Harry J. Anslinger
Harry Jacob Anslinger (May 20, 1892 – November 14, 1975) 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 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.
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 The American Magazine, the best examples were contained in his "Gore File", a collection of quotes from police reports, by later opponents described as police-blotter-type narratives of heinous cases, most with no 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."
Anslinger borrowed the term “marijuana” for cannabis from Mexico because he wanted to give cannabis an association with Mexicans, thus using racial prejudice to cause public opinion to support laws against it. Working hand-in-hand with William Randolph Hearst, Anslinger helped to create the propaganda machine that turned the tide of American opinion in favor of the drug war by feeding on racial prejudice and stereotypes.
"Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with (white) female students, smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy"
"Two Negros took a girl fourteen years old and kept her for two days under the influence of hemp. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis."
What Anslinger used was language from police reports about illegal drug use. Police reports are typically written with a concise language including such details as age, gender, race, ethnic group, type of crime etc. Anslinger, for example, pointed at the former big bootleggers of alcohol, something that many interpret as the Italian/Jewish mafia, as responsible for a big part of the organized illegal trade with opium and cocaine from mid 1930s. "The first Federal law-enforcement administrator to recognize the signs of a national criminal syndication and sound the alarm was Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics in the Treasury" (Ronald Reagan 1986)
" Ma'rijuana is taken by ...musicians. And I'm not speaking about good musicians, but the jazz type... —Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the US Bureau of Narcotics, 1930 - 1962
Even at the time, reputable experts had already deemed much of the alarmist anti-cannabis propaganda that was being disseminated in Hearst publications and quoted by Harry J. Anslinger in congressional testimony was inaccurate. Anslinger took pains to ensure that news of upcoming meetings was not circulated where any groups that might counter the proposed legislation (which taxed marijuana out of existence, in an end-run around the medical issues) would be alerted. The American Medical Association, which would likely have argued the medicinal benefits of marijuana, 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 vociferous objections -- when before the vote he was asked by Congress if the AMA agreed that the bill should be passed, a member of Anslinger's committee replied, "Yes, they are in complete agreement."
Anslinger is reported to have retired in 1962, but he was actually fired by U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Anslinger was canned for insubordination for refusing to desist from attempting to halt all publications by Professor Alfred Lindsmith of Indiana University who wrote, among other works, The Addict and the Law (Washington Post, 1961), a book critical in detail of the "War on Drugs" that was initiated with the war on marijuana in the run-up to the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.
He held office an unprecedented 32 years in his role 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.
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 The American Magazine, the best examples were contained in his "Gore File", a collection of quotes from police reports, by later opponents described as police-blotter-type narratives of heinous cases, most with no 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."
Anslinger borrowed the term “marijuana” for cannabis from Mexico because he wanted to give cannabis an association with Mexicans, thus using racial prejudice to cause public opinion to support laws against it. Working hand-in-hand with William Randolph Hearst, Anslinger helped to create the propaganda machine that turned the tide of American opinion in favor of the drug war by feeding on racial prejudice and stereotypes.
"Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with (white) female students, smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy"
"Two Negros took a girl fourteen years old and kept her for two days under the influence of hemp. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis."
What Anslinger used was language from police reports about illegal drug use. Police reports are typically written with a concise language including such details as age, gender, race, ethnic group, type of crime etc. Anslinger, for example, pointed at the former big bootleggers of alcohol, something that many interpret as the Italian/Jewish mafia, as responsible for a big part of the organized illegal trade with opium and cocaine from mid 1930s. "The first Federal law-enforcement administrator to recognize the signs of a national criminal syndication and sound the alarm was Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics in the Treasury" (Ronald Reagan 1986)
" Ma'rijuana is taken by ...musicians. And I'm not speaking about good musicians, but the jazz type... —Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the US Bureau of Narcotics, 1930 - 1962
Even at the time, reputable experts had already deemed much of the alarmist anti-cannabis propaganda that was being disseminated in Hearst publications and quoted by Harry J. Anslinger in congressional testimony was inaccurate. Anslinger took pains to ensure that news of upcoming meetings was not circulated where any groups that might counter the proposed legislation (which taxed marijuana out of existence, in an end-run around the medical issues) would be alerted. The American Medical Association, which would likely have argued the medicinal benefits of marijuana, 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 vociferous objections -- when before the vote he was asked by Congress if the AMA agreed that the bill should be passed, a member of Anslinger's committee replied, "Yes, they are in complete agreement."
Anslinger is reported to have retired in 1962, but he was actually fired by U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Anslinger was canned for insubordination for refusing to desist from attempting to halt all publications by Professor Alfred Lindsmith of Indiana University who wrote, among other works, The Addict and the Law (Washington Post, 1961), a book critical in detail of the "War on Drugs" that was initiated with the war on marijuana in the run-up to the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.
