. Bureau of Narcotics." In this version J. O0. was quoted as saying:
"I was fearless after smoking marijuana cigarettes but would not have done
this without marijuana." 12
The news media frequently may omit mentioning that a criminal was drunk on
alcohol when he committed his crime, but when marijuana (or LSD) is supposedly
involved in a case, that fact is often given prominence. Dr. Lawrence Kolb has
supplied a striking example: "Two young men had some drinks of whiskey in a
hotel room where they were celebrating. They then smoked a marijuana cigarette,
after which they had some more whiskey and left the hotel room. Shortly
thereafter, one of the men shot another man for some trifling reason. This story
was played up in the press as a vicious, marijuana-induced murder." 13
Commissioner Anslinger's drive for federal as well as state anti-marijuana
legislation shifted into high gear in 1937, when his superiors in the Treasury
Department sent to Congress the draft of a bill that became the Marijuana Tax
Act of 1937. This bill, modeled on the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914, did not on
its face actually ban marijuana. It fully recognized the medicinal usefulness of
the substance, specifying that physicians, dentists, veterinarians, and others
could continue to prescribe cannabis if they paid a license fee of $1 per year,
that druggists who dispensed the drug should pay a license fee of $15 a year,
that growers of marijuana should pay $25 a year, and that importers,
manufacturers, and compounders should pay $50 a year. Only the nonmedicinal,
untaxed possession or sale of marijuana was outlawed.14
At hearings on this bill before Senate and House committees, Commissioner
Anslinger appeared as the chief witness, buttressed by members of his staff. He
told horror stories similar to the ones in his American Magazine article quoted
above. Another witness was the prosecuting attorney from New Orleans, who told
of how criminals used marijuana in that city. In addition to stressing the
relationship between marijuana and crime, witnesses testified that marijuana
"addicts" went crazy.15
Curiously, Commissioner Anslinger himself refuted one charge against
marijuana now commonly made. In the course of the House hearings, Representative
John Dingell of Michigan remarked, "I am just wondering whether the
marijuana addict graduates into a heroin, an opium, or a cocaine user."
Commissioner Anslinger replied, "No, sir; I have not heard of a case of
that kind. The marijuana addict does not go in that direction." 16
By 1955, however, Commissioner Anslinger was testifying before a Senate
committee that "eventually if used over a long period, [marijuana] does
lead to heroin addiction." 17
No medical testimony in favor of the proposed federal anti-marijuana law was
presented at the 1937 Congressional hearings. Indeed, the only physician to
testify was a representative of the American Medical Association-and he opposed
the bill.18 Marijuana, he pointed out, was a recognized medicine in good
standing, distributed by leading pharmaceutical firms, and on sale at many
pharmacies. At least twenty-eight medicinal products containing marijuana were
on the market in 1937.
Although the proposed federal law preserved the right of physicians to
prescribe marijuana and of pharmacists to dispense it,19 an editorial in the
Journal of the American Medical Association for May 1, 1937, vigorously opposed
the legislation.
