In the early seventeenth Century, the members of a small Christian cult known as the Puritans left Europe for a new life in North America. Though the name of their sect would eventually become synonymous with fanatical religious asceticism, it is noteworthy that in addition to the food, tools, weapons and clothing they would need to meet the challenge of the New World, the Puritans brought with them forty-two tons of beer and ten thousand gallons of wine¹. By arriving early and in quantity, alcohol secured its position as the most 'American' of the psycho-active drugs, though more 'exotic' drugs were accepted and used throughout the young nation. Psycho-active drugs were easily available and widely consumed for the next two and a half centuries, subject to control only by a few sparsely imposed state revenue taxes. It was not until 1883 that the federal government saw fit to enact legislation designed to regulate the production, sale, use, or possession of any drug—in this case, it imposed a prohibitive tax on imported smoking opium. This tax was applied solely to raise the price of smoking opium, and thereby (it was hoped) curtail its use. At the time, opium smoking was the drug and ingestion route of choice among immigrant Chinese railroad workers in the Western states. Though the curbing of individual behavior via the federal government's revenue raising authority was a new technique in 1883, it would eventually serve as the model for federal drug laws over the next half century. From the outset, federal drug legislation was not conceived as a rational response to a pressing social problem, nor was it informed by scientific consensus or debate. Prohibition found its impetus and justification in the mix of racism, xenophobia and religious moralism that held sway in much of America in the 1880s, and in many cases, still does.

The wholesale prohibition of non-medical psycho-active drug use is by and large a phenomenon of the twentieth century, though its roots stretch back much farther. In the early 1800s, the prohibition program found its form in the shape of the temperance movement, which primarily sought to end the consumption of alcohol. Due to its widespread use and particular pharmacological effects, alcohol was considered to be responsible for most of what constituted the 'drug problem' in the 1800s. Many social reformers saw it as the main obstacle to realizing their vision of an American utopia, noting particularly alcohol's relation to poor hygiene and 'moral degeneracy.' They decided that the prohibition of the substance itself was the surest way to stanch the ills engendered by its use. The new movement found the bulk of its leaders and adherents among clergymen, pious citizens, evangelical philanthropists and a cluster of concerned women's associations. Organizations such as the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Christian Temperance Union made headlines with exuberant public speeches, marches and the occasional destruction of saloons by ax-wielding devotees. The link between alcohol and immorality was promulgated by social reformers such as the Quaker physician John H. Griscom, New York's City Inspector in the 1840s, who was convinced that damp, filthy living spaces, the neglect of personal hygiene, the consumption of alcohol and immorality were all intimately connected. He based his hypotheses on his observations of New York City tenement dwellers—a good deal of whom were recent European immigrants. Griscom commented that "indulgence in a vicious or immoral course of life is sure to prove destructive to health,"² and:

From a low state of general health, whether in an individual or in numbers, proceed diminished energy of body and of mind, and a vitiated moral perception, the frequent precursor of habits and deeds, which give employment to the officers of police, and the ministers of justice.³

Despite the best intentions of temperance advocates and social reformers like Dr. Griscom, most Americans continued to consume alcohol. Though they viewed the temperance movement as a small collection of 'puritanical' zealots, they likewise ceded to them whatever moral high ground there was surrounding the issue of alcohol abuse. Few people, it seems, felt compelled to take to the streets in defense of their favorite intoxicating beverage. The strong conviction of its members and the relative lack of open public resistance notwithstanding, the alcohol prohibitionists in the temperance movement would have to wait until the first half of the twentieth century for their ultimate success—and subsequent failure. However, their ability to intertwine the themes of prohibition and morality would serve their cause well beyond the case of alcohol. The non-medical use of drugs considered to be less 'American' than alcohol would fare much worse.

