Harry J. Anslinger is commonly known for his extreme campaign against Cannabis.

Harry J. Anslinger (May 20, 1892 – November 14, 1975) is widely considered to be the first United States "drug czar". He held office as the Assistant Prohibition Commissioner in the Bureau of Prohibition, before being appointed as the first Commissioner of the Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) on August 12, 1930. He held office an unprecedented 32 years in his role (rivaled only by J. Edgar Hoover), holding office until 1962. He then held office two years as US Representative to the United Nations Narcotics Commission. The responsibilities once held by Harry J. Anslinger are now largely under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. Anslinger died at the age of 83 of heart failure in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Today, he is most remembered for his sensationalist campaign against marijuana, based on long-since discredited arguments concerning the perceived evils of the drug. Harry Anslinger This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... Harry Anslinger This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... Look up Cannabis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... May 20 is the 140th day of the year (141st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1892 (MDCCCXCII) was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... is the 318th day of the year (319th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy Keith Hellawell, former Drug Czar in the United Kingdom. ... The Bureau of Prohibition (or Prohibition Unit) was the federal law enforcement agency formed to enforce the National Prohibition Act of 1919, commonly known as the Volstead Act, which backed up the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution regarding the prohibition of the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic... 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. ... Amid evidence of corruption in 1929, the US Treasury Departments Narcotics Division collapsed and the following year Congress created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), still under the Treasury Deparment. ... August 12 is the 224th day of the year (225th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1930 (MCMXXX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display 1930 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an influential but controversial director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). ... Year 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), a component of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, was established in 1988 by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. ... Hollidaysburg is a borough located in Blair County, Pennsylvania. ... Capital Harrisburg Largest city Philadelphia Area  Ranked 33rd  - Total 46,055 sq mi (119,283 km²)  - Width 280 miles (455 km)  - Length 160 miles (255 km)  - % water 2. ... A Cannabis sativa plant The drug cannabis, also called marijuana, is produced from parts of the cannabis plant, primarily the cured flowers and gathered trichomes of the female plant. ...

Early life, marriage

Harry Jacob's father, Robert J. Anslinger, born in Bern, Switzerland was trained and worked in that country as a barber. Harry's mother, formerly Rosa Christiana Fladt, was born in Baden, Germany. In 1881, Robert and Christiana arrived on Ellis Island. Robert worked as a barber for two years in New York, eventually settling his family in Altoona, Pennsylvania. In 1892, Robert took a job with the Pennsylvania Railroad, and on May 20 of the same year Harry Jacob Anslinger was born—the eighth of Robert and Christiana's nine children. Location within Switzerland The city of Bern, English traditionally Berne (Bernese German Bärn , German Bern , French Berne , Italian Berna , Romansh Berna ), is the Bundesstadt (administrative capital) of Switzerland, and is the fourth most populous Swiss city (after Zürich, Geneva and Basel). ... Baden is a historical state in the southwest of Germany, on the right bank of the Rhine. ... Ellis Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor, was at one time the main entry facility for immigrants entering the United States from January 1, 1892 until November 12, 1954. ... Altoona is a city in Blair County, Pennsylvania, United States. ... 1893 map The Pennsylvania Railroad (AAR reporting mark PRR) was an American railroad that was founded in 1846 and merged in 1968 into Penn Central Transportation. ...

Anslinger claimed that he witnessed an event at the age of 12 that affected his life's direction: he heard the screams of a morphine addict that were only silenced by a boy his age returning from a pharmacist to supply the addict with more morphine. Apparently, he was appalled that the drug was so powerful and that children had ready access to such drugs. Morphine (INN) (IPA: ) is a highly potent opiate analgesic drug and is the principal active agent in opium and the prototypical opiate. ... Morphine (INN) (IPA: ) is a highly potent opiate analgesic drug and is the principal active agent in opium and the prototypical opiate. ...

