The Sociology of Reefer Madness: the criminalization of marijuana in the U.S.A.

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THE SOCIOLOGY OF REEFER MADNESS: THE CRIMINALIZATION OF MARIJUANA IN THE U.S.A. by Michael C. Eisner submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology; Justice Signatures of Committee: Chair:

Dean of the College Date 1994 The American University Washington, D.C. 20016 THE AMEBICAH UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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cCOPYRIGHT by MICHAEL C. ELSNER 1994 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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THE SOCIOLOGY OF REEFER MADNESS: THE CRIMINALIZATION OF MARIJUANA IN THE U.S.A. BY Michael C. Eisner ABSTRACT In the United States of America, no legal sanctions against marijuana existed on the federal level until the U.S. Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act in 1937.

The

social origins of this law are, in effect, a mystery.

There

is a lack of consensus among sociologists and historians, and no clear, concise explanation of how and why marijuana came to be criminalized in the United States.

This

dissertation attempts to fill that void. In the 1930s, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (forerunner of today's Drug Enforcement Administration) and the Hearst publishing empire framed marijuana use in the context of a violence-inducing, insanity-producing "assassin of youth."

"Reefer," a slang term for a marijuana

cigarette, thus came to be associated with "madness." This dissertation provides its readers with a more comprehensive explanation of the Marihuana Tax Act than heretofore has been available.

It examines the Act's

passage and its subsequent enforcement in a social context, ii

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that of popular culture and historical studies of marijuana use.

It develops and puts forth a new theory, the Social

Control Hypothesis, of why the Marihuana Tax Act became law. It is unique in its analysis of the role that 1930s-era jazz music and anti-marijuana motion pictures played in relation to the passage and enforcement of the Marihuana Tax Act. The historical analysis is extended to include in-depth examinations of the related, but yet distinct, issues of marijuana's decriminalization, legalization and medicalizacion.

By comparing drug use data in the United

States and Holland (the Netherlands), where cannabis use has been decriminalized, this study empirically tests and refutes the "stepping stone hypothesis" (also known as the "gateway theory"), which claims that marijuana leads the user to cocaine and heroin. By examining the anti-marijuana media campaign of the Partnership For A Drug Free America, "The Sociology of Reefer Madness" follows the trail of Reefer Madness to the present day.

It is thus demonstrated on two fronts: the

medical marijuana issue and anti-marijuana media propaganda, that Reefer Madness is alive and well in the 1990s. Extensive research for "The Sociology of Reefer Madness: the Criminalization of Marijuana in the U.S.A." was conducted at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and Suitland, Maryland. iii

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The following people were gracious in taking the time to allow me to benefit from their areas of expertise and to learn from their vast ranges of cannabis knowledge: David Musto (Chapter 2), Bernard Brightman of Jass/Stash Records (Chapter 3), Michael Starks (Chapter 4), Peter Cohen (Chapter 5), David Gerstein (Chapter 6), and Kevin Zeese (Chapters 6 and 7). For their guidance and support throughout various stages of this endeavor, I am particularly grateful to Michael Aldrich, John Galliher, Jerome Himmelstein and John McWilliams.

I am honored to consider this work as an

extension of their own. For shepherding me down the doctoral road at American University, I hereby express my thanks to Arnold Trebach and David Saari of the Department of Justice, Law and Society, and to Muriel Cantor and Jurg Siegenthaler of the Department of Sociology. Finally, I would like to thank my neurosurgeon, Richard Dennis, and my acupuncturist, Yeh Chong Chan, for correcting my neck and back problems and enabling me to sit at the computer terminal and write again.

IV

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TABLE OF CONTENTS A B S T R A C T ............................................... il ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................ iv LIST OF T A B L E S ....................................... viii INTRODUCTION ............................................

1

Chapter 1. THE RISE OF REEFER MADNESS

9

Marijuana: The Evolution of a D r u g ............. 10 The Roots of Marijuana in the U.S................ 14 The Legislative History of the Marihuana Tax Act ..

16

Indian Hemp Drug Commission Report:1893-1894 . . .

