Marijuana - Assassin of Youth

Marijuana - Assassin of Youth
by
H. J. Anslinger
U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics,
(The American Magazine, July 1937)
"Not long ago the body of a young girl lay crushed on the sidewalk after a plunge from a Chicago apartment window. Everyone called it suicide, but actually it was murder. The killer was a narcotic known to America as marijuana, and to history as hashish.
Used in the form of cigarettes, it is comparatively new to the United States and as dangerous as a coiled rattlesnake. How many murders, suicides, and maniacal deeds it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured.

In numerous communities it thrives almost unmolested, largely because of official ignorance of its effects. Marijuana is the unknown quantity among narcotics. No one knows, when he smokes it, whether he will become a philosopher, a joyous reveler, a mad insensate, or a murderer.

The young girl's story is typical. She had heard the whisper which has gone the rounds of American youth about a new thrill, a cigarette with a "real kick" which gave wonderful reactions and no harmful after-effects.

With some friends she experimented at an evening smoking party. The results were weird. Some of the partiers went into paroxysms of laughter, others of mediocre musical ability became almost expert; the piano dinned constantly. Still others found themselves discussing weighty problems with remarkable clarity. The girl danced without fatigue throughout a night of inexplicable exhilaration.

Other parties followed, finally there came a gathering at a time when the girl was behind in her studies and greatly worried. Suddenly, as she was smoking, the thought of a solution to her school problems came. Without hesitancy she walked to a window and leaped to her death. Thus madly can marijuana "solve" one's difficulties.

It gives few warnings of what it intends to do to the human brain. Last year a young marijuana addict was hanged in Baltimore for criminal assault on a ten year old girl. In Chicago, two marijuana-smoking boys murdered a policeman.

In Florida, police found a youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an ax he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He had no recollection of having committed this multiple crime. Ordinarily a sane, rather quiet young man, he had become crazed from smoking marijuana.

In at least two dozen comparatively recent cases of murder or degenerate sex attacks, marijuana proved to be a contributing cause. In Ohio a gang of seven marijuana addicts, all less than 20, were caught after a series of 38 holdups. The boys' story was typical of conditions in many cities. One of them said they first learned about "reefers" in high school, buying the cigarettes at hamburger stands, and from peddlers who hung around the school. He told of "booth joints" where you could get a marijuana cigarette and a sandwich for a quarter, and of the shabby apartments of women who provided the cigarettes and rooms where boys and girls might smoke them together.

His recollection of the crimes he had committed was hazy. "When you get to floating", he explained, "it's hard to keep track of things. If I had killed somebody on one of those jobs, I'd never had known it. Sometimes it was over before I realized that I'd been out of my room."

It is the useless destruction of the youth which is so heartbreaking to all of us who labor in the field of narcotics suppression."

^thats just so fucking funny.

also sad that bullshit propoganda like that led to the criminalization of pot in the first place. Why is it still illegal when the reasons for it to be made illegal are laughable now?

do you even know who harry anslinger is? have you heard of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937?

here is a quote about anslinger from a reputable text explaining the history of drug laws.

There were three bodies of testimony at the hearings on the national marijuana prohibition.


The first testimony came from Commissioner Harry Anslinger, the newly named Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Now, I think some of you know that in the late 20s and early 30s in this country there were two Federal police agencies created, the FBI and the FBN -- the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.


In our book, I talk at great length about how different the history of these two organizations really are. But, the two organizations, the FBI and the FBN had some surface similarities and one of them was that a single individual headed each of them for a very long time. In the case of the FBI, it was J. Edgar Hoover, and in the case of the FBN it was Harry Anslinger, who was the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 until 1962.


Commissioner Anslinger gave the Government testimony and I will quote him directly. By the way, he was not working from a text that he had written. He was working from a text that had been written for him by a District Attorney in New Orleans, a guy named Stanley. Reading directly from Mr. Stanley's work, Commissioner Anslinger told the Congressmen at the hearings, and I quote, "Marihuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death." That was the Government testimony to support the marijuana prohibition from the Commissioner.

The next body of testimony -- remember all of this took a total of two hours -- uh .. You understand what the idea was, don't you? The idea was to prohibit the cultivation of hemp in America. You all know, because there has been some initiative here in California, that hemp has other uses than its euphoriant use. For one, hemp has always been used to make rope. Number two, the resins of the hemp plant are used as bases for paints and varnishes. And, finally, the seeds of the hemp plant are widely used in bird seed. Since these industries were going to be affected the next body of testimony came from the industrial spokesmen who represented these industries.

The first person was the rope guy. The rope guy told a fascinating story -- it really is fascinating -- the growth of a hemp to make rope was a principle cash crop right where I am from, Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland at the time of the Revolutionary War. But, said the rope guy, by about 1820 it got cheaper to import the hemp we needed to make rope from the Far East and so now in 1937 we don't grow any more hemp to make rope in this country -- it isn't needed anymore.