The medical profession today seldom dispenses the drug [the JAMA editorial
conceded]. Many physicians will, however, probably feel it necessary to
preserve their right to use it if and when circumstances make it advisable to
do so and accordingly will feel compelled to pay the tax. Pharmacists
presumably seldom have calls for cannabis, but they must nevertheless be
prepared to dispense it when a call does come, so they will have to pay the
tax. . . . The million dollars to be collected annually by the federal
government will no doubt be charged as a part of the cost of practicing
medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy. So also will the expense of record keeping
and reporting, called for under the bill. All this will in the end be paid for
by the patient and thus will go to swell the cost of sickness. Thus the sick
and injured must contribute toward federal efforts to suppress a habit that
has little or no relation to the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes and
that is already within the jurisdiction of the several states.20
The JAMA editorial also took a dim view of the likelihood that the new
law would succeed in its purpose of discouraging the nonmedicinal use of
marijuana. Its words have a prophetic ring:
After more than twenty years of federal effort and the expenditure of
millions of dollars, the opium and cocaine habits are still widespread. The
best efforts of an efficient bureau of narcotics, supplemented by the efforts
of an equally efficient bureau of customs, have failed to stop the unlawful
flow of opium and coca leaves and their compounds and derivatives, on which
the continuance and spread of narcotic addiction depends. The best efforts of
the Public Health Service to find means for the prevention and cure of
narcotic addiction have not yet accomplished that end. Two federal narcotic
farms, operating under the supervision and control of the U.S. Public Health
Service, cannot yet guarantee the cure of narcotic addiction. What reason is
there, then, for believing that any better results can be obtained by direct
federal efforts to suppress a habit arising out of the misuse of such a drug
as cannabis? Certainly it is almost as easy to smuggle into the country and to
distribute as are opium and coca leaves. Moreover it can be cultivated in many
parts of the United States and grows wild in field and forest and along the
highways in many places.21
The proposed federal anti-marijuana law was also considered at the June 1937
convention of the American Medical Association in Atlantic City. The
"Report of the AMA Committee on Legislative Activities" at that
convention noted:
There is positively no evidence to indicate the abuse of cannabis as a
medicinal agent or to show that its medicinal use is leading to the
development of cannabis addiction. Cannabis at the present time is slightly
used for medicinal purposes, but it would seem worth while to maintain its
status as a medicinal agent for such purposes as it now has. There is a
possibility that a restudy of the drug by modern means may show other
advantages to be derived from its medicinal use.*
Your committee also recognizes that in the border states the extensive use
of the marijuana weed by a certain type of people would be hard to control.24
* This "restudy of the drug by modern means" has now begun. At
the University of Vermont College of Medicine, for example, researchers
announced in August 1970 that they were testing THC for the alleviation of pain
in cancer patients. The project was approved by local medical and legal
officials, the United States Food and Drug Administration, and the National
Institute of Mental Health. The THC was offered for voluntary oral use to
patients at the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont. "The background for
this study," the hospital's newsletter explained, "is the fact that
cancer patients frequently require large doses of sedatives, antidepressants and
pain killers toward the terminal part of the illness. Search is therefore being
made for a drug which could produce mood elevation in cancer-patients without
undesirable side effects." 22 This study was never completed.
In Britain, too, the reevaluation of cannabis as a medicine is under way,
with government approval. The Baroness Wootton Subcommittee of the United
Kingdom Home Office's Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence commented on this
trend in 1968:
"At present cannabis can be prescribed by doctors in the form of
extract of cannabis and alcoholic tincture of cannabis. Until very recently
the demand for these preparations has been virtually negligible. In recent
months however, there has been a striking increase in the amounts prescribed
Our enquiries, supported by what we were told by our witnesses, indicate that
there are a number of doctors who are beginning to experiment with the use of
cannabis in the treatment of disturbed adolescents, heroin and amphetamine
dependence and even alcoholism. Whilst we do not expect cannabis prescription
will ever become standard medication in the treatment of these conditions, it
is quite likely that the amount dispensed on medical prescriptions will
continue to increase and that this process may be accelerated when synthetic
cannabis derivatives, properly standardised, become available. We see no
objection to this and believe that any new legislation should be such as to
permit its continuance. We think, however, that when cannabis or its
derivatives are prescribed, records of the kind that can be inspected by HM.
Inspectors of Drugs should be available. This will enable the prescribing
trend over the next few years to be kept under methodical review." 23
Dr. William Woodward, a specialist in legal medicine and a lawyer as well
as a physician, testified as a representative of the board of trustees of the
American Medical Association in opposition to the proposed marijuana
legislation at the 1937 Congressional hearings. He pointed out that the case
against marijuana rested merely on newspaper stories and was not proven, and
he opposed the law as likely to be a nuisance to the medical profession.25
Also testifying against the law were the distributors of birdseed, who
complained that canaries would not sing as well, or might stop singing
altogether, if marijuana seeds were eliminated from their diet.26
Congress recognized the legitimacy of the opposition from the birdseed
manufacturers, and the bill was amended before enactment to exclude sterilized
marijuana seed.27 But the AMA's opposition was ignored, and the law was passed
without other amendment.