Prior to 1883, governmental regulation of non-medical (or even medical) drug use was very rare. It consisted mostly of a few state laws banning the sale or possession of smoking opium in the Western part of the country. Opium smoking was associated with (and largely confined to) the Chinese immigrant workers who came to America in large numbers during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. These 'coolies' (as they were known) brought the custom with them from their native China. For the most part, the habit was looked on as an ethnic curiosity of little interest to or impact on the general population in America. Opium smoking became a topic of political concern only when the immigrant-owned opium dens which dotted cities like San Francisco began to attract white patrons, and most alarmingly, white women. Fear spread that white women were being debauched in the opium dens of the "heathen Chinee."⁵ Consequently, the smoking of opium took on a morally degenerate hue in the minds of many Americans in the West, but the reputation of the oral consumption of the drug (the mode of ingestion favored by white Americans) suffered much less. At its worst, non-medical opium eating was frowned upon as a "vice akin to dancing, smoking [tobacco], theater-going, gambling, or sexual promiscuity."⁶

More importantly, perhaps, the oral ingestion of opiates was the time honored route for the medication of illness. While many people under the care of physicians received prescription opiate preparations, this was by no means the major method of distribution in the nineteenth century. Opiates were also available in drugstores, grocery and general stores, via mail order and from traveling salesmen.⁷ Moreover, most of the available non-prescription opiate medicaments for oral administration did not list their ingredients. Many people consumed them without ever knowing what they were taking, only that it 'cured' their pain. Due to their profound analgesic effect, both medical doctors and lay people considered opiates to be a panacea. Physicians at the time referred to opiates as "G.O.M. - God's Own Medicine,"⁸ and they were prescribed for a great variety of afflictions. Morphine or opium were common ingredients in patent medicines, herbal preparations and other 'curatives' available to anyone without restriction. Opiate addiction—often referred to as the 'army disease' due to its prevalence among Civil War veterans who had been (over)treated with morphine—was a recognized, albeit relatively rare phenomenon. Prior to the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, however, no law required the listing of contents on patent medicines—certainly some people became unwitting opiate addicts as a result.

Subsequent to the Pure Food and Drug Act, pharmaceutical firms began listing the ingredients on the labels of the products they marketed. Combined with the growing public knowledge about the addictive potential of opium derivatives, this led to decreasing demand for opiated medicines. By 1914, the number of opiate addicts had actually dropped from its peak in the 1890s.⁹ The bulk of remaining 'medicinal' opiates were consumed by a small section of the population best described as middle or upper class, middle aged, white and female.¹⁰ Many of these women became habituated in the course of medical treatment for menopause, menstrual disorders, 'hysteria,' or other ailments. They were not considered to be part of a criminal element or a menace to the social order. This benevolent disregard for opiate addicts, however, was not to persist.

The passage of the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 marks the dividing line whereupon the preponderance of official attitude toward certain drugs and drug users shifted from one of benign neglect to one of hostile persecution. This perceptual shift is buried in the language of a legislative package whose ostensible purpose was to address an international political problem—the orderly trade and marketing of opiates and a few other drugs between and among nations. The American national interest in this issue was partly vested in its recent acquisition of the Philippine Islands, as spoils of the Spanish-American War. Upon taking over the governance of the Philippines, the U.S. War Department inherited the system, established under Spanish rule, of licensing opiate addicts and supplying them with legal narcotics.¹¹ Alternatives to this system were sought by a War Department Commission of Inquiry headed by the Episcopal Bishop of the Philippine Islands, the Right Reverend Charles H. Brent. After examining East Asian narcotics control techniques, the Brent Commission recommended that opiates be regulated internationally, rather than on the existing national basis.¹² The idea of international narcotics control fell on sympathetic ears in the U.S. government. There had been much controversy in the preceding years about Britain's policy of shipping opiates from India to China (and the wars fought to protect that trade), as well as reports from American missionaries complaining of the deleterious effects of opium on the Chinese people. In response to these concerns (and at the request of Bishop Brent), in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt called for an international conference on opium. Before the conference convened in Shanghai in 1909, the U.S. government had established its opposition to the non-medical use of opiates by passing the 'Act to Prohibit Importation and Use of Opium.' The 1909 Act restricted the ports through which opium could legally be shipped and prohibited the use of opium for other than medicinal purposes (what constituted 'medicinal' was left, presumably, to medical practitioners to decide).¹³ A second international conference was held in The Hague in 1911. The two gatherings resulted in The Hague Convention of 1912, which sought to resolve problems in the Far East opiate trade.¹⁴