18

Panama Canal Zone Military Investigations: 1925-1931

21

The LaGuardia Committee Report; 1939-1944 ........

24

Reefer Madness Solidified .........................

33

2. THE SOCIAL CONTROL HYPOTHESIS

.....................

34

Historical Background .............................

36

The Criminology of Reefer M a d n e s s .................. 39 The Anslinger Hypothesis The Mexican Hypothesis

.........................

41

...........................

45

Drug Control and Social Control ................... 51 The Ideology of the Marihuana Tax A c t .............. 54 The Social Control Hypothesis .....................

56

V

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The Du Pont H y p o t h e s i s .............................61 Reefer Madness Reformulated .......................

65

3. REEFER B L U E S ......................................... 66 Blowing Reefer Smoke

.............................

68

Up the River with J a z z .............................73 Vipin*............................................... 74 The Anti-Jazz Campaign

...........................

79

Examining Reefer Songs

...........................

83

4. REEFER M O V I E S ...................................... 100 Sinister Menace .................................

106

Assassin of Y o u t h .................................. 110 Tell Your C h i l d r e n ................................ 115 Marihuana: Weed With Roots in H e l l ................ 122 5. TESTING THE STEPPING STONE HYPOTHESIS ............

128

Historical Foundations of DrugControl ...........

130

Dutch Cannabis P o l i c y ..............................133 Normalization: the Dutch System of Drug Control .. 134 Comparing U.S. and Dutch Drug Control Policies . . 1 4 5 6. BEYOND C R I M I N A L I Z A T I O N .............................148 Decriminalization

...............................

150

Marijuana Decriminalization in the United States.. 152 Civil Law Versus Criminal L a w .................... 153 The Unique Case of A l a s k a ........................ 155 The Overreach of the Criminal L a w ................ 156 The "Crime T a r i f f " ................................. 157 vi

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The Unique Case of A l a s k a .........................155 The Overreach of the Criminal L a w ................ 156 The "Crime T a r i f f " ................................. 157 Labeling and Secondary Deviance

................. 158

Wandering in the Desert of U.S. Marijuana Policy.. 161 The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse (NCMDA): 1970-1973 ......................... 163 The Report of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences: 1978-1982 . . . 173 7. REEFER MADNESS R E B O R N ...............................183 Marijuana As a M e d i c i n e ...........................183 The Marihuana Tax Act R e v i s i t e d .................. 185 The Prohibition on Medical M a r i j u a n a .............. 190 HHS' "Compassionate Relief Program" Reefer Madness Revisited

............. 197

.......................

205

The Partnership for a Drug Free A m e r i c a .......... 209 Reefer Madness Reborn

...........................

224

C o n c l u s i o n ......................................... 225 BIBLIOGRAPHY

..........................................

228

V ll

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LIST OF TABLES Tedale 1:

Marijuana's Use As a Medicine Over the Ages . . 13

Table 2;

Reefer-Related Music: Chronological Listing . . 85

Table 3:

Reefer-Related Music: Alphabetical Listing

Table 4:

Possible Reefer S o n g s ...........................93

Table 5:

Cannabis Use Among Students in Secondary Schools (13-18 Years) in the Netherlands and the USA.. 137

Table 6;

Illicit Drug Use Among Students in Secondary Schools (13-18 Years) in the Netherlands and the U S A ........................................ 139

Table 7:

Illicit Drug Use in the United States and Amsterdam, the Netherlands (12-70+ Years). . . 143

Table 8:

Marijuana Laws in U.S. States That Have Decriminalized the Offense of Marijuana P o s s e s s i o n ..................................... 154

Table 9:

