Anslinger, Harry

Marijuana

Anslinger is perhaps best known for his role in creating a moral panic over marijuana in the mid-1930s, which eventually led to the passage of the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act. In 1932 Anslinger seemingly did not see marijuana as a serious problem, and claimed that the media was overplaying the use of the drug. However, as Ernest Abel notes, in the midst of the Great Depression, the U.S. Congress began to examine the budgetary requirements of federal agencies and the Bureau of Narcotics budget was reduced by $200,000. One potential solution to this budgetary crisis was to create a new drug menace to justify the Bureau's existence, and Anslinger and the Bureau began to supply community service groups and the popular press with information concerning the alleged atrocities committed by people under the influence of marijuana. As Howard Becker notes, of the 17 articles on marijuana listed in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature over the period of 1935 to 1939, 10 either explicitly acknowledged the assistance of the Bureau in providing facts or figures or, through the use of anecdotes of heinous [Page 27]crimes committed by individuals allegedly under the influence of marijuana, gave implicit evidence of such assistance.

These articles, appearing in popular magazines such as Literary Digest, Forum and Century, and Scientific American, among others, emphasized that marijuana use was associated with sexual immorality, a number of adverse psychological effects, and violent crime. Consistent with contemporary themes related to drug use, the articles also demonized marijuana through claims that use of the drug was concentrated in minority (primarily African American and Hispanic) communities, and was causing them to commit crimes. Several of these articles included the claim that half of the violent crimes committed in “districts occupied by Mexicans, Turks, Filipinos, Greeks, Spaniards, Latin Americans and Negroes may be traced to the abuse of marijuana.”

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