The Hague Convention was the statutory stage on which the Harrison Narcotic Act would make its debut. The Act's most ardent supporter was William Jennings Bryan, the Secretary of State, who promoted it as the fulfillment of America's duties under the international agreement. [After serving as head of the State Department, Bryan, "a man of deep prohibitionist and missionary convictions,"¹⁵ went on to serve as Prosecutor in a court case that would come to be known as the 'Scopes Monkey Trial'—wherein high school teacher John Thomas Scopes was convicted and fined for teaching the theory of the evolution of species to his science class.] The substance of the Harrison Narcotics Act was deceptively reasonable. Essentially, it mandated the registration and licensing of people who produce, distribute, sell, or prescribe opium or cocaine derivatives, and the keeping of accurate records with regard to those drugs and transactions. An effort was made to insure that the Act would in no way interfere with the prescription of drugs by physicians to patients. It stipulated that no part of the Act would:

...apply...to the dispensing or distribution of any of the aforesaid drugs to a patient by a physician, dentist, or veterinary surgeon registered under this Act in the course of his professional practice only.¹⁶ [emphasis added]

Within months, a black market production, importation and distribution system had sprung up to meet the demand of users and addicts. The price of contraband opiates and cocaine began to steadily increase. Addicts began to switch en masse from the less potent smokable or edible opium or morphine to the most potent form known—injectable heroin. Addicts began to migrate to the nation's cities to gain access to the black market distribution points located there. The medical profession, still smarting from the prosecutions, decried the excesses of Harrison Act enforcement, and called for a revision of the law. Just seven months after the implementation of the Act, an article in American Medicine pointed out that under the federal law, an addict was:

...denied the medical care he urgently needs, open, above-board sources from which he formerly obtained his drug supply are closed to him, and he is driven to the underworld where he can get his drug, but of course, surreptitiously and in violation of the law...¹⁹

In the early years of opiate prohibition one can see the template for the prohibition of all future illicit drugs: legislation is considered based on its expediency in addressing political concerns not directly (or not at all) related to the issue of drug use by individuals; the revenue-raising power of the federal government is used to enact prohibitory legislation—laws which, if imposed as outright bans, would face near-certain defeat in the Supreme Court as a violation of state’s rights or personal liberty; in response to opposition from experts in the field armed with contrary empirical evidence, the legislation is shored up with increased punitive power or more aggressive enforcement techniques. By 1920, the only modern tactic of prohibition that had yet to be developed was the wholesale dehumanization of drug users via misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. This tactic would reach maturity in the 1930s under the auspices of the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger, and his life-long campaign against cannabis.

Cannabis has been growing in America since it was first brought to Jamestown, Virginia by settlers in the early 1600s (some reports indicate that it was growing wild before they arrived). Commonly known as 'hemp', the plant was primarily used in the manufacture of cordage, ship rigging and sails, paper and various textiles. Cannabis was highly valued in colonial America—in some areas, farmers could be fined for not cultivating it.²⁰ George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were known to have grown cannabis on their estates. While hemp fiber was clearly the aim of most cannabis cultivation, the plant's pharmacological effects were recognized and used medicinally into the 1930s. Similar to the case of the opiates, cannabis preparations were not uncommon in nineteenth century drug stores. In the 1800s, cannabis was listed in the U.S. Pharmacopeia, and described in the U.S. Dispensatory as a legitimate treatment for:

...neuralgia, gout, rheumatism, tetanus, hydrophobia, epidemic cholera, convulsions, chorea, hysteria, mental depression, delirium tremens, insanity, and uterine hemorrhage.²¹

