Harding Administration, Warren

[Page 349]Warren Gamaliel Harding (1865–1923) was the 29th president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in office in 1923. A likeable postwar president who promised the country a “return to normalcy,” his administration was marked by scandals that ended in multiple suicides, arrests of highly placed officials, and the first conviction of a cabinet member, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall, for his part in the Teapot Dome scandal. Prohibition had begun in the last year of President Wilson's presidency, and continued through all of Harding's.

Though the amendment leading to Prohibition had been ratified quickly, there remained considerable opposition to it, and in the early days of Prohibition under Harding's administration, these opponents of the Eighteenth Amendment organized themselves in different ways. The very deliberately named Moderation League of New York, for instance, was founded in 1923 when it seemed that it would be impossible to repeal Prohibition (which, originally, many had thought would be accomplished so quickly that there would be nothing to worry about). Instead of repeal, the Moderation League sought to change the legal definition of “intoxicating liquors” as referenced by the amendment and the Volstead Act, in order to allow light alcohol beverages like beer and wine, while continuing to prohibit hard liquors—a compromise that had been employed in many municipalities before Prohibition. One of the inciting incidents leading to the formation of the Moderation League was the passage of the Willis-Campbell Act in 1921, sponsored by Senators Frank Willis of Ohio and Philip Campbell of Kansas, which banned doctors from prescribing beer or liquor medicinally—closing a loophole that had allowed some amount of drinking to continue in municipalities where authorities chose to be lax about enforcement.

Cocaine and heroin distribution had gained ground in the United States around the time Harding was elected, and the 1922 Jones-Miller Act (the Narcotic Drug Import and Export Act) was the response. The act established the Federal Narcotics

Control Board as the body to enforce its law, which made it a federal crime to bring into the United States or any of its territories any illegal narcotic. The act did not differentiate between possession and possession with intent to distribute; possession of the drug in any quantity was sufficient evidence for conviction unless the defendant could provide a satisfactory explanation. The sentence called for by the act was a fine of up to $5,000 and imprisonment of up to 10 years. In combination with the earlier Harrison Act, the sale of narcotics had been sufficiently criminalized to drive up the costs and prices of these drugs, and to eliminate any legal distribution.

Though marijuana was legal at the federal level in Harding's time, it continued to be outlawed by many states—Arkansas, Iowa, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada all passed laws against it in 1923—mirroring the way in which alcohol prohibition had begun at the state and local level before cresting into national Prohibition. The 1923 laws are almost certainly the result of an unintended effect of Prohibition: once alcohol was outlawed, marijuana became more popular, and legal markets for it began to open up to fill the demand for intoxication. New York City and New Orleans, in particular, were known for such markets, and as tourist destinations easily accessible by ship or rail, they certainly served more than the locals.

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