Marijuana Use By U.S. High School Seniors: 1975-1984

. . 89

180

Table 10: Current and Potential Uses of Medical M a r i j u a n a ..................................... 195 Table 11: States With Laws That Permit Marijuana's Medical Use..................................... 199 Table 12: Public Perceptions of the Most Important Problem Facing the United States: 1985-1989 .. 207 Table 13: Public Perceptions of the Most Important Problem Facing the United States: 1985-1992 .. 208 Table 14: Self-Reported Monthly, Yearly and Lifetime Use of Marijuana, Cigarettes and Alcohol By U.S. High School Seniors: 1979-1991 215 Table 15: Self-Reported Monthly, Yearly and Lifetime Use of Marijuana, Cigarettes and Alcohol By U.S. College Students: 1980-1991 ............. 220 viii

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INTRODUCTION "Reefer" is a slang term for a marijuana cigarette. According to Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1983: 1515), the origin of the word "reefer" stems from the similarity between a rolled marijuana cigarette and a "reef," the part of a sail which can be folded together and tied down.

Yet

according to the High Times Encyclopedia of Recreational Drugs (1979: 135), the word "reefer" is rooted in a racial context and is "derived from greefa. New Orleans slang for the drug smoked by grifo, the offspring of blacks and mulattoes." A number of dictionaries of American slang provide further insight into the origins of "reefer."

Partridge's

Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1989:367,ix) informs us that the term surfaced in the U.S. through the "underworld" and came to be used more popularly around 1935.

According to the New Dictionary of American

Slang (1986:357), "rifa" is thought to have originated from the Mexican Spanish grifa, and the "g" was "lost because it is not aspirated or exploded in Spanish pronunciation and hence not readily heard by English speakers."

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2

Simon and Schuster's International Dictionary; EnalishSpanish/Spanish-Enolish (1973:457) defines marijuana as "canamo de la India," or hemp from India (1020).

Simon and

Schuster proceed to tell us that "grifa" is slang for marijuana, and that among its masculine and feminine form meanings are included "curly, kinky hair" and the "offspring of a black and an Indian" (1248).

Grifa is derived from the

verb engrifar, which is "to curl, crimp; to make (hair) stand on end" (1179). As anyone who has seen a marijuana plant can attest to, the cannabis plant's dried leaves and flowering buds do in fact resemble curly hair.

It is plausible, therefore, that

the origin of the slang term "reefer" may stem from the Spanish word "engrifar." In the United States, marijuana, which was then widely known as Indian hemp, was not outlawed on the federal level until 1937.

The historical record clearly reflects that

through a campaign waged by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) and the Hearst publishing empire, the smokable leaves of the hemp plant came to be associated with murder, madness and mayhem.

The image of marijuana which was promoted to

the public was that of a "killer weed" and an "assassin of youth."

At various times, marijuana was also touted as a

"stepping stone" which led its users to harder drugs. The social origins of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, the federal legislation whereby cannabis became criminalized

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3

in the United States, remain shrouded in mystery.

There is

a lack of consensus among sociologists and historians of how and why the federal prohibition on marijuana came to be enacted in the U.S.

In this dissertation, I am attempting

to put forth a more precise explanation of the social forces that lay behind the criminalization of cannabis in the United States. Historians and sociologists have claimed that the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act came about due to two competing theories which have been referred to by Himmelstein (1983) as the "Anslinger Hypothesis" and the "Mexican Hypothesis."

Scant evidence exists, however, to

support either theory. By synthesizing the "Anslinger Hypothesis" and the "Mexican Hypothesis," this dissertation formulates a new theory which explains the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act; the "Social Control Hypothesis."

This thesis additionally

examines another existing theory that seeks to explain the social origins of federal cannabis prohibition in the United States; the "Du Pont Hypothesis." In the 1960s, marijuana use became more widespread among young people in the United States.

As its popularity

increased and it came to be seen as less of a danger than other illicit drugs, the legislation of the Marihuana Tax Act was replaced by the 1970 Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act.

The 1970 Act both statutorily

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4

separated marijuana from narcotic drugs’ and reduced the crimes of nonprofit distribution of small amounts and simple possession of marijuana from felonies to misdemeanors. Further provisions were made in the law to expunge the criminal records of first-time offenders who were convicted of marijuana possession (Himmelstein, 1983:102-104). Following the federal lead, state criminal penalties for marijuana possession were decreased nationwide in the 1970s.

