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Dr. Robert J. Min, Robert J. Min M.D., Robert J. Min cornellmedicalimaging.com | Michael J. Howorth IBD GEM Project: Welcome to the Michael J. Howorth gemproject.ca |
Harry Jacob Anslinger (May 20, 1892 – November 14, 1975) held office as the Assistant Prohibition Commissioner in the Bureau of Prohibition, before being appointed as the first Commissioner of the Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) on August 12, 1930. He held office an unprecedented 32 years in his role holding office until 1962. He then held office two years as US Representative to the United Nations Narcotics Commission. The responsibilities once held by Harry J. Anslinger are now largely under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. Anslinger died at the age of 83 of heart failure in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.
[edit] Early life, marriageAnslinger's father, Robert J. Anslinger, born in Bern, Switzerland and had worked in that country as a barber. His mother, Rosa Christiana Fladt, was born in Baden, Germany. In 1881, the family emigrated to the United States. Robert Anslinger worked in New York for two years, before settling in Altoona, Pennsylvania. In 1892, the same year his son Harry was born, Anslinger went to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Harry Anslinger later claimed that he had witnessed a scene that affected his life. When he was 12, he heard the screams of a morphine addict that were only silenced by a boy returning from a pharmacist to supply the addict with more morphine. He was appalled that the drug was so powerful and that children had ready access to such drugs. However, the experience didn't stop Anslinger, while acting as the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, he authorized a druggist near the White House to fill a morphine prescription for an addicted Senator Joseph McCarthy. [1] Anslinger enrolled at Altoona Business College at the age of 17. He also went to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1913, he was granted a furlough so he could enroll at Pennsylvania State College, where studied in a two-year associate degree program in engineering and business management. He married Martha Kind Denniston (Sept 1886 - Oct 10, 1961) in 1917. That year, at age 38, he was renting an apartment at 16th & R Street in Washington, DC for $90 per month, where he lived with his wife Martha and son Joseph L. Anslinger (May 24, 1911 - Nov 1982), who were 44 and 18, respectively. Martha Denniston was the niece[2] of Andrew W. Mellon, the Secretary of the US Treasury who would appoint Anslinger to his 32 year post as Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. [edit] Rise to prominenceAnslinger gained notoriety early in his career. At the age of 23 (1915), while working as an investigator for the Pennsylvania Railroad, he performed a detailed investigation that found the claim of a widower in a railroad accident fraudulent. He saved the company $50,000 and was promoted to captain of railroad police. From 1917 to 1928, Anslinger worked for various military and police organizations. His tour of duty took him all over the world, from Germany to Venezuela to Japan. His focus was on stopping international drug trafficking, and he is widely credited for shaping not only America's domestic and international drug policies, but for having influence on drug polices of other nations, particularly those that had not debated the issues internally. By 1929, Anslinger returned from his international tour to work as an assistant Commissioner in the United States Bureau of Prohibition. Around this time, corruption and scandal gripped Prohibition and Narcotics agencies. The ensuing shake-ups and re-organizations set the stage for Anslinger, perceived as an honest and incorruptible figure, to advance not only in rank but to great political stature. In 1930, Anslinger was appointed to the newly-created FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics) as its first Commissioner. The FBN, like the Bureau of Prohibition, was under the auspices of the US Treasury Department. At that time the trade of alcohol and drugs was considered a loss of revenue because as illegal substances they could not be taxed. Anslinger was appointed by Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew W. Mellon and given a budget of $100,000. [edit] The campaign against marijuana 1930-1937Main article: Legal history of marijuana in the United States Restrictions for marijuana started in District of Columbia 1906 and was followed by state laws in other parts of the country in the 1910s and 1920s. The early laws against the cannabis drugs were passed with little public attention. Concern about marijuana was related primarily to the fear that marijuana use would spread, even among whites, as a substitute for the opiates. It is largely believed that the early prohibitive marijuana laws were a response by the general public to the popularity of the drug among Mexicans. [3] In 1925 United States supported regulation of Indian hemp, Cannabis for use as a drug, in the International Opium Convention[4]. Recommendations from the International Opium Convention inspired the work with The Uniform State Narcotic Act between 1925 and 1932. Harry J. Anslinger become an active person in this process from about 1930.[5][6] Some of his critics allege that Anslinger, DuPont petrochemical interests and William Randolph Hearst together created the highly sensational anti-marijuana campaign to eliminate hemp as an industrial competitor. Indeed, Anslinger did not himself consider marijuana a serious threat to American society until in the fourth year of his tenure (1934), at which point an anti-marijuana campaign, aimed at alarming the public, became his primary focus as part of the government's broader push to outlaw all drugs.[7] Members of the League of Nations had already implemented restrictions for marijuana in the beginning of the 1930s and restrictions started in many states in U.S years before Anslinger was appointed. Both president Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Attorney General publicly supported this development in 1935.[7] An alternative explanation for Anslinger's opinions about hemp is that he believed that a tax on marijuana could be easier to supervise if it included hemp. Around 1931 advertising started for hemp as the new billion dollar crop. Anslinger had reports from experiments with mechanical harvesting of hemp in 1936, reporting that the machines were no success.
