Harry J. Anslinger (1892-1975) is widely considered to be "The first United States drug czar". Currently, many firmly oppose Anslinger for his rhetoric-based crusade against marijuana, fueling decades of misinformation about the drug based on racism and fear. He served as the Assistant Prohibition Commissioner in the Bureau of Prohibition, before being appointed as the first Commissioner of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Narcotics on August 12, 1930, serving until 1962 when he was dismissed by President John F. Kennedy. While there are many examples in Anslinger's writings and behavior that justify today's intense abhorrence of his character, some contend that Harry J. Anslinger was really just a representative puppet for a thriving political belief. In other words, although it would appear that Anslinger was a conservative who truly believed marijuana to be a threat to the future of American civilization, his biographer maintained that he was an astute government bureaucrat who viewed the marijuana issue as a means for elevating himself to national prominence.

During the 1920s, an emerging movement of legislators, newspaper editors, and concerned citizens started pressing Washington for federal legislation against marijuana. Back then, the drug was even more misunderstood than it is today. A publication in the Montana Standard, on January 27, 1929, records progress on a bill in that state to amend the general narcotic law:

"There was fun in the House Health Committee during the week when the Marihuana bill came up for consideration. Marijuana is Mexican opium, a plant used by Mexicans and cultivated for sale by Indians. 'When some beet field peon takes a few rares of this stuff,' explained Dr. Fred Fulsher of Mineral County, 'he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico so he starts to execute all his political enemies...' Everybody laughed and the bill was recommended for passage." ⁽¹⁾

The demands of this growing viewpoint were immediately heard by Anslinger. By using the mass media as his forum (receiving much support from William Randolph Hearst), Anslinger propelled the anti-marijuana sentiment from the state level to a national movement writing for American Magazine. The best examples were contained in his "Gore File", a collection of police-blotter-type narratives of heinous cases, most with flimsy substantiation, linking graphically depicted offenses with the drug:

"An entire family was murdered by a youthful addict in Florida. When officers arrived at the home, they found the youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an axe 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 he was pitifully crazed. They sought the reason. The boy said that he had been in the habit of smoking something which youthful friends called “muggles,” a childish name for marijuana."

Most commonly this campaign also focused intensely on racist themes, popular of the time:

"Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with female students (white), smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result pregnancy"; or "Two Negros took a girl fourteen years old and kept her for two days under the influence of marijuana. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis."

Anslinger's successful crusade to national distinction resulted in the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act on August 2, 1937. The new law provided the first framework for federal regulation, classifying marijuana as a narcotic. Claims are commonly made that Anslinger went to great lengths to ensure that news of meetings regarding the Marijuana Tax Act were not circulated to any group that might counter the proposed legislation. For example, the American Medical Association (AMA), which would have likely argued in favor of the drug's medicinal function, was notified only two days before the hearing. Their representative, Dr. William Woodward, denounced the hearings as "being rooted in tabloid sensationalism," and demanded an explanation for the secrecy involved. Anslinger ignored Woodward's objections, and then lied to Congress claiming the AMA agreed the bill should be passed.

Later in his career, Harry J. Anslinger was scrutinized for insubordination by refusing to desist from an attempt to halt the production of publications by Professor Alfred Lindsmith of Indiana University. He wrote, among other works, The Addict and the Law (Washington Post, 1961), a critical book on the War on Drugs, specifically indicating Anslinger’s role. This controversy is often credited in ending Anslinger's position of Commissioner of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Narcotics. The responsibilities once held by Harry J. Anslinger are now largely under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Notes

Note (1): Larry Sloman, Reefer Madness: A History of Marijuana in America (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1979), pp 30-31

Sources

• The War on Drugs II (ISBN 1559340169), by J.A. Inciardi, California: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1992

External links

• Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the US Bureau of Narcotics, "Marijuana: assassin of Youth" (http://www.cannabis.net/assassin-of-youth.html), The American Magazine, July 1937: text
• Statement by Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the US Bureau of Narcotics, to the Senate Ways and Means Committee, 1937 (http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/taxact/anslng1.htm)