Though he did not receive a high school diploma, Harry J. Anslinger enrolled at Altoona Business College in 1909, at the age of 17. Sometime thereafter he became employed, like his father, by the Pennsylvania Railroad. At age 21 (1913), he requested and was granted a furlough so he could enroll at Pennsylvania State College where he entered a two-year associate degree program consisting of engineering and business management courses. The Pennsylvania State University (commonly known as Penn State) is a state-related, land-grant university. ...

He married Martha Kind Denniston (Sept 1886 - Oct 10, 1961) in 1917 at the age of 25, according to the 1930 Census. That year, at age 38, he was renting an apartment at 16th & R Street in Washington, DC for $90 per month, where he lived with his wife Martha and son Joseph L. Anslinger (May 24, 1911 - Nov 1982), who were 44 and 18, respectively. Martha Denniston was the niece^{[citation needed]} of Andrew W. Mellon, the Secretary of the US Treasury who would appoint Anslinger to his 32 year post as Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Despite any perceived nepotism then or today, by 1930 he was well-qualified for the position. Andrew William Mellon (March 24, 1855 — August 27, 1937) was an American banker, industrialist, philanthropist, art collector and Secretary of the Treasury from March 4, 1921 until February 12, 1932. ...

Rise to prominence

Anslinger gained notoriety early in his career. At the age of 23 (1915), while working as an investigator for the Pennsylvania Railroad, he performed a detailed investigation that found the claim of a widower in a railroad accident fraudulent. He saved the company $50,000 ($921,126 in 2005 dollars) and was promoted to captain of railroad police.

From 1917 to 1928, Anslinger worked for various military and police organizations. His tour of duty took him all over the world, from Germany to Venezuela to Japan. His focus was on stopping international drug trafficking, and he is widely credited for shaping not only America's domestic and international drug policies, but for having influence on drug polices of other nations, particularly those that had not debated the issues internally.

By 1929, Anslinger returned from his international tour to work as an assistant Commissioner in the United States Bureau of Prohibition. Around this time, corruption and scandal gripped Prohibition and Narcotics agencies. The ensuing shake-ups and re-organizations set the stage for Anslinger, perceived as an honest and incorruptible figure, to advance not only in rank but to great political stature. The Bureau of Prohibition (or Prohibition Unit) was the federal law enforcement agency formed to enforce the National Prohibition Act of 1919, commonly known as the Volstead Act, which backed up the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution regarding the prohibition of the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic...

In 1930, Anslinger was appointed to the newly-created FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics) as its first Commissioner. The FBN, like the Bureau of Prohibition, was under the auspices of the US Treasury Department. At that time the trade of alcohol and drugs was considered a loss of revenue because as illegal substances they could not be taxed. Anslinger was appointed by Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew W. Mellon and given a budget of $100,000 ($1,139,170 in 2006 dollars).

The campaign against marijuana

During the 1920s, an emerging movement of legislators, yellow journalists, and concerned citizens started pressing Washington for federal legislation against marijuana. A publication in the Montana Standard, on January 27, 1929, records progress on a bill in that state to amend the general narcotic law: 1920 (MCMXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ... Nasty little printers devils spew forth from the Hoe press in this Puck cartoon of Nov. ... Aerial photo (looking NW) of the Washington Monument and the White House in Washington, DC. Washington, D.C., officially the District of Columbia (also known as D.C.; Washington; the Nations Capital; the District; and, historically, the Federal City) is the capital city and administrative district of the United... This article describes the government of the United States. ... A Cannabis sativa plant The drug cannabis, also called marijuana, is produced from parts of the cannabis plant, primarily the cured flowers and gathered trichomes of the female plant. ... The Montana Standard is a Lee Enterprises daily newspaper printed in Butte, Montana. ... is the 27th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

"There was fun in the House Health Committee during the week when the marijuana 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⁾

Southern states were also pressing for a federal law against marijuana to persecute Mexicans that saturated the workforce with cheap labor during The Depression. Anslinger eventually responded to the demands of this growing viewpoint. 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. This article does not adequately cite its references. ... Mineral County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. ... The U.S. Southern states or The South, known during the American Civil War era as Dixie, is a distinctive region of the United States with its own unique historical perspective, customs, musical styles, and cuisine. ... The Great Depression was a global economic slump that began in 1929 and bottomed in 1933. ... This article deals with conservatism as a political philosophy. ... A bureaucrat is a member of a bureaucracy, usually within an institution of the government. ...