By using the mass media as his forum (receiving much support from William Randolph Hearst), Anslinger propelled the anti-marijuana sentiment from the state level to a national movement. Writing for The American Magazine, the best examples were contained in his "Gore File", a collection of quotes from police reports, by later opponents described as police-blotter-type narratives of heinous cases, most with no substantiation, linking graphically depicted offenses with the drug:
It appeared that Anslinger was also responsible for racial themes in articles against marijuana in the 1930s:[citation needed]
What Anslinger used was language from police reports about illegal drug use. Police reports are typically written with a concise language including such details as age, gender, race, ethnic group, type of crime etc.[citation needed] Anslinger, for example, pointed at the former big bootleggers of alcohol, something that many interpret as the Italian/Jewish mafia, as responsible for a big part of the organized illegal trade with opium and cocaine from mid 1930s.[citation needed] "The first Federal law-enforcement administrator to recognize the signs of a national criminal syndication and sound the alarm was Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics in the Treasury" (Ronald Reagan 1986)[14] When Anslinger was interviewed in 1954 about drug abuse (see below), he did not mention anything about race or sex. In his book The Protectors (1964) Anslinger has a chapter called "Jazz and Junk Don't Mix" about the black jazz musicians Billie Holliday and Charlie Parker, who both died after years of heavy drug abuse:
[edit] Later yearsLater in his career, Anslinger was scrutinized for insubordination by refusing to desist from an attempt to halt the ABA/AMA Joint Report on narcotic addiction, a publication edited by the sociology Professor Alfred R. Lindesmith of Indiana University. Lindsmith wrote, among other works, Opiate Addiction (1947), The Addict and the Law (1965), and a number of articles condemning the criminalization of addiction. Nearly everything Lindesmith did was critical of the War on Drugs, specifically condemning Anslinger’s role. The AMA/ABA controversy is sometimes credited with ending Anslinger's position of Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. In fact, Anslinger was surprised to be re-appointed by President John F. Kennedy in February 1961. The new President had a tendency to invigorate the government with more youthful civil servants and by 1962 Anslinger was 70 years old, the mandatory age for retirement in his position. In addition, during the previous year he had witnessed his wife Martha's slow and agonizing death due to heart failure and is said to have lost some of his drive and ambition. He submitted his resignation to President Kennedy on his 70th birthday, May 20, 1962. Since Kennedy did not have a successor, Anslinger stayed in his $18,500 a year ($125,535 in 2007 dollars) position until later that year. He was succeeded by Henry Giordano. Following that, he was the United States Representative to the United Nations Narcotics Commission for two years after which he retired. By 1973, Anslinger was completely blind, had a debilitatingly enlarged prostate gland, and suffered from angina. Some of his opponents find it ironic that despite his aggressive stance against addictive painkilling drugs, he himself was taking morphine to alleviate his pain[citation needed]. On November 14, 1975, at 1 pm, Anslinger died of heart failure at Mercy Hospital (now known as Bon Secours Hospital Campus of the Altoona Regional Health System) in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He was 83. He was survived by his son Joseph L. Anslinger and a sister. According to John McWilliams' 1990 book The Protectors, Anslinger's daughter-in-law Bea at that time still lived in Anslinger's home in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Anslinger is buried in Hollidaysburg Presbyterian Cemetery, Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, USA Plot: Sec. C, Lot 320. [edit] Career timeline, recognition
[edit] Sources
Note (1): Larry Sloman, Reefer Madness: A History of Marijuana in America (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1979), pp 30–31
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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