Anslinger, Harry

President Herbert Hoover creates the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, headed by former Prohibition agent Harry Anslinger. Anslinger focuses much of his efforts on combating the growing popularity of marijuana among Mexican immigrants and jazz aficionados. 

David E Musto Interview. Frontline, PBS Online. Available online. URL http //www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/interviews/musto. html. Posted in 1998. An eminent historian of drug use and drug policy in the United States provides an overview of the remarkable history of marijuana in America. It includes the activities of Harry Anslinger, the... 

Bureau Chief Harry Anslinger stated, "One primary outlet for the Red Chinese traffic has been Hong Kong." 02)... 

The accuracy or inaccuracy of Harry Anslinger s presentation is not what is in question at the moment. Rather, it is a simple point of fact that McCoy and his co-authors have no facts whatever to indicate that the PRC is not involved in the drugs traffic and furthermore, that their treatment of U.S. authorities who presented facts impheating the PRC is wildly inaccurate. As the Scott review demonstrated, that is a matter of the published record. 

Harry J. Anslinger, The Murderers (New York Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy,1961). 

A year of considerable importance to this history is 1930, when Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon appointed his niece s husband Commissioner of the newly created U.S. Narcotics Bureau. Harry J. Anslinger reigned as Commissioner for three decades. Anslinger was to the inhibition of Cannabis use what Andrew Comstock had at the turn of the century been to the inhibition of American sexual freedom. Although not particularly concerned about marijuana when he took office, he soon became obsessed with "the evils of this weed, seeing a curse for humanity in the leaves and flowers of the Cannabis plant. 

Harry J. Anslinger (1893-1975) was the U.S. Narcotics Commissioner who engineered the federal—and later international—laws against marijuana that gave it the legal status of an addictive narcotic. 

Although there was no evidence to show that Licata had killed his family while under the influence of marihuana, Harry Anslinger, the commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics, cited the case during the hearings on the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 as just one example of the dangers of marihuana ... 

Later that year, when the senior surgeon of the US Public Health Department visited the Bureau of Narcotics to obtain information about the dangers of marihuana, Commissioner Harry Anslinger produced this... 

In 1937, readers of American Magazine were aroused by yet another hysteria-rousing version, this time written by the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger ... 

On August 12, 1930, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was created as an independent unit in the Treasury Department and Harry J. Anslinger was appointed the bureau s first commissioner of narcotics by President Hoover. 

Not long thereafter, Congress stripped control over narcotics from the scandal-tom Prohibition Unit and created an entirely new department, the Bureau of Narcotics, under the auspices of the Treasury Department with Harry Anslinger as its first commissioner. 

The Treasury Department s medical witness was none other than Commissioner Harry Anslinger, who offered his own medical opinion of the dangers of marihuana, an opinion that was liberally spiked with a historically inaccurate rendering of the hoary legend of the Assassins. After the Treasury Department presented its case it was time to hear from the other side. 

In 1930 the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established and its crusading Commissioner, Harry J. Anslinger, began an extensive nation-wide anti-marijuana campaign laced with horror stories of rape and murder perpetrated while under the influence of the diabolic weed. By 1937 every state, either by adoption of the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act of 1932 or by separate legislation, had prohibited marijuana use. In late 1937, Federal controls were added by enactment of the Marihuana Tax Act. 

Harry F. Anslinger, U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics The Narcotics Section recognizes the great danger of marijuana due to its definite impairment of the mentality and the fact that its continuous use leads directly to the insane asylum. ... 

Only a few people testified during that brief 1937 hearing. The first speaker was Harry Anslinger, the newly named commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Anslinger gave a very short testimony based on hearsay and unproven reports, which he summed up with the words, Marihuana is an addictive drug, which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death. ... 

Commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger, reports to a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee about drug use. 

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