Secretary Mellon, Anslinger's appointer and boss for two years, was a prime backer (through his Mellon Financial Corporation) of the DuPont petrochemical company, to which the "New Billion-Dollar Crop" of hemp (Popular Mechanics, publication date: February, 1938) presented a serious competitive threat. There is some belief that Anslinger, DuPont petrochemical interests and William Randolph Hearst together created the highly sensational anti-marijuana campaign to eliminate hemp as an industrial competitor. Indeed, Anslinger did not himself consider marijuana a serious threat to American society until in the fourth year of his tenure (1934), at which point an anti-marijuana campaign aimed at alarming the public abruptly became his primary focus. This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... William Randolph Hearst (April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American newspaper magnate. ...

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^{[citation needed]}, linking graphically depicted offenses with the drug: This article does not cite any references or sources. ... William Randolph Hearst (April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American newspaper magnate. ... 1917 issue The American Magazine was founded in June of 1906 stemming from failed publications that had been purchased a few years earlier from publishing mogul Miriam Leslie and operated between 1904 and August of 1905 as Leslies Magazine then until May of 1906 as the American Illustrated Magazine. ...

"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 popular racist themes of the time: Look up Cannabis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

"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"^{[citation needed]}

"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."^{[citation needed]}

In other words, Harry Anslinger was a ignorant racist excuse for a person. Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by Treponema pallidum. ...

Later years

Later in his career, 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. Lindsmith wrote, among other works, The Addict and the Law (Washington Post, 1961), a book critical of the War on Drugs and specifically condemning Anslinger’s role. This controversy is sometimes credited with ending Anslinger's position of Commissioner of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Narcotics. Indiana University is the principal campus of the Indiana University system. ... ... Massive mark-ups for drugs, [http://www. ...

In fact, Anslinger was surprised to be re-appointed by President John F. Kennedy in February of 1961, since the tendency of the new President was to invigorate the government with more youthful civil servants. In any case, by 1962 Anslinger was 70 years old, the mandatory age for retirement in his position. In addition, in the previous year he had witnessed his wife Martha's slow and agonizing death due to heart failure, and is said to have lost some of his drive and ambition. He submitted his resignation to President Kennedy on his 70th birthday, May 20, 1962. Since Kennedy did not have a successor, Anslinger stayed in his $18,500 ($114,241 in 2005 dollars) position until later that year. He was succeeded by Henry Giordano. Following that, for two years he was the United States Representative to the United Nations Narcotics Commission, after which he retired.

By 1973, Anslinger was completely blind, had a debilitatingly enlarged prostate gland and suffered from angina. It is ironic that despite his aggressive stance against addictive painkilling drugs, he himself was taking morphine to alleviate his pain.^{[citation needed]} At 1pm on November 14, 1975, Anslinger died of heart failure at Hollidaysburg Mercy Hospital, Pennsylvania. He was 83.

Anslinger was survived by his son Joseph L. Anslinger and a sister. According to John McWilliams' 1990 book The Protectors, Anslinger's daughter-in-law Bea at that time still lived in Anslinger's home in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.

