Harry Anslinger and How Xenophobia Shaped America's Marijuana Policy
Here is my 7-page History 2020 paper I got a 95 and it was the highest graded paper in the class
Harry Anslinger and how Xenophobia Shaped
America??s Marijuana Policy
By: Jimbo85
America is a large conglomeration of cultures. This is thanks to the laws that have been enacted to promote freedom and equality for the very diverse population that has chosen to inhabit this great country. Unfortunately Americans has not always acted as if the immigrants, who have made the country what it is today, either belonged here or deserved the equal rights of the predominately white Christians who tend to use their government powers to shape a world that they feel is fit to be their home. The problems that can be associated with this form of democracy are very close to limitless. In the early twentieth century the fifteenth amendment had been in place for over thirty years yet that only secured the right to vote for the American people. This did not eliminate the fact that the white Christian male dominated the political arena. The lack of initiative to diversify government left the country in the hands of a notably oppressive segment of society. This was not a democracy for and by the people but rather a democracy for and by the white Christian society who felt, through nearly two millennia of moralistic brain washing, that their way of life was ideal. With all of the stones set in place to protect the will of an oppressive political ideology America was doomed to be shaped by the moralistic majority.
In 1930 the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established and the Assistant Commissioner of Prohibition was chosen to run the newly created Federal Bureau of Narcotics(FBN) .¹ At the time there were few laws in place that prohibited narcotics from being distributed. This presented a public health issue. A growing number of Americans were abusing opium, or the more current morphine, habitually. Morphine had been used as a pain reliever during the Civil War and addicts had been created by through the overuse of the drug because the doctors trying to save lives had literally nothing else to offer.² The rate at which soldiers were coming home with a need to feed their newly formed addictions even became known as ??The Army Disease?.³ Lack of proper legislation to control the movement of opium and products derived from opium allowed for a spread of the habit of addiction. By 1900 it has been estimated that there were two hundred and fifty thousand addicts in the United States. No longer was it just ??The Army Disease?, now house wives were getting addicted and the lack of proper legislation allowed the over-the-counter sale of heroin as a cough medicine.⁴ As the problem grew so did its importance and in 1914 the Harrison Act was passed making the use of narcotics a medical issue. Now a prescription was required to obtain any form of opiate.⁵
In several cases that followed the terms under which a doctor was allowed to issue a prescription were more clearly defined. Section 2 of the Harrison Act stated clearly that prescriptions were to be made ??to a patient by a physician? in the course of his professional practice only.?⁶ In the case of Webb vs. United States a doctor was brought up on the charge that he had been selling prescriptions for the cost of fifty cents a piece.⁷ This court case brought forth the notion that prescriptions were not to be made to ??satisfy a users customary use.? Now the government had effectively created a new criminal. The act of addiction had become illegal and the law that had been made to tax a narcotic could be used to imprison a person who suffered from the moral conflict of addiction.
Harry Anslinger joined the treasury department in 1926 and within three years had become the Assistant Commissioner of Prohibition.⁸ In 1930 he was named the Head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He was very adamant on his view of any and all mind altering substances. As a prohibitionist he brought into his position the idea that narcotics were an evil to society and that they would ruin everything that America stood for. This was not an uncommon view at the time and the Christian stance was that any attempt to escape reality was a sin. As a child growing up he had a friend who died from smoking opium and was associated with a woman who had a debilitating addiction to morphine.⁹ These tragic events related to the horrible lack of opium control could be at least part of the reason why he took such an extremist stance against narcotics as an adult.
Between the passing and adjusting of the Harrison Act and the formation of the FBN marijuana started coming into America more and more. It however was not a big issue. Sixteen states had placed regulations on marijuana by 1930 but they were lightly enforced. ¹⁰ This changed when Harry Anslinger began to turn his interest to the attention of marijuana. After his department was created and before the passing of the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act of 1937 the remainder of the states had enacted laws prohibiting marijuana. The public attention paid to marijuana was very slim. The FBN at first only tried to prove that marijuana was a narcotic. In one of Anslinger??s books he even refers to ??narcotic addiction to marijuana? then the quickly states that marijuana does not create dependency in the user.¹¹ He has always asserted that marijuana leads to degeneracy which is a reflection to his time as a moral crusader for the prohibition of alcohol. The prohibition of alcohol proved to be a large disappointment for all of those who supported it. The law, just as the Harrison Act had, created a new criminal and gave rise to new criminal industries. It is not a hidden fact that the prohibition of alcohol caused many causalities and was a very difficult law to enforce. That is why the law was thrown out with the introduction of the New Deal.
