What matters is not why it was done, but how it was done in the USA.

In Part I we discussed how cannabis was originally prohibited through a series of international drug control treaties and local bans in many countries and 29 US states. Mexico banned cannabis in 1920 and the League of Nations, including the UK and Canada, banned cannabis drugs except for medical and scientific use in 1925, so even though the USA did not sign that treaty it shows that cannabis prohibition was a well established trend before the US federal government got into the game in the 1930’s.

White American culture saw recreational marijuana use as low class and foreign, and instinctively accepted prohibition without controversy, so why did the government feel the need to take extreme positions on cannabis when writing US law?

• Why would the U.S. federal government write its prohibition laws using the Mexican term “marihuana” rather than the proper english terms “cannabis sativa”, “cannabis indica”, and “indian hemp”?
• Why did the USA lead the way in restricting both the medical cannabis and fiber hemp industries when other countries allowed them?
• Why did the U.S. federal government develop an official hostility to scientific research on cannabis?

The answer to these questions can be found by identifying the people who made these decisions and examining their motivations. The most important person on that list is Harry J. Anslinger, the longtime Director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) and chief architect of America’s original drug laws.

Anslinger was the first Director of the FBN when it was created in 1930 and would rule the agency as his personal fiefdom for the next 32 years. The imperious, teetotaling Anslinger was a puritanical true believer in prohibition of all intoxicants; he had been an alcohol prohibition agent and believed the experiment could have worked if only the nation had been willing to deploy more police. Anslinger’s hardline personal views have shaped policy to this day; he held that drug abuse was a moral and criminal issue that must be treated with stiff penalties, and was opposed to even the discussion of treating addiction as a public health issue.

As a segregationist, Anslinger would protect prominent white people who got caught up in their addictions while viciously prosecuting blacks. Anslinger’s FBN embodied all the worst aspects of hypocrisy, deceit, and institutional racism associated with the failed war on drugs. Although personally, Anslinger was a man of modest means who was greatly respected, even revered, and widely considered incorruptible. A few short years after his retirement in the 1960’s the entire FBN had to be disbanded because of widespread criminality among the agents, some of whom were caught depositing cash seizures directly into their own bank accounts. The DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) was created in 1973.

One widespread misconception about Anslinger should be mentioned. Many of the racist statements attributed to him are not true. Anslinger spoke like a politician and diplomat and was frequently interviewed in the media, he learned the hard way not to make racially inflammatory comments in public. He was severely chastised and nearly lost his job as Commissioner early in his term after referring to a defendant as a “ginger-colored nigger”, and was careful afterwards to stick to his scripts which did not focus on race or sex, but emphasized marijuana’s supposed connection to violence before shifting to the gateway drug rhetoric in the 1940’s (even though the gateway theory was initially denied by Anslinger in the ‘30’s).

The most widely circulated quote is certainly not accurate, Anslinger may have believed the following but he did not say it in Congressional testimony as often claimed. He demonstrated his racism in his actions, not in his speeches.

Most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, jazz musicians, and entertainers. Their satanic music is driven by marijuana, and marijuana smoking by white women makes them want to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others. It is a drug that causes insanity, criminality, and death — the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind. — This quote is not likely from Harry Anslinger (unless someone can demonstrate the source).

Anslinger ran a public relations campaign arguing for federal and state marijuana prohibition in the 1930’s. His campaign consisted of outrageous stories of violent crimes filled with graphic pictures of blood and gore, mostly committed by white people, and all while under the influence of marijuana. He would also discuss the Hashashin/Assassins story, and the belief in many cultures that cannabis could trigger unexplained fits of violence in some individuals.

That these supposedly true crime stories did not stand up to scrutiny didn’t matter since Anslinger never subjected his tales to debate; he preferred to relay them to sympathetic audiences. At the time marijuana was not well known to the American public and Anslinger did more to raise awareness of the drug than anyone else; which also had the convenient effect of making his job as chief prohibitionist more important.

Anslinger always made sure to use the Mexican term “marihuana” rather than the common english terms. If asked, he would identify the plant as cannabis sativa and acknowledge its long history as a fiber and drug. But he would demonize the plant, dismissing its value as a medicine and pushing bogus science claiming to show that common farm hemp was a narcotic. It was certainly news to the nation’s farmers and drug users that you could get high off hemp. Thanks to Anslinger, farmers began finding the local riff-raff digging around in their barns looking for hemp to smoke. Fortunately it did not take them long to figure out they were wasting their time.

Use of the term marijuana was a propaganda coup for the FBN. The name came from Mexico where it already had negative associations, and fear of marijuana had been whipped up by the Hearst newspapers and other moral crusaders through the 1920’s as the ‘devil weed’.