Though cannabis was widely cultivated in America for three hundred years, both as a fiber resource and for its medicinal properties, its use as an intoxicant was rare until the beginning of the twentieth century. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, hashish was occasionally displayed and indulged in at exhibitions and fairs as an exotic curiosity from the Orient. There is evidence that 'hashish dens' were in operation at this time in several major cities, catering mostly to upper class consumers. The cannabis houses were modeled after opium dens, replete with lush accouterments and subdued lighting. It is likely that they sprung up in response to the law enforcement crackdown on opium smoking after 1875."²³ Still, cannabis consumption was sporadic and localized into the early 20th century. Most use then was limited among migrant Mexican farm laborers in the Southwest and West Indian sailors in Gulf coast port towns such as New Orleans. Within a few decades, the custom of cannabis smoking wended its way up the Mississippi River into the Ohio Valley, then east into Harlem in New York City.²⁴ By 1920, however, it was still absent from mainstream American consciousness and experience. Cannabis smoking at that time was a sometimes habit of a small proportion of lower class laborers, foreigners and blacks; its primary use was as a cheap substitute for alcohol. As long as alcohol was inexpensive and easily available, cannabis smoking was rare.

In 1920, after almost one hundred years of spirited campaigning by temperance movement advocates, the requisite number of states and congressional representatives voted to ratify the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, permitting a nationwide ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages. The time was ripe for the temperance movement—though most people still drank alcohol, they had also become generally disgusted by political corruption involving the liquor industry, notorious episodes of public drunkenness and the 'licensed saloon' system of distribution.²⁵ Also in 1920, Congress passed the Volstead Act, which codified the legal parameters and sanctions pursuant to the alcohol ban. America's experiment with alcohol prohibition had begun.

Once the legal production for sale (but not home production for personal use) of alcoholic beverages was banned, cannabis smoking began to spread more quickly. Clearly though, the drug of choice for the overwhelming majority of consumers interested in intoxication remained alcohol. In the form of bootleg or contraband liquor, alcohol was widely available from street dealers or in the thousands of illegal 'speakeasy's' that sprung up to meet the demand. The experience of opiate prohibition was repeated almost exactly: a black market organized and run by career criminals quickly replaced the former legal distribution system; the drug became much more expensive; users shifted from less potent to more potent forms of the drug (in this case from beer and wine to moonshine). Due largely to the prevalence of alcohol consumption both before and during prohibition, its widespread and historic acceptance as part of American life, and the explosion of criminal activity that accompanied its banning, alcohol prohibition was destined to fail—the Volstead Act was repealed in 1933.²⁶ Its effects on the prohibition of other drug use include a modest increase in the number of cannabis consumers, and the career of Harry J. Anslinger.

Anslinger became a U.S. Foreign Service agent shortly before World War I, and he served in Europe during the hostilities. After the war, he was stationed in The Hague, Hamburg and Venezuela before taking an assignment in the Bahamas as head of the U.S. consulate. While there, Anslinger worked to garner support from local British authorities to help stem the flow of bootleg liquor through the West Indies. His efforts on behalf of alcohol prohibition were noticed back in Washington, and in 1926 Anslinger was tapped by the Treasury Department to head the Prohibition Bureau's Division of Foreign Control. In 1929, he was promoted to assistant commissioner of prohibition and secretary to the Narcotics Control Board. In 1930, the NCB was abolished by Congress and a new enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was established under the Treasury Department. Harry Anslinger was appointed to be the first commissioner of the FBN.²⁷

From the outset, Anslinger was intent on proving that his new agency was worthy and able to address the narcotics problem on many fronts. He chose as its first major mission, involvement with and influence over the drafting of the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act—a standardized legislative package designed to be adopted by the individual states. The drafting of the Uniform Act had been proceeding since 1924 as a joint venture of the federal narcotics bureaucracy, the American Medical Association, and representatives from the nation's pharmaceutical industry. It was initiated at the suggestion of the AMA to effect more efficient regulatory control of narcotics. Anslinger hoped that the Uniform Act could be used to institute a ban on cannabis, a drug he believed to cause violence, insanity and crime.

