As early as the 1930s, many people frequented Harry J Anslinger’s office in Washington, D.C., to beg for leniency for their relatives or friends found abusing drugs. Anslinger and his agents locked up every drug user they could find. Anslinger used brutal tactics even for suspects who were experimenting with drugs for the first time. According to Anslinger, the only way to end the drug problem was to lock them up for good. Consequently, Anslinger’s unforgiving mentality on drug abuse led to his role as the commissioner for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics for more than three decades.
Anslinger was born in 1892 in Altoona, Pennsylvania to Swiss German immigrant parents. Anslinger’s father, Robert, worked for Pennsylvania Railroad. Anslinger attended local schools before enrolling at Altoona Business College at the age of 17 while working at Pennsylvania Railroad with his father. Anslinger gained notoriety in the early stage of his career. In 1915, Anslinger worked as an investigator, and he performed a detailed investigation which found out that $50,000 claim of a widower in a railroad accident was fraudulent (Nicholas & Churchill, 2012). Consequently, he was promoted to captain of railroad police, a post that allowed him to travel the world and offer assistance to various military and police organizations on drug trafficking.
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Anslinger’s accomplishments and international tours as the assistant commissioner in the US Treasury Department’s Bureau of Prohibition was the foundation for his future role as the commissioner of FBN. In 1929, the narcotic agencies were marred with corruption and scandals. The government engaged in a massive shake-up for the narcotics department, and this set the stage for Anslinger. Anslinger was perceived as an honest and incorruptible figure capable of bringing real changes to the narcotics department. In 1930, Anslinger was appointed as the first commissioner for Treasury’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). FBN was established in 1930 with the aim of consolidating both the Federal Narcotics Control Board and the Narcotic Division (Nicholas & Churchill, 2012). The two groups were responsible for enforcing the provisions of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act and the Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act . Andrew Mellon, the secretary of the Treasury for Herbert Hoover’s government, appointed Harry Anslinger because he had an experience of his prior work against drug trafficking.
In his early years as the commissioner of FBN, Anslinger concerned himself with criminalizing marijuana use, thus the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. FBN proposed increased penalties for drug use including marijuana, opium, and heroin. FBN established offices in locations where drug smuggling was prevalent to prevent drugs from getting into the US. Under his tenure at FBN, Anslinger sponsored local and international policies against drug abuse (Newcombe, 2016). The first policy was the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 which classified marijuana in the same class as other restricted narcotics such as heroin and cocaine. The Bureau under Anslinger started the theory that marijuana is a harmful and a gateway drug to other harmful addictions (Newcombe, 2016). The bureau used the film Reefer Madness to sensationalize the effects of marijuana rather than conducting scientific studies on the real effects of marijuana.
In the late 1940s, Anslinger launched an attack on the judicial system claiming that judges played a role in the drug epidemic by giving out lenient sentences to drug offenders (Nicholas & Churchill, 2012). Consequently, Congress came up with the Boggs Act to propose severe and mandatory minimum punishments following a conviction for at least two to ten years for repeated convictions. The legislation also introduced a mandatory life sentence or death for the sale of heroin by an adult to a minor. FBN also pressured state governments to enact severe drug laws under the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act of 1932. State governments began passing stringent marijuana laws as early as 1937 (Anslinger & Cooper, 1967). Some states had stricter drug laws than the federal government, and Anslinger’s men and local prosecutors engaged in the practice of shuffling drug offenders to state or federal courts where they would receive harsh punishments.
In the international front, Anslinger was respected in the war against drugs. While the US was not a member of the League of Nations, US representatives were given a voice in drug matters. Anslinger dominated international deliberations for drug control agencies and those for the U.N. in the annual Bureau reports to the U.S. Treasury, Anslinger often pushed his views and agenda as recommendations of international bodies and the UN such that his ideas received little or no resistance.
Anslinger’s time at FBN ended in 1962, but his legacy still lives on. President Nixon, Reagan, and George Bush intensified the fight against drugs using the same arguments proposed by Anslinger. Marijuana is still classified alongside restricted drugs such as heroin and cocaine; a majority of the US convicts are serving drug-related sentences. In 1968, FBN merged with the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control to form the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, later named as Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
Anslinger remains a critical figure in the fight against drug abuse. He attracted an equal share of criticism and praise for his decades of work in the drug enforcement agencies. Anslinger’s critics described him as a racist who used the war on drugs to criminalize blacks. Anslinger came up with the harsh laws against marijuana after he realized that it was a favored drug among blacks. Anslinger’s campaign against marijuana had a hidden agenda as Anslinger conspired with William Randolph Hearst to create sensational anti-marijuana campaign. Anslinger came up with a ‘gore” file of the most violent crimes associated with drugs (Anslinger & Cooper, 1967). He blamed murders, rape, kidnappings and other crimes on marijuana abuse to alarm the public and gain support for the ban of all recreational drugs, even when the criminals had a history of mental illness and criminality even before abusing drugs.
In conclusion, Anslinger’s history paints him as a devoted campaigner against drug abuse. Anslinger went from working at Pennsylvania Railroad to the helm of leadership of the largest drug agency in the U.S. Anslinger would have achieved more if adopted a multi-dimensional approach to drug abuse and rehabilitation. Instead, he chose only one strategy of giving drug abusers harsh sentences to deter drug abuse. Anslinger embarked on a campaign to show that marijuana and other drugs are responsible for crime in the society and the only solution was to give longer sentences to those abusing or selling drugs. Some of his policies against drugs were divisive as they targeted blacks more than whites, yet Anslinger received support from Washington because of his connections. Anslinger’s long tenure with FBN would have been more impactful if he listened to experts on drug abuse on effective strategies for rehabilitation.
References
Anslinger, H. J., & Cooper, C. R. (1937). Marijuana: Assassin of youth . Crowell Publishing Company.
Newcombe, R. (2016). Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. Drugs and Alcohol Today , 16 (3), 229.
Nicholas, P., & Churchill, A. (2012). The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the states, and the origins of modern drug enforcement in the United States, 1950-1962. Contemporary Drug Problems, 39, 595-639.