Marijuana was a virtually untouched issue by the FBN in the first four years of its operation. There was little need to tackle the subject and it was considered the states problem. Marijuana was typically use by Mexican laborers as a way to relax after a hard day??s work. They found it to be a cheap way to get intoxicated. Being that the majority of them were young and transient they soon found trouble. According to Texas Monthly in 1914 a fight broke out in El Paso, Texas that involved a Mexican smoker of the marijuana plant. Not soon after the first law prohibiting the use of marijuana was set in place.¹² Many more came after it is surrounding areas as a way to control the Mexican population of the southwest. The Mexican population was already looked down upon by the white Americans with whom they lived aside in southwestern communities. The Mexicans willingness to work for cheap made them an instant enemy of the whites who were having hard times finding jobs and maintaining employment. When the prohibition of alcohol came into effect marijuana started to travel across the south to New Orleans and became a staple of the Jazz community alongside other more harmful narcotics that had been deemed illegal by the Harrison Act.¹³ From New Orleans it traveled north with the music into Chicago. It is important to note that African-American jazz musicians were not fully responsible for marijuana??s move north. It had found a home in New York when immigrants had brought it over from Europe.
Now that marijuana culture had spread across all races it become a problem for all of America. When the concept of ??social locust? is applied to the new culture of marijuana it is apparent why the political majority allowed legislation to be passed on a subject that the public and medical communities found to not be a problem.¹⁴ Social locust theory states that when drug use is observed from an outside point of view the drug use is accompanied with the class of the user. The lower that the class of the user is determines how likely the drug use will be determined deviant. As the social context of the use of the drug changes so does the moralistic opinion of the act of using the drug. This is to say that since the lower classes of immigrants and African-Americans were the ones who were observed using marijuana the act immediately became seen as deviant. This supported Anslinger??s claim that marijuana would lead to the degeneracy of America. With the act of using marijuana seen as deviant the label then spreads to the person using marijuana. Now the person??s actions have become a description of who that person is and they are no longer respectable. Unless the person in question has a master status (i.e. class or race) that is greater than the status of their actions the person will be seen as a deviant.⁵
Furthermore, ??moral entrepreneurship? can be applied to Harry Anslinger himself. Anslinger did not do all of this on his own and was supported by other entrepreneurs who shared his moral view of the world. A view of how laws are made is important to this task. It is a nice thought to believe that laws are the reflection of the collective morals of a society. This is however not how it happens, rules are not automatically created in society??s best interest. The formation of a rule comes from the propagating of an entity who feels the need to spread their opinion on what law should be enacted. Obviously Anslinger did not form the first marijuana laws but he had already committed himself to prohibition before he joined the treasury. This automatically places him on the side of prohibition in any matter that came after his appointment at the head of the FBN because of the social position he had chosen for himself.⁶ He did not press for the issue heavily for his entire career leading up to the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act of 1937.
By 1936 the FBN had begun working with the National Conference on Uniform state laws and this is where the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act started. In 1935 Harry Anslinger started his moral crusade against marijuana. The FBN began to report a ??widespread traffic in Indian hemp? and proceeded to urge states to heighten enforcement in order to stop a growing population of drug abusers. Marijuana was suddenly ??spreading like wildfire among the youth? and had become the ??greatest narcotic peril? facing America. No factual evidence was ever presented to solidify these claims. A look at how literature was produced on the topic will illuminate the drastic change brought on by the FBN. Between 1925 and 1935 virtually no information on marijuana was published. In July 1935 marijuana rapidly started to gain recognition and twenty-one articles appeared before June 1939. Harry Anslinger was getting his message out that marijuana would turn innocent youth and adults alike into violent criminals who were capable of rape and murder. It was even reported that marijuana would turn the user insane. It is more troubling when the fact arises that the majority of the articles rely only on one source, the FBN. Based on the FBN??s information marijuana was at the time considered more harmful than opiates or cocaine. The racist tension that was prevalent thanks to Jim Crow laws and segregation was played upon claiming that sexually dangerous African-Americans were being driven crazy by the drug. Harry Anslinger avoided any scientific backlash by declaring that marijuana was too dangerous to be experimented with. In a quote from Harry Anslinger he asserts that ??In discussing its use, one fact should be emphasized at once. Whereas opiates can be a blessing when properly used, marijuana has no therapeutic value and its use is therefore always an abuse and a vice. This important fact should never be forgotten??¹⁷ With all of the fear mongering done by the FBN it only took two hours to get the Marijuana Tax Stamp passed.