Throughout the 1920s, sporadic reports had surfaced from law enforcement agencies along the country's southern border about the connection between cannabis smoking and criminal behavior. This connection (in the minds of state and local police and politicians) was a logical extension of their belief in a connection between criminal behavior and Mexican and black people of the lower socio-economic classes. Local officials along the border blamed cannabis use in many instances for the recent and dramatic rise in crime rates (often in lieu of noting the concurrence of alcohol prohibition and rising incidence of crime). This was especially true in New Orleans, home to both flourishing crime rates and backyard cannabis cultivation. In Washington, Congress began to stir. In an inquiry to the Bureau of Prohibition in 1929, Representative James O'Connor of New Orleans asked whether the sale of cannabis could be prohibited without resorting to an amendment of the Harrison Narcotics Act.²⁸ While there was little or no opposition in Congress to the prohibition of another 'narcotic,' members were wary of amending the Harrison Act. Prevailing constitutional interpretation held that only the states could regulate the medical profession and the dispensation of pharmaceuticals. When challenged in 1919, the Harrison Act passed Supreme Court review by the slim margin of five votes to four. The majority emphasized that the Act was deemed constitutional only on the grounds that it did raise significant revenue via the tax on opiates and cocaine. By the late 1920s, however, cannabis had fallen into disuse among the medical community—largely due to the variability in the potency of its preparations. By and large, doctors had begun prescribing alternative medications whose dosages were more easily and reliably calculated. It was obvious that no significant revenue could be raised by taxing the cannabis trade. Thus, any attempt to prohibit the sale (and thereby use) of cannabis via the revenue-raising or interstate-commerce-regulating power of the federal government was bound to be ruled unconstitutional. As a result, the narcotics bureaucracy in Washington opposed a federal prohibitory tax on cannabis, and Congress let the matter drop in 1930.

The flurry of activity over cannabis in the late twenties prompted several federal officials to request information on the effects of the drug's use. The result was the Surgeon General's Preliminary Report on Indian Hemp and Peyote, issued in 1929. By that time, there had been several studies and reports from throughout the globe on the medical, sociological and pharmacological aspects of cannabis use. Included among them were the exhaustive Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report conducted by a joint British/Indian investigative team and published in 1894, and the Panama Canal Zone Military Investigations conducted between 1916 and 1929 by U.S. military personnel.²⁹ In the drafting of Surgeon General Cummings' report, however, no review of the existing literature on cannabis was undertaken.³⁰

The report is thus a combination of information gleaned from medical texts as to the clinical application of cannabis, anecdotal reports from local law enforcement personnel and the recounting of some of the current and historic mythology surrounding the drug's use. Included in the report was the assertion that:

...those who are habitually accustomed to the use of the drug are said to develop a delirious rage after its administration during which they are temporarily, at least, irresponsible and liable to commit violent crimes.³¹

It is sometimes alleged that the murderous frenzy of the Malay, characterized as running 'amok,' is the result of the habitual use of hashish. It is also said that the Mohammadan leaders, opposing the Crusades, utilized the services of individuals addicted to the use of hashish for secret murders. The frenzy produced by the drug led to these persons being called 'haschischin,' 'hashshash' or 'hashishi' from which the modern word 'assassin' is derived.³²

In the conclusion to its 1894 report, the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission asserted that:

In regard to the physical effects, the Commission have come to the conclusion that the moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all....In respect to the alleged mental effects of the drugs...the moderate use of hemp drugs produces no injurious effects on the mind....In regard to the moral effects of the drugs...their moderate use produces no moral injury whatever.³⁴

The injury done by the excessive use is, however, confined almost exclusively to the consumer himself; the effect on society is rarely appreciable.³⁵