By 1974, the crime of unlawful possession of

marijuana had been reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor in virtually all U.S. states.^ Thus, the term "Reefer Madness" has two distinct meanings:

(1) in the United States of the 1930s, Reefer

Madness referred to the supposed causal link between the marijuana use and insanity; and (2) in the I970s, as penalties for marijuana possession were reduced nationwide, the perpetuation of the drug's criminal status was considered by many to be another form of "Reefer Madness." This study, which consists of seven chapters, traces the origin of Reefer Madness and follows its trail to the present day.

Chapter 1, "The Rise of Reefer Madness,"

’cocaine was misclassified as a narcotic by both this law and the grandfather of all U.S. drug laws in the United States, the 1914 Harrison Narcotic Act. Narcotics are analgesics, or pain killers, which slow the respiratory rate. Cocaine is a stimulant which is still inappropriately referred to as a narcotic. ^For an explanation of the unique situation in Nevada, see Morals Legislation Without Moralitv: the Case of Nevada by John F. Galliher and John R. Cross (1982, Rutgers University Press).

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5

provides a global historical narrative of marijuana use over the millennia, and then examines two scientific studies of cannabis which pre-date the Marihuana Tax Act; the Indian Hemp Commission Report of 1893-1894 and the Panama Canal Zone Military Investigations of 1925-1931.

The chapter also

focuses on an additional scientific study of cannabis which was undertaken immediately following the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act; the New York-city based LaGuardia Committee Report of 1939-1944.

As the chapter ends in 1945,

it is clear that the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was successful in its campaign to solidify marijuana's criminalized status in the United States. Chapter 2, "The Social Control Hypothesis," examines previous theories which attempt to explain the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, and it puts forth a new theory in this regard.

This chapter provides the

theoretical base by which the phenomenon of Reefer Madness is sociologically examined in subsequent chapters. In Chapters 3 and 4, content analyses of I930s-era popular culture are conducted within the context of the Social Control Hypothesis.

Chapter 3, "Reefer Blues,"

examines the lyrics of marijuana-oriented jazz songs, most of which date from the 1930s, while Chapter 4, "Reefer Movies," studies the plots and propaganda contained within four anti-marijuana movies that were released in the 1930s.

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One of a number of prominent themes within the anti­ marijuana "scare" films of the 1930s was the claim that marijuana leads the user to harder drugs, such as cocaine and heroin.

Formerly known as the "stepping stone

hypothesis," today this notion is called the "gateway theory."

Chapter 5 tests the "stepping stone hypothesis"

via the availability of comparative drug use data in the United States and the Netherlands (Holland), where cannabis use has been decriminalized.

Chapter 5, "Testing the

Stepping Stone Hypothesis," presents clear and convincing empirical evidence that refutes today's "gateway theory." The Dutch system of decriminalization, known as "normalization," is but one method by which a governmental entity has enacted a drug control policy.

Chapter 6,

"Beyond Criminalization," examines two alternatives to the criminalization of marijuana: its decriminalization and its legalization. Chapter 7, "Reefer Madness Reborn," discusses a third alternative to marijuana's criminalization: its use as a medicine.

As well, in the context of examining the media

campaign of the Partnership For A Drug Free America, which originated in the mid-1980s, this concluding chapter draws parallels between propaganda of the 1930s and the present day.

Thus, on two fronts: medical marijuana and media

propaganda, this dissertation's final chapter demonstrates that Reefer Madness is alive and well in the 1990s.

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7

Extensive archival research for "The Sociology of Reefer Madness" was conducted at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and Suitland, Maryland.

Lesser archival research was

conducted at the U.S. Treasury Department's Library, Howard University's Moorland-Spingam Research Center, and the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "The Sociology of Reefer Madness" provides its readers with a more comprehensive explanation of the social origins and the enforcement of the Marihuana Tax Act than heretofore has been available.

It examines the law's passage and its

subsequent enforcement in a social context, that of popular culture and historical studies of marijuana use.