Having secured both state and federal anti-marijuana legislation,
Commissioner Anslinger's next goal was to drive marijuana out of legitimate
medical practice, despite the promarijuana stand of the American Medical
Association. One step in this direction was his successful effort to persuade
Dr. Ernest Fullerton Cook, chairman of the Committee on Revision of the United
States Pharmacopeia (U.S.P.), to have marijuana deleted from that official
compendium.* Commissioner Anslinger made use of Dr. Cook's well-known
opposition to "shotgun remedies" containing two or more active
ingredients. I recollect very well my conversation with . . . Dr. Fullerton
Cook in relation to removing marijuana from the Pharmacopeia," the former
commissioner wrote in 1970. "He made the decision to remove it after I
pointed out that it was being used purely in shotgun prescriptions. In one
case, a woman had her prescription refilled 300 times and wound up in Bellevue
Hospital as a mental case." 28
* Cannabis is still an accepted drug in the British Pharmacopoeia.
Commissioner Anslinger's campaign against medicinal use of marijuana was
almost wholly successful. During the year ending December 31, 1970, only 38
American physicians paid their tax under the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 and
received licenses to prescribe marijuana.29
Since 1937, restrictive legislation on marijuana has increased in quantity
and severity. Most state marijuana laws specified that marijuana penalties
should be the same as heroin penalties. Thus, as heroin penalties were
escalated through the decades, marijuana penalties rose automatically.
Nineteen states, moreover, made no distinction between mere possession of one
marijuana cigarette and the sale of large quantities of heroin. Under both
federal law and the laws of many states, as noted earlier, the giving or
furnishing of a narcotic drug or of marijuana was included in the definition
of "sale."
Here are some of the penalties in force as of January 1, 1970 : 30
- In Alabama, a judge was required to sentence the possessor of one
marijuana cigarette to not less than five years; he could hand down a ten
year sentence, and as much as forty years for a second-possession offense.
Suspended sentences and probation were prohibited in all cases.
- In Colorado, the mandatory minimum for a first-possession offense was
two years and for a first-sale offense ten years; no parole was permitted
until these minimum sentences had been served.
- In Georgia, sale of marijuana to a minor was punishable by life
imprisonment, even if it was a first offense-though the jury could
recommend ten-to-twenty years instead. A second such offense was
punishable by death-but the jury could recommend life imprisonment or ten
to twenty years instead. No mitigation of sentence (suspension, probation,
or parole) was permitted; the constitutionality of this clause was in
question.
- In Illinois, the penalty for a first-sale offense was not less than ten
years and as much as life. A mandatory life sentence was in effect for a
second-sale offense. These penalties remained in effect after a 1968
amendment to the law reduced the penalties for possession of small
amounts.
- In Louisiana, anyone over twenty-one years of age possessing marijuana
was subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of five years at hard labor
for a first offense; the judge could impose a fifteen-year sentence.
Possessors under twenty-one could be sentenced to not more than ten years,
with or without hard labor. An adult selling marijuana to another adult
was subject to a minimum mandatory sentence of ten years at hard labor and
a maximum sentence of fifty years at hard labor for a first offense. If
the seller were under twenty-one, sentences ranged from five to fifteen
years. If the buyer were under twenty-one, however, a first-sale offense
required a mandatory minimum sentence of thirty years at hard labor and
could draw a death sentence. No suspended sentences or probation was
permitted for any sale offenses or for second-possession offenses.