The influence of the drug when used for smoking is uncertain and has apparently been greatly exaggerated. Most of the reports appear to have little basis in fact. There is no medical evidence that it causes insanity....The Health Department of the Panama Canal and the Police Department of the Panama Canal have no knowledge of any ill effects from the use of the drug in the Canal Zone.³⁶

Back at the newly created Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger began his agency's involvement with the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act—the model law to be enacted by state legislatures throughout the country. Anslinger concurred with the Surgeon General that cannabis was habit-forming and criminogenic. He also believed it was spreading quickly across the nation, but unlike imported opiates, the growth of the cannabis plant could and must be controlled. Because the control of cannabis cultivation lay within state jurisdiction, Anslinger pushed to include a cannabis ban in the Uniform Act. He expected opposition to the ban from doctors and drug manufacturers, but since the 'model' Act could be drafted without public notice, hearings, or debate, Anslinger was confident that he could successfully rebuff their objections.

The battle was contentious. Anslinger felt that the drug had no legitimate medical use, and that if a medical exception were allowed (instead of a total ban on all use), the door would be open to widespread abuse. As he had expected, medical professionals and the pharmaceutical industry did not agree. Anslinger's chief opponent was Dr. William C. Woodward, director of the American Medical Association's Bureau of Legal Medicine. Woodward argued (as the representative of the medical profession) that a ban was ludicrous, and that the stringent regulatory control of medicinal cannabis was completely unwarranted—in short, because most doctors felt that the drug was not a serious public health threat, that there were no known incidents of the abuse of medicinal cannabis preparations, and that the minuscule abuse potential was far outweighed by the potentially enormous regulatory paperwork.³⁷ By 1932, despite Anslinger's repeated attempts to force a mandatory cannabis regulation scheme into the Uniform Act, the AMA would not budge. The FBN eventually backed down, and the Act was adopted with only an optional cannabis section. States who enacted the package could elect to opt out of the cannabis clause. Harry Anslinger immediately set to work to see that they did not.

It was during the process of the passage of the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act that Anslinger came to appreciate the importance of the print, radio and film media in the shaping of public opinion. He realized that in order for the Act (including the cannabis section) to be passed in every state, both legislators and voters would have to be alerted and educated about the 'dangers' of cannabis consumption. This was no mean feat considering that into the mid 1930s, the average New York City policeman could identify neither a growing cannabis plant nor its dried leaves and buds. To counter the ignorance, in 1934 Anslinger and the FBN instituted a campaign to insert anti-cannabis articles—many penned by the Commissioner himself—into the nation's newspapers and magazines. Anslinger and his aides made public speeches and radio broadcasts to spread the message. The stories they told were salacious, sensational and effective. Almost all of the stories represented as true were based on thinly stretched facts, misinformation, gross exaggeration and simple falsehoods. An article co-authored by Anslinger appeared in the American Magazine in 1937. It was typical of the 'cannabis-atrocity' genre, recounting how:

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....The officers knew him ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man; now he 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.³⁸

An anti-cannabis story by reporter Kenneth Clark appeared on the Universal News Service in 1936 under the title "Murders Due to 'Killer' Drug." It reported that:

Shocking crimes of violence are increasing. Murders, slaughterings, cruel mutilations, maimings, done in cold blood, as if some hideous monster was amok in the land. Alarmed Federal and State authorities attribute much of this violence to the "killer drug." That's what the experts call marihuana. It is another name for hashish. It's a derivative of Indian hemp, a roadside weed in almost every State in the Union....Those addicted to marihuana, after an early feeling of exhilaration, soon lose all restraints, all inhibitions. They become bestial demoniacs, filled with the mad lust to kill....⁴⁰

With sufficient popular, legislative and law enforcement support mobilized behind him, Anslinger decided in the mid 1930s to press for federal legislation to ban cannabis nationwide. His media campaign was a proven winner, so he stuck with it. Anslinger collected cannabis horror stories from law enforcement and from the print media (even those he hadn't written), and he was fond of exhibiting them whenever he needed to emphasize the evil inherent in the drug. Cannabis, moral degeneracy, violence and racism mingled freely in graphic detail within Anslinger's 'gore-file.' Some of his favorites included:
 

West Va.— Two Negroes took a girl fourteen years old and kept her for two days in a hut under the influence of marihuana. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphillis.

Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with female students (white) smoking and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result pregnancy.

In New Jersey in 1936, a particularly brutal murder occurred, in which one young man killed another, literally smashing his face and head to a pulp.... The prosecutor was convinced that Marihuana had been indulged in, that the smoking had occurred and the brutality of the murder was accounted for by the narcotic...The furor of the murderer was apparent. Not content with killing his friend, he tore out his tongue, his eyes and so mutilated him that even the hardened coroner had to turn his eyes away from the gruesome sight.

Corpus Christi—...An oil worker, good character, smoked a cigarette, raped his six-year-old daughter. When his wife returned home in the evening, she found him lying across the bed in a stupor and the little child torn and bleeding. He couldn't remember. Sentenced to death.

While under the influence of the drug, the subject thrust his hand through his hair, and found that his fingers passed through his crackling skull and into his warm, cheesy brain. Another time, his head rolled off his shoulders, broke and burst like a huge egg upon the carpet. Another time, his innards fell out with a hideous splash. Nightmares were of horror, disgust, rebellion and fiendish vengefulness and exultation.⁴¹

Unlike the consideration of the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act, which required no public hearings or debate at the federal level, hearings were held on the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. Surrounded by his staff from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger ('gore file' in hand) was the chief witness in favor of the Act. Among his contributions was this response to a question asked by Senator Davis as to the number of cannabis cigarettes one would need to smoke in order to precipitate a 'vicious mental attitude' toward one's neighbor:

I believe in some cases one cigarette might develop a homicidal mania, probably to kill his brother....Probably some people could smoke five before it would take effect, but all the experts agree that the continued use leads to insanity. There are many cases of insanity.⁴²

That there has been a certain amount of narcotic addiction of an objectionable character no one will deny. The newspapers have called attention to it so prominently that there must be some grounds for their statements. It has surprised me, however, that the facts on which these statements have been based have not been brought before this committee by competent primary evidence. We are referred to newspaper publications concerning the prevalence of marihuana addiction. We are told that the use of marihuana causes crime.

But yet no one has been produced from the Bureau of Prisons to show the number of prisoners who have been found addicted to the marihuana habit. An informal inquiry shows that the Bureau of Prisons has no evidence on that point.

You have been told that school children are great users of marihuana cigarettes. No one has been summoned from the Children's Bureau to show the nature and extent of this habit among children.

Inquiry of the Children's Bureau shows that they have had no occasion to investigate it and know nothing particularly of it.

Inquiry of the Office of Education...indicates that they have had no occasion to investigate and know nothing of it.

...The Bureau of the Public Health Service has also a division of pharmacology. If you desire evidence as to the pharmacology of Cannabis, that obviously is the place where you can get direct and primary evidence, rather that the indirect hearsay evidence.⁴³

An interesting side note to this affair occurred when Harry Anslinger testified about the possibility of cannabis addiction leading to opiate addiction—what would later be known as the 'gateway theory.' In that regard, there was an exchange between the Commissioner and Michigan Representative John Dingell:

Mr. Dingell: I am just wondering whether the marijuana addict graduates into a heroin, an opium, or a cocaine user.

Mr. Anslinger: No, sir; I have not heard of a case of that kind. I think it is an entirely different class. The marihuana addict does not go in that direction.⁴⁴

This history of cannabis prohibition (and most non-medical drug prohibition) since 1937 has essentially been a rehash of the tactics developed up to that point. The sensational media coverage, the campaigns of disinformation, the portrayal of drug users as immoral and dangerous, the playing upon fear and racial prejudice, the use of drug consumers and vendors as scapegoats for social ills—all these tactics are as old as prohibition. The thread that ties them neatly together is the fact that not one of them stands up to logical, rational, scientific scrutiny.