By choosing to use the Mexican name instead of the familiar English names Anslinger was able to confuse the public and foreclose an informed debate on the prohibition policy. He was also able to define the term as he saw fit, and he made sure that the definition of marijuana was all inclusive of the entire plant species, not just the drug products which was the League of Nations definition. It was bureaucratic expediency, to eliminate any confusion for agents in the field who might struggle to distinguish between harmless ditch weed and someone’s drug crops, to simply made all cannabis illegal.

It may seem counter intuitive, but the FBN did not directly gain a lot of power from marijuana prohibition. Anslinger was fond of pointing out that his agency was never given an increase in budget or manpower to fight cannabis. The FBN was a small agency that rarely had more than 300 agents and it was primarily concerned with combating heroin. FBN Agents had strict orders not to bring marijuana cases unless it was large scale, and those cases were rare. Marijuana prohibition was enforced at the local level, but it was used to great effect by all of law enforcement as a pretext to stop and search suspects on the street.

Anslinger derived his power politically, by championing the cause of harsh drug prohibition from the United Nations down to the states, he built a strong following of supporters among both moral crusaders and uniformed law enforcement. Anslinger’s Army they were called, and they amplified his message and helped him keep his job through many presidential administrations.

Marihuana may have sounded like a new threat from south of the border, but in reality cannabis was not unfamiliar, the USDA grew both hemp and drug varieties, and had experts at their Experiment Farm in Arlington, VA, walking distance from Anslinger’s offices. If the country had an honest debate the public likely would have supported prohibition lite, where recreational use was discouraged but not attached to heavy penalties, as this was the prevailing attitude among experts. But instead, Anslinger intentionally used hysteria to inflame the public and drive policy decisions that provided the police with maximum power and authority.

Anslinger had initially resisted grassroots pressure to restrict cannabis because he was concerned that the federal government did not have constitutional authority to restrict a wild plant, nor did he have the manpower at the FBN. He advocated for an international treaty that would compel the federal government to act, as well as action at the state and local level which is where most prohibition enforcement did in fact take place. But a clever Treasury Department official presented Anslinger with the idea for the Marijuana Tax Act, which imposed a stiff tax on cannabis that no drug user would ever pay, opening them to federal prosecution.

Anslinger quietly pushed the Marihuana Tax Act through the New Deal congress of 1937 where it was subject to almost no debate. It was the depth of the Great Depression and the federal government was eagerly embracing new powers through the New Deal to reshape the country; marihuana prohibition included. Thirty years later, the Supreme Court would find the Marihuana Tax Act unconstitutional, but by that time the U.S. had already joined the United Nation Single Convention on Drugs, Anslinger’s final career victory.

The Congressional hearings for the Marihuana Tax Act caught a lot of hemp industry people by surprise, largely because they had no idea what marihuana was or that their legitimate cannabis industries were being threatened. Hemp seeds and seed oil were still used in paints and varnishes, and were greatly favored in birdseed. An accommodation for sterilized hemp seeds was made to satisfy industry. Hemp fibers were also not technically restricted, hemp could continue to be imported, but cultivation would be closely monitored and eventually the excessive oversight drove the industry out of business.

The representative from the AMA (American Medical Association), Dr. William Woodward, offered the only substantive criticism of the proposed tax act at the Congressional hearings. Woodward pointed out correctly that the term marijuana was not the proper scientific name, and that cannabis prohibition was not necessary from a medical perspective, the effects of the drug are mild and it was not considered dangerous. Though cannabis medicines were not used much in those days, the doctor said that it still had some applications and future research may yield new uses. Dr. Woodward had been an antagonist of Anslinger for a number of years and his comments were not well received by the Congressmen who were dismissive of him.

Anslinger told many lies about cannabis over the years that became established as accepted fact.

First, Anslinger proclaimed that cannabis is not a good medicine and forced the AMA to remove it from the pharmacopoeia even though it was a common pharmaceutical with a well established record for safety. The League of Nations and most other countries prohibition laws had exceptions for legitimate medical and scientific cannabis use, the USA was the exception.

For the AMA, cannabis was a bargaining chip in the negotiations with the FBN. The FBN controlled access to opiates that doctors legitimately needed but Anslinger took it even farther. In exchange for the AMA supporting his positions, Anslinger made it policy that he had to personally sign any prosecution of a doctor for their own personal misuse of drugs, and under his watch those prosecutions were exceedingly rare. Anslinger also controlled the licenses for pharmaceutical firms to legally import and manufacture opiates, an incredibly profitable business and effectively a cartel since there were only three firms. Pharmaceutical industry executives and the AMA were among Anslinger’s biggest political allies throughout his entire career.

Cannabis was considered a crude botanical medicine that was difficult to reliably prescribe, and when the feds requested that it be removed from the pharmacopoeia the AMA did not object, even though the scientific evidence was clear that cannabis did not cause death or addiction. Anslinger would continue to argue at the United Nations that there was no legitimate medical use of cannabis, and his energetic lobbying would eventually carry the day internationally as well.