- In Massachusetts, it was a felony punishable by not more than five years
in prison to be in a place where marijuana was kept or deposited, or to be
in the company of anyone known to be in illegal possession of marijuana.
- In Missouri, the judge could hand down a life sentence for a second
possession offense or a first-sale offense, without possibility of
suspended sentence, probation, or parole. If the buyer were a minor, a
death sentence was possible for a first-sale offense.
- In Rhode Island, a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years was decreed
for a first offense of possession with intent to sell. The mandatory
minimum for the first actual sale was twenty years, and a forty-year first
offense sentence could be imposed.
- In Texas, the penalty for a first-possession offense was not less than
two years, but the judge could impose a life sentence for a
first-possession offense. A second-possession offense carried a mandatory
minimum ten year sentence or a possible life sentence.
- In Utah a life sentence was possible for a first marijuana sale offense
or for a second possession-with-intent-to-sell offense.
Congress also from time to time escalated federal marijuana penalties
along with federal heroin penalties. In 1951, mandatory minimum sentences were
fixed for all marijuana offenses, and, all but first-time offenders were
rendered ineligible for suspended sentence or probation. In 1956, the
mandatory minimum for first-offense possession was fixed at two years (with a
ten-year term possible). The mandatory minimum for a second possession offense
was fixed at five years (with a twenty-year term possible), with parole as
well as probation and suspended sentence prohibited. For sale offenses, the
mandatory minimum was set at five years for a first offense and ten years for
a second; terms of twenty years for a first offense and forty for a second
were possible-and parole as well as suspended sentence and probation were
banned for all sale offenses.31
The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1971
subsequently reduced federal penalties for marijuana possession.
As in the case of similar penalties for the possession or sale of heroin,
these "mandatory" penalties were in fact rarely invoked; the
offender was usually allowed to plead guilty to a lesser offense. When extreme
penalties were handed down, there usually appeared to be some other reason-
some conduct or advocacy-aside from involvement with marijuana. Ordinary
people, it is commonly agreed, rarely draw such sentences. "In
California," one youth leader explains, "it is illegal to smoke
marijuana unless you have your hair cut at least once a month."32 The
children of governors, senators, and others in the public eye, when arrested
for marijuana offenses, rarely receive even short prison terms. Inequities of
sentencing are no doubt among the factors bringing the marijuana laws, and
drug law enforcement generally, into disrepute.
Continuing antimarijuana propaganda kept pace with the continuing
antimarijuana legislation after 1937. And people generally believed the
propaganda. In a National Institute of Public Opinion (Gallup) poll of a
cross-section of 1,539 adults in 300 localities, made in October 1969, only 12
percent of the respondents thought that use of marijuana should be legalized;
84 percent were opposed, and 4 percent had no opinion. Among grade-school
children, opposition to marijuana was even more prevalent; 6 percent thought
it should be legalized, while 91 percent were opposed, and 3 percent had no
opinion.33 When adult respondents were asked to describe the effects of
smoking marijuana, they gave the following replies.34
| |
Percent of Respondants |
| Harms mind and nervous system |
17 |
| Leads to use of stronger drugs |
12 |
| Dulls the senses |
9 |
| Harmful to the health |
9 |
| Makes user "high" |
8 |
| Addictive, habit-forming |
7 |
| Makes user lose control of his
actions |
7 |
| Leads to irresponsibility,
affects judgement |
3 |
| Neither habit-forming nor
harmful |
3 |
| Leads to crime |
1 |
| Harmful to unborn children |
1 |
| Generally unfavourable comments |
6 |
| Miscellaneous |
1 |
| Unable to give answer |
35 |
| Total |
119 |
"The total adds up to more than 100 percent since some persons
gave more than one response," the Gallup organization explained. That
only 3 percent of respondents considered marijuana "neither habit-forming
nor harmful" is worthy of particular note. From the point of view of
antimarijuana laws and antimarijuana publicity alike, the United States in the
1960s was superbly protected against this hated drug.
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