Amid evidence of corruption in 1929, the US Treasury Department's Narcotics Division collapsed and the following year Congress created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), still under the Treasury Deparment. In June, 1930, Harry J. Anslinger was appointed its first commissioner by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon under President Herbert Hoover. The United States Department of the Treasury is a Cabinet department, a treasury, of the United States government established by an Act of U.S. Congress in 1789 to manage the revenue of the United States government. ... Harry J. Anslinger is commonly known for his extreme campaign against Cannabis. ... Mellon portrait Andrew William Mellon (March 24, 1855–August 27, 1937) was an American banker, industrialist, philanthropist, and Secretary of the Treasury from March 4, 1921 until February 12, 1932. ... Order: 31st President Vice President: Charles Curtis Term of office: March 4, 1929 – March 4, 1933 Preceded by: Calvin Coolidge Succeeded by: Franklin D. Roosevelt Date of birth: August 10, 1874 Place of birth: West Branch, Iowa Date of death: October 20, 1964 Place of death: New York City, New...
Under Anslinger, the bureau lobbied for harsh penalties for drug usage. The FBN is credited for criminalizing drugs such as marijuana with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, as well as strengthening the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. In the United States, the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act was one of the cornerstone bills that led to the criminalization of Cannabis. ... The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act was an American law that regulated and taxed the production, importation, distribution and use of opiates. ...
As presently organized the Bureau depends for its very existence upon the status quo, and it is therefore easy to understand that 'it has come to be the symbol of a punitive approach and the most important and influential obstacle to reform.
In 1939 a federalnarcotics agent approached a member of the Board of Trustees of Indiana University and later the President of the university (of whose faculty I was, and still am, a member), with the word that I was a member of or associated with a disreputable organization.
Bureau publications are ordinarily deferred to as authoritative with respect to questions of enforcement, while those of the Public Health Service officials are regarded as authoritative on the medical, psychiatric, and biological aspects of addiction.
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