Second, Anslinger claimed that marijuana was growing wild all over the country and that fiber hemp was a narcotic. This was not true; although botanists had come to the conclusion by that time that all cannabis was one species, and there was legitimate scientific confusion about the chemical identity of the drugs, there remained the common sense reality that the fiber hemp being farmed for centuries was not a drug crop. Feral hemp grew as wild as dandelions over large areas and had never been a problem for anyone until law enforcement began talking about it. But by claiming jurisdiction over a common weed, law enforcement gave themselves the power to enter private property, arrest poor people, and make claims of big drug busts by tearing up acres of feral hemp, a practice that has continued to this day.

One of the first things the FBN did upon passage of the Marijuana Tax Act was to enlist WPA (Works Progress Administration) work gangs funded by the New Deal to tear up miles of wild hemp all over the country; a make-work project for cops.

Ironically, the Soviet Union and China never saw a need to restrict the cultivation of industrial hemp, and no one can accuse those communist dictatorships of being soft on drugs.

Third, Anslinger made it policy to be hostile to science. New York City Mayor Fiorello Laguardia questioned the merits of the Marijuana Tax Act and pointed out that there was very little science about the use and impacts of the drug. The Mayor commissioned the esteemed New York Academy of Science in 1939 to do an investigation. The five year long study was released in 1944 and its conclusions contradicted FBN claims that marijuana caused crime and depraved behavior, though they still recommended discouraging its use. Anslinger was incensed and went on an extensive publicity tour denouncing the report and any scientists associated with it until finally his strong-arm behaviour succeeded in having the Laguardia Committee Report pulled from circulation. There would never again be legitimate research into cannabis while Anslinger was in office.

The Marijuana Tax Act was declared unconstitutional in the case, Leary vs United States, when the famous LSD proselytizer Timothy Leary was busted with weed at the Mexican border and challenged the law as entrapment at the Supreme Court and won. The Tax Act had always stood on dubious legal grounds, part of the reason why most marijuana arrests were made at the state and local levels. The Controlled Substances Act that we live with today was enacted in 1970, and the law required a study on the dangers of marijuana to determine whether it should be placed in Schedule I, as one of the most dangerous drugs.

To complete the study, President Nixon handpicked the Shafer Commission who were expected to come up with a complete indictment of the devil weed, but instead surprised everyone when after a thorough review of the evidence, they recommended decriminalization of marijuana. President Nixon reacted the same way in 1972 that Harry Anslinger did in 1944, he was outraged and threw the report in the garbage, completely ignoring the findings.

Prohibitionists have consistently discovered that unbiased science on marijuana works against them every time, so law enforcement’s historical response has been to stonewall research and loudly proclaim that cannabis is a threat no matter what anyone else says.

Restrictions on recreational drug use, including cannabis, were widely supported around the world in the 20th century and reflected the growth of progressive governments seeking to clean up their societies. It can be argued that it is an example of western colonialist values being imposed on developing world countries, but nonetheless, the basic premise of drug prohibition was globally popular. But there was only one group, and they were from America, who pushed to restrict the legitimate uses of cannabis as a medicine and as a fiber and objected to scientific research on the subject, and that group was US law enforcement, the prohibition agents themselves, originating with Harry J. Anslinger and Federal Bureau of Narcotics in the 1930s and continuing to this day.

For conservative hardliners like Anslinger and Nixon, marijuana was viewed through the lens of culture war and both described marijuana as a threat to western civilization. In their minds, they were defenders of white christian culture against the encroachment of liberal immorality and heathenism.

These hardline attitudes led to the bureaucratic overreach to eliminate any distinction between the legitimate and illegitimate uses of cannabis. This not only spared the prohibition agents of the effort required to define these distinctions, but provided them with sweeping police powers drawn from the desire to do battle with weeds growing wild all over.

No conspiracy theories are needed to explain the motivations of law enforcement; outlawing the entire cannabis species whether it was useful or not gave more power to the police to arrest people and seize their property. These new powers expanded the scope of racist Jim Crow law enforcement beyond just blacks to also target Hispanics, poor whites, and all lower class people, leading directly to the massive prison population we have today.

Not only has harsh marijuana prohibition caused widespread injustice under the law, but the beneficial uses of cannabis as a medicine and fiber have also been denied to Americans. Fiber hemp was an industry that was championed for centuries and played a critical role in helping to build America, it never needed to be shut down. And the AMA was right in the 1930’s when they initially argued that future research may yield new medical uses for cannabis. It has proven particularly cruel to withhold medicine from sick people and arrest them for simply possessing flowers they need to treat their painful conditions.

And to what end? Culture war and prejudice. Empowering law enforcement at the expense of the poor and colored. The largest prison population in the history of the world. And an inversion of the American credo; from “land of the free, home of the brave” into “land of the afraid, home of the incarcerated”.