Career timeline, recognition

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Harry J. Anslinger

• 1913-1915 : Student, Pennsylvania State University, State College PA
• 1917-1918 : Member, Efficiency Board, Ordinance Division, War Department
• 1918-1921 : Attached to American Legation, The Hague
• 1921-1923 : Vice-Consul, Hamburg, Germany
• 1923-1925 : Consul, La Guaira, Venezuela
• 1926 : Consul, Venezuela
• 1926 : Delegate of US to Conference on Suppression of Smuggling, London
• 1926-1929 : Chief Division of Foreign Control, US Treasury Department
• 1927 : Delegate of US to Conference on Suppression of Smuggling, Paris
• 1928 : International Congress against Alcoholism, Antwerp, Belgium
• 1928 : Conference to Revise Treat with US, Ottawa, Canada
• 1929-1930 : Assistant Commissioner of Prohibition
• 1930 : LL.B., Washington College of Law
•  ? : LL.D., University of Maryland
• 1930-1962 : Commissioner of Federal Bureau of Narcotics
• 1931 : Conference of Limitation of Manufacture of Narcotic Drugs
• 1932-34, 1936-39 : Co-Observer of US at League of Nations Opium Advisory Commission
• 1936 : US delegation International Conference for Suppression of Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs, League of Nations, Geneva
• 1952 : US representative commission on Narcotic Drugs of UN Recipient Pennsylvania Ambassador, Proctor Gold Medal Awards
• 1958 : One of ten outstanding career men, Federal Government, National Civil Service League
• 1959 : Alumni Recognition Award, American University
• 1959 : Distinguished Alumnus award, Pennsylvania State University
• 1962-1963 : US Representative to United Nations Narcotics Commission
• 1964: Retired

• Alexander Hamilton Medal
• Remington Medal
• Presidential Citation
• Member, Commission Drug Addiction NRC
• Honorable Member, Terre Haute Academy of Medicine
• Associate Member, International Police Chief Association
• Member, Advisory Committee, International Cooperation Common Law, American Bar Association
• Life Member, Pennsylvania and Blair County Pharm. Association
• Diplomatic and Consular Officers Reg. (board of governors)
• Sigma Nu Phi

Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Wikiquote is a sister project of Wikipedia, using the same MediaWiki software. ... Coordinates: , Country Netherlands Province South Holland Area (2006)  - Municipality 98. ... The term Prohibition, also known as A Dry Law, refers to a law in a certain country by which the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages is restricted or illegal. ... The degree of Bachelor of Laws is the principal academic degree in law in most common law countries. ... Legum Doctor (English: Doctor of Laws; abbreviated to LL.D.) In the UK the LL.D. is a higher doctorate awarded on the basis of exceptionally insightful and distinctive publications, containing significant and original contributions to the science or study of law. ...

Sources

Note (1): Larry Sloman, Reefer Madness: A History of Marijuana in America (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1979), pp 30-31 Reefer Madness is a 1936 drama film revolving around the tragic events that follow when high school students are lured by pushers to try marihuana: a hit and run accident, manslaughter, suicide, rape, and descent into madness all ensue. ...

• United States Census, Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1930
• The Traffic in Narcotics: An interview with the Hon. Harry J. Anslinger United States Commissioner of Narcotics, Jan. 1, 1954
• Obituaries, New York Times, November 18, 1975
• Who Was Who in America with World Notables (ISBN 0-8379-0207-X), Vol VI 1974-1976, by Marquis Who's Who, 1976
• The Protectors: Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1930-1962) (ISBN 0-87413-352-1), by John C. McWilliams, University of Delaware Press, August 1, 1990
• The War on Drugs II (ISBN 1-55934-016-9), by J.A. Inciardi, California: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1992
• Cannabis: A History (ISBN 0-312-42494-9), by Martin Booth, Picador USA, June 2005

See also

• Havana Conference
• LaGuardia Commission
• Legal issues of cannabis
• Prohibition (drugs)
• L.G. Nutt

This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The Laguardia Commission was the first in depth study into the effects of smoking marijuana. ... World laws on cannabis possession (small amount). ... For the general concept, see Prohibitionism. ... Nutt, Levi G., Colonel - Chief of the Narcotics Division of the US Treasury Department 1929-30 prior to the creation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). ...

External links

• Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the US Bureau of Narcotics, "Marijuana: assassin of Youth", The American Magazine, July 1937
• Statement by Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the US Bureau of Narcotics, to the Senate Ways and Means Committee, 1937
• Guide to the H.J. Anslinger Papers, 1835-1970, Pennsylvania State University