If you heard that story, there are two things about it that I found fascinating. Number one, it explains the long-standing rumor that our forefathers had something to do with marijuana. Yes, they did -- they grew it. Hemp was the principal crop at Mount Vernon. It was a secondary crop at Monticello. Now, of course, in our research we did not find any evidence that any of our forefathers had used the hemp plant for euphoriant purposes, but they did grow it.

The second part of that story that, to me is even more interesting is -- did you see the date again - 1937? What did the rope guy say? We can get all the hemp we need to make rope from the Far East, we don't grow it hear anymore because we don't need to.

Five years later, 1942, we are cut off from our sources of hemp in the Far East. We need a lot of hemp to outfit our ships for World War II, rope for the ships, and therefore, the Federal Government, as some of you know, went into the business of growing hemp on gigantic farms throughout the Midwest and the South to make rope to outfit the ships for World War II.

So, even to this day, if you are from the Midwest you will always meet the people who say, "Gosh, hemp grows all along the railroad tracks." Well, it does. Why? Because these huge farms existed all during World War II.

But, the rope people didn't care. The paint and varnish people said "We can use something else." And, of the industrial spokesmen, only the birdseed people balked. The birdseed people were the ones who balked and the birdseed person was asked, "Couldn't you use some other seed?"

These are all, by the way, direct quotes from the hearings. The answer the birdseed guy gave was, "No, Congressman, we couldn't. We have never found another seed that makes a birds coat so lustrous or makes them sing so much."

So, on the ground that the birdseed people needed it -- did you know that the birdseed people both got and kept an exemption from the Marihuana Tax Act right through this very day for so-called "denatured seeds"?

In any event, there was Anslinger's testimony, there was the industrial testimony -- there was only one body of testimony left at these brief hearings and it was medical. There were two pieces of medical evidence introduced with regard to the marijuana prohibition.


The first came from a pharmacologist at Temple University who claimed that he had injected the active ingredient in marihuana into the brains of 300 dogs, and two of those dogs had died. When asked by the Congressmen, and I quote, "Doctor, did you choose dogs for the similarity of their reactions to that of humans?" The answer of the pharmacologist was, "I wouldn't know, I am not a dog psychologist."


Well, the active ingredient in marijuana was first synthesized in a laboratory in Holland after World War II. So what it was this pharmacologist injected into these dogs we will never know, but it almost certainly was not the active ingredient in marijuana.


The other piece of medical testimony came from a man named Dr. William C. Woodward. Dr. Woodward was both a lawyer and a doctor and he was Chief Counsel to the American Medical Association. Dr. Woodward came to testify at the behest of the American Medical Association saying, and I quote, "The American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marihuana is a dangerous drug."

What's amazing is not whether that's true or not. What's amazing is what the Congressmen then said to him. Immediately upon his saying, and I quote again, "The American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marihuana is a dangerous drug.", one of the Congressmen said, "Doctor, if you can't say something good about what we are trying to do, why don't you go home?"


That's an exact quote. The next Congressman said, "Doctor, if you haven't got something better to say than that, we are sick of hearing you."

this was alot of fun to read

Yea well For one thing the commissioner is pointing out bad things. Murder. What proof is there that the specific murder cases he's refering to are a result of drugs. Killing a Cop sounds like a desparate attempt out of the teens legal situation which was a series of robberies not smoking marijuana. The girls suicide and failing grades, simple too much dancing and partying. Of course smoking marijuana can contribute but theres always other factors involved. So blaming unfortunate turns of events and tragety on marijuana soley as the only cause of a violent crime is wrong.

Have you ever seen the movie "Caddy Shack" with Chevy Chase?
You know that old fuck with the white hair that plays against Chevy and Dany Neunan. The old bastard that chases Danny with a golf club he's your typical corporate CEO and is in charge of the security that pesses charges on those punk kids. And with the white haired mans power he influences our countries political decisions for his personal financial gain. Danny Neunan he's your typical Burner.
Chevy He's a burner too. And I'm a burner. It's that old jack-off white haired CEO in charge of the Catholic Church as well.

O how about Captin Mouser and Procter. Yea thats the captin of security, the good old "Police Academy". Oh that security guard that branished his gun at me when I got in trouble at school trying to display his power over me. And My Chemistry teacher told me how I had to get my priorites straight. We'll Fuuuuuck You! And Fuck the commissioner.

wow man thats amazing i mean i new americans in power were dumb so they could be easily controled but thats damn close to retarded lol that was a great read and i hope you are really involved in activism because you just convinced me to go and check some facts on the start of the phrohibition in canada thank you for both great reads and i look forward to rewading anything else you can dig up