It puts

forth a new theory, "The Social Control Hypothesis," of why the Marihuana Tax Act became law, and it examines the enforcement of the Act in relation to one specific targeted group of people who used marijuana: jazz musicians.

This

dissertation further explores popular culture and the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act in relation to anti­ marijuana motion pictures of the 1930s that appear to have been created for propaganda purposes.

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Michel Foucault, in answering the question of why he authored Discipline and Punish; the Birth of the Prison. wrote (1979:31): Why? Simply because I am interested in the past? No, if one means by that writing a history of the past in terms of the present. Yes, if one means writing the history of the present. With Foucault looking over my shoulder, I have written a history of the past, a sociological analysis of marijuana's criminalization in the United States, in terms of the present. In developing and applying the Social Control Hypothesis to popular culture of the 1930s, and in testing the "Stepping Stone Hypothesis," this dissertation breaks new academic ground.

Perhaps, in the future, it will serve

as food for thought to policymakers who grapple with the question of whether marijuana should be a decriminalized or legalized commodity. For now, however, let us examine the "history of the present."

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CHAPTER 1 THE RISE OF REEFER MADNESS Marijuana is an ancient drug.

Throughout the ages,

under various names, and in many languages, marijuana has been used industrially, as a medicine, as an intoxicant and for religious purposes.

Marijuana is, perhaps, the most

well-studied drug throughout the recorded annals of modern world history. The word "marijuana" is of Spanish origin, originated in Mexico, and is widely used in the United States today.^ Worldwide, numerous other terms for marijuana exist, including bhang, ganja, dagga, hemp, Indian hemp and cannabis.

This manuscript tends to use these terms

interchangeably, although cannabis is actually a term used for both marijuana and hashish,^ which is created from compressed marijuana resin and is said to be from five to eight times more potent than marijuana (Brecher, 1972:400). 9

^Since the "j" in Spanish is silent, the word "marihuana" is often found in the marijuana literature. In this text, the term "marihuana" is consistently used as it appears throughout the historical record. Otherwise, the use of the word "marijuana" is preferred. ^The word "hashish," which is an Arabic term for "grass," originally was used to describe marijuana (Abel, 1982:48).

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Mari-iuana; The Evolution of a Drug Marijuana's use by humankind can be traced twelve thousand years ago to the Chinese island of Taiwan.

The

first written evidence of marijuana's use as a medicine is in China, where it is described as "the liberator of sin," and dates nearly five thousand years ago to 2737 B.C. Radiocarbon dating has produced evidence of cultivated cannabis sativa in China more than five thousand years ago, where practitioners of shamanism used the plant "primarily as a hallucinogen and not a textile fiber" (Porter, 1993:20).

There is further evidence that the Chinese

cultivated cannabis in 4500 B.C., and the historical record suggests that marijuana may well have been cultivated as far back as ten thousand years ago. Over the ages, cannabis has been used not only in China, but in India, Japan, South East Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

"The earliest unmistakable reference to

cannabis in Egypt does not occur until the third century A.D." (Abel, 1980:26).

Centuries later its use spread from

Northern Africa into Persia (today's Iran), Assyria (today's Syria), and other Arabic-speaking nations.

Later, marijuana

use is said to have spread eastward to the Mediterranean and Europe, and the Spanish slave trade is thought to have

^Aldrich (1971:1-2) claims that the 2737 B.C. Treatise on Medicine fPen-ts'ao) attributed to Emperor Shen Nung "was actually compiled by Han Dynasty scholars whose references go back no further than the fourth century B.C."

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11

transported the drug from Africa to Brazil and South America.* Marijuana has been credited with playing a major role in the development of many of the world's great religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Zoroastrianism and Sufism (Abel, 1980:19-22; Aldrich, 1971:1-5; Herer, 1990:4951; Snyder, 1971:19-23).

Brecher (1972:398) cites sources

which contend that portions of the Judaeo-Christian Old Testament contain references to marijuana.^

As documented

by Mikuriya (1973:118), Biblical scholars concluded in 1860 that the myrrhed wine "offered to our Saviour immediately before his crucifixion was, in all probