A tragicomedy featuring the US Treasury Department, industries reliant on hemp, and the American Medical Association. Continued from last week’s AVA.
JENKINS: It seems to me your only burden is to prove, chemically, that this is a narcotic.
HESTER: We have to show that it is a drug.
JENKINS: If you show that, you have no question as to its being constitutional?
HESTER: That is right.
McCORMACK: In other words, it is a straight tax bill?
HESTER: That is right.
McCORMACK: And the other testimony you will introduce as to the character of this drug and its effect upon human beings is to justify what appears to be a high tax.
HESTER: That is right.
McCORMACK: Showing the justification for this from the tax angle. That is the theory upon which you are proceeding.
HESTER: That is the theory. Your statement is absolutely correct.
McCORMACK: What the results might be is of no concern to the courts. If we have the power to tax, the manner in which it is exercised is of no concern to the courts.
HESTER: That is right.
NARRATOR: In the 1930s Congress was asserting its power to legislate in areas that, for most of U.S. history, had been left up to the states. The Supreme Court was an obstacle to some key New Deal reforms, and President Roosevelt had a plan to bring the Supreme Court into line by packing it with six new members.
VINSON: What is the fair market value, per ounce, of marijuana?
HESTER: In its raw state it is about one dollar per ounce, as a drug.
NARRATOR: (wistfully) The bygone age of the one-dollar ounce.
DINGELL: I would like to ask the witness whether the Treasury has had any contact with the pharmaceutical trade, and whether we have any word from them as to their attitude on this proposed legislation. Take, for instance, such concerns as Frederick Stearns; Park, Davis & Co; Burroughs-Welcome, and a number of others; have you had any word from them as to whether they are opposed to this legislation or not?
HESTER: I have not personally communicated with any of these people, but Commissioner Anslinger is in touch with them constantly. I might say, though, that this drug is rarely used by the medical profession and is not indispensable to that profession. Commissioner Anslinger will predict in his statement that it will be only a few years until marijuana will entirely disappear as a drug.
DINGELL: I have no intention of trying to place the commercial interests of the drug producers ahead of the general welfare or ahead of public health, but I wondered whether the Treasury had any word from the large drug manufacturers who are always, so far as I can ascertain, willing to cooperate with the Treasury.
HESTER: The drug manufacturers always cooperate with the Treasury Department in all these matters. This bill has been pending for some time and we have not had any word from them.
NARRATOR: The big drug companies seemed to be ambivalent about the prohibition of marijuana. Although Merck and Eli Lilly produced and sold cannabis-based tinctures and salves, these products didn't bring in significant profits. For pain reduction, opiates and barbiturates offered purity, consistency, and “precise dosage” (which is never really precise, given the variations in size and metabolism between individual patients).
DOUGHTON: Through what channel or agency is this drug in its deleterious form dispensed or distributed? Is it sold by druggists, or at grocery stores?
HESTER: I will answer your question, but I hope you will ask the same question of Mr. Anslinger, because he can speak more authoritatively on that phase of the subject. The flowered tops, leaves, and seeds, are smoked in cigarettes.
DOUGHTON: Is it carried generally by druggists?
HESTER: I do not think so, for this reason. It is very variable. It may affect you in one way, and me in another way, and then, too, there are many better substitutes.
DOUGHTON: And its use is deleterious?
HESTER: The smoking of it, yes. You can take the tops, leaves, and seeds and fix them in a way somewhat similar to tobacco. It is just about the same as tobacco. You can smoke it like tobacco.
DOUGHTON: Just as an illustration, suppose I were in the market for some of this drug, where would I find it?
HESTER: There are about 10,000 acres under cultivation by legitimate producers.
DOUGHTON: I want to know where it can be bought? When is it being sold?
LEWIS: Where do the victims get it?
REED: I think what the chairman wants to know is how the high-school children are able to get it. Is it true that there are illicit peddlers who hang around the high-school buildings, and as soon as they find out that there is some boy to whom they think they can sell it, they make his acquaintance?
HESTER: Yes, I read in the newspapers not long ago that a place on 12th Street was raided where a lady was selling marijuana.
LEWIS: Do legitimate companies make these cigarettes, or are they made in an illicit manner, like bootleg whiskey used to be made? Do reputable firms make these cigarettes?
HESTER: I would like to refer that question to Commissioner Anslinger.
Act One, Scene Two
ANSLINGER unwraps some flowering tops which he will use as a prop.
NARRATOR: Act one, scene two: The Original Drug Czar. Harry Anslinger was born in 1892, the eighth of nine children. He grew up in Western Pennsylvania. His mother came from Baden, Germany, his father from Switzerland. His father had been a barber but couldn’t make it and went to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was then a major U.S. corporation. As a teenager Harry suffered a detached retina in a fight —he got hit with a thrown pear— and lost vision in one eye. He went to school part-time and worked for the railroad. Soon he was assigned to do security work.
As a young investigator Anslinger won a big case for the company that their lawyers were about to settle, He was promoted to chief inspector. He took two years of business classes at Penn State. He occasionally played the piano at silent-movie theaters (around 1914-15) His mother had hoped he’d be a concert pianist.
When the U.S. entered World War One Anslinger volunteered for the army but was ruled ineligible because of his eye injury. He became an officer in the Ordnance Reserve Corps and was rapidly promoted. He applied to and was accepted (with great letters of recommendation from the Pennsylvania Railroad) by the U.S. State Department, He became an attaché in the American Legation at the Hague. He spoke perfect German and good French and picked up Dutch quickly. He was involved in several undercover missions. (Henry Kissinger would also owe his career to speaking German and getting assigned to Army Intelligence.)
Anslinger claimed that he insinuated his way into Kaiser Wilhelm’s entourage and delivered an important message: the U.S. did not want him to abdicate at the end of the war because it might lead to the Social Democrats coming to power. (But the Kaiser did step down.) In 1921-22 Anslinger was posted by the consular service to Hamburg. He married the former Martha Denniston, a niece (said to be the favorite niece) of Andrew Mellon, the Pittsburgh banker who became Secretary of the Treasury in 1921. Martha had a 12-year-old son from a previous marriage.
Anslinger’s next posting was to a beautiful port city in Venezuela, La Guaira (which lies at the foot of a sheer, tropical mountain and along a crescent-shaped beach). Anslinger hated it and bombarded the State Dept. with letters requesting a transfer. He was transferred to Nassau, where his career as a Prohibitionist took off.
Consul Anslinger urged the British to crack down on the Bahamians running liquor to the U.S. At a conference in London he recounted seeing ships leaving Nassau loaded with whiskey and returning empty. The Brits agreed to a protocol —ships going in and out of Nassau harbor would have to show paperwork— that became known as the “Anslinger Accord.” Andrew Mellon requested that Anslinger be transferred to Treasury so that he could make similar arrangements with Canada, France, and Cuba. Anslinger became chief of the Prohibition Unit’s Division of Foreign Control (anti-smuggling). He attended conferences in London and Paris, and conducted inspections in Vancouver, Nova Scotia, Antwerp, Havana.
In 1929 Anslinger was made Assistant Commissioner of Prohibition. He ardently believed that prohibition could be enforced if Congress would amend make it a crime to buy alcohol. (Only manufacture, sales and transportation had been Prohibited.) Under Anslinger’s Draconian proposal, a second conviction would carry a mandatory minimum two years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
In 1930 Congress created a Federal Bureau of Narcotics (also part of the Treasury Dept. but separate from the Prohibition Bureau). The top contender to run the FBN, Levi Nutt, got embroiled in a scandal involving his son taking money from Arnold Rothstein, the infamous gambler. Mellon named Anslinger Acting Commissioner. Harry then organized a lobbying campaign to get the job permanently. He had the backing of railroad magnates, William Randolph Hearst, the National Association of Retail Druggists, and the AMA. (One Senator had questioned whether the job called for someone with a medical background. He arranged a meeting with Anslinger. Harry arranged for a major bust —a million dollar’s worth of opium— the day before that meeting. The skeptical senator was so impressed he inserted the Washington Herald story of the bust into the Congressional Record.) Anslinger was appointed Narcotics Commissioner by Herbert Hoover in September, 1930, at the age of 38.
Between 1932 and 1935 Anslinger changed his position on marijuana —what he knew to be a relatively innocuous herb became a menace to society. Exactly why is undocumented. According to Anslinger’s biographer John Williams “his philosophy on drug enforcement might have been perceived by his critics as regressive, but the commissioner was enlightened in matters of bureaucratic survival and intelligence gathering.”
Be First to Comment