Prohibition's opponents in the scientific community (among others) continue to this day to fight for a rational reappraisal of America's drug laws. At the August 28, 1993 Cocaine Laws Symposium in Washington, D.C., several prominent pharmacologists, social scientists, attorneys and others presented evidence regarding the racist and irrational nature of prohibition.

Former Counsel to the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Eric Sterling recounted his firsthand observation of the process whereby in the mid 1980s Congress (re)enacted mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug offenders (mandatory minimums had been enacted in the 1950s, then repealed in 1970 as too harsh and not effective). As an example of the "contempt for rationality" exhibited in Congress, Sterling cited an amendment by Senator Phil Gramm that would set the penalty for possession of heroin or cocaine in a federal prison as twenty years added to the prisoner's sentence. At that time, the penalty for the possession of a loaded gun or bomb in a federal prison was only ten additional years. Sterling commented further that "rationality has been dropped—it was dropped by the Congress, and it's been dropped by the Justice Department."⁴⁶

Though the committee that he addressed was specifically concerned with the racist component of crack cocaine laws, Arnold Trebach (noted drug researcher and President of the Drug Policy Foundation) encouraged the members to expand their scope and consider the fact that "the drug laws, root and branch, are fundamentally irrational." As a result, he said, "you simply cannot make this system work. It is irrational, and ultimately we're going to have to change it in very fundamental ways."⁴⁷
 

2) C. Rosenberg, No Other Gods - On Science and American Social Thought, (The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore & London, 1961, 1962, 1976), p. 112.

3) Ibid., p. 114.

4) Ibid.

5) P. McWilliams, Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do - The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society, (Prelude Press, Los Angeles, 1993), p. 533.

6) E. Brecher and the Editors of Consumer Reports, Licit & Illicit Drugs, (Little, Brown and Company, Boston & Toronto, 1972), p. 6.

7) Ibid., p. 3.

8) Ibid., p. 8.

9) Ibid., p. 47.

10) Ibid., pp. 17 & 18.

11) Ibid., p. 48.

12) Ibid.

13) R. Bonnie & C. Whitebread II (1975), p. 15.

14) E. Brecher (1972), p. 48.

15) Ibid.

16) Ibid., p. 49.

17) P. McWilliams, (1993), p. 541.

18) E. Brecher (1972), pp. 49 & 50

19) Ibid., p. 50.

20) P. Stafford, Psychedelics Encyclopedia, (And/Or Press, Berkeley, 1977), p. 95.

21) E. Brecher (1972), p. 405.

22) P. Stafford (1977), p. 97.

23) E. Brecher (1972), p. 408.

24) P. Stafford (1977), p. 97.

25) R. Bonnie & C. Whitebread II (1975), p. 26.

26) Ibid.

27) Ibid., p. 66.

28) Ibid., p. 56.

29) E. Brecher (1972), p. 451.

30) R. Bonnie & C. Whitebread II (1975), p. 127.

31) Ibid., p. 128.

32) Ibid.

33) Ibid., p. 60.

34) Ibid., pp. 130-131.

35) Ibid., p. 131.

36) Ibid., p. 135.

37) Ibid., p. 65.

38) E. Brecher (1972), p. 414.

39) L. Sloman, Reefer Madness - The History of Marijuana in America, (The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis & New York, 1979), p. 62.

40) Ibid., p. 48.

41) Ibid., pp. 60 & 61

42) R. Bonnie & C. Whitebread II (1975), p. 157.

43) Ibid., pp. 166 & 167.

44) L. Sloman (1979), p. 67.

45) E. Brecher (1972), p. 416.

46) "Cocaine Laws Symposium," C-SPAN telecast, (28 August 1993).

47) Ibid.