This is a great oversight in the American legal system that should never be forgotten. For if it is forgotten than the American people will have opened themselves back up to the abuse of the moralistic crusaders. These are the people who keep a closed mind to the truth and the facts. They do still exist and they are still trying to enforce their way of life upon American society. Whether it be in challenge of Roe vs. Wade or the restrictions on land use Americans cannot afford to allow tyrants to have their way. Apathy was never and will never be the correct stand point of political opinion. The facts must be presented and if no one is presenting the facts than the press has fallen prey to the communist media control that Harry Anslinger used to have his moral opinion turned into law. Nothing good has come from his campaign to have marijuana be issued a tax stamp that he had no intention of ever printing.
End Notes
1. Schaller, ?The Federal Prohibition of Marijuana?
2. ?Morphine Daze?
3. ?Morphine Daze?
4. ??Morphine Daze?
5. King, ??The Narcotics Bureau and the Harrison Act: Jailing the Healers and the Sick?
6. King, ??The Narcotics Bureau and the Harrison Act: Jailing the Healers and the Sick?
7. King, ??The Narcotics Bureau and the Harrison Act: Jailing the Healers and the Sick?
8. Schaller, ?The Federal Prohibition of Marijuana?
9. Schaller, ?The Federal Prohibition of Marijuana?
10. Schaller, ?The Federal Prohibition of Marijuana?
11. Schaller, ?The Federal Prohibition of Marijuana?
12. Williams, ??Weed legal: Texas high ways: why the unlikeliest of states--ours--should legalize marijuana?
13. Gerard, ??Race and Jazz Communities?
14. Himmelstein, ??The Strange Career of Marihuana?
15. Himmelstein, ??The Strange Career of Marihuana?
16. Himmelstein, ??The Strange Career of Marihuana?
17. Schaller, ?The Federal Prohibition of Marijuana?
Bibliography
The Federal Prohibition of Marihuana, by Michael Schaller Journal of Social History © 1970 Peter N. Stearns JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
Morphine Daze. History Reference Center. Ebsco Host. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.as...ite=ehost-live
The Narcotics Bureau and the Harrison Act: Jailing the Healers and the Sick, by Rufus G. King The Yale Law Journal © 1953 The Yale Law Journal Company, Inc. JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
Martin, Williams. ??Weed Legal: Texas high ways: why the unlikeliest of states??ours??should legalize marijuana.? Texas Monthly Oct. 2009: 148+. General OneFile. Web. 8 Dec. 2009. http://find.galegroup.com/gps/start....e=lincclin_tcc
Gerard, Charley "Race and Jazz Communities." In Jazz in Black and WhiteRace, Culture, and Identity in the Jazz Community, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. The African American Experience. Greenwood Publishing Group. http://aae.greenwood.com/doc.aspx?fi...oks/greenwood/. (accessed December 8, 2009).
Himmelstein, Jerome L.The Strange Career of Marijuana: Politics and Ideology of Drug Control in America. Westport, Connecuit: Greenwood Press, 1983
Review: Clinging to Failure: The Rise and Continued Life of U. S. Drug Policy, by Kevin F. Ryan © 1998 Law and Society Association. JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
Harry Anslinger and How Xenophobia Shaped America's Marijuana Policy
WOW 35 views and no comment!?!?!
Did anybody even read it?
Harry Anslinger and How Xenophobia Shaped America's Marijuana Policy
yeah, this whole thing is the start of all this bullshit and not many see it. especially white bread patriots. the classes were formed because/for that purpose, to keep it that way. pharma, timber, oil, gov and on down to the po po next door. sellouts traitors and commies...long live america:thumbsup:
meded is a hell of a drug
