Hoover Administration, Herbert

The administration of Herbert Hoover is in many ways inseparable from the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the era of Prohibition. Hoover was one of Prohibition's most ardent supporters. In his memoir, he spoke of Prohibition as a movement to realign American society and as “a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.”

Arguments supporting the prohibition of alcohol were firmly transplanted by Hoover into other [Page 365]spheres such as the curtailment of illegal gambling and illicit narcotics.

On February 21, 1930, President Hoover sent a message to the meeting of the World Conference on Narcotic Education, “I earnestly commend the work of the World Conference on Narcotic Education for its recognition of the menace to society in the excessive manufacture of narcotic drugs and for their use of scientific methods and surveys to establish the facts concerning the evils and extent of the traffic in these drugs.

The consistent leadership of Americans in the effort to control this traffic is a worldwide service to the health, morals, and public safety of the race.” Remarks such as these exemplify Hoover's technocratic approach to addressing social ills. Perhaps owing to his engineer's mindset, Hoover was strongly influenced by the efficiency movement and progressive social thought.

The administration's efforts to curb the manufacture, sale, and use of illicit narcotics is best seen in the creation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a predecessor to the modern Drug Enforcement Administration. In 1930 Pennsylvania Congressman Stephen G. Porter introduced legislation for a new and independent federal agency tasked with addressing the problem of illicit narcotics. On June 9 of that year, Hoover signed the legislation into law. After 16 years of coexisting in the same federal agency, the responsibility for alcohol and narcotics enforcement activities were finally separated.

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was designated as an agency of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. A commissioner, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, would lead the agency. At the suggestion of Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, a career diplomat, Harry J. Anslinger, was appointed as the first FBN commissioner. At the time, Anslinger was serving as Assistant Prohibition Commissioner in the Bureau of Prohibition. Under Anslinger's direction, the FBN worked to increase penalties for drug usage and broaden enforcement measures. FBN efforts are generally credited with passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, as well as strengthening the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914.

Agents of the FBN worked closely with INTERPOL to establish overseas offices in France, Italy, Turkey, Thailand, and other locations deemed critical to the battle against narcotics trafficking. While the primary enforcement focus of the FBN during the Hoover administration was the curtailment of opium and heroin smuggling, by 1934 Anslinger's attentions turned squarely to the eradication of marijuana.

Another important act of the Hoover administration was to send California State Senator Sanborn Young as the U.S. representative to the 1931 Narcotics Manufacturing and Distribution Limitation Convention in Geneva, Switzerland. Convened by the League of Nations, the conference produced the Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs. This document was designed to direct narcotics enforcement efforts at the point of origin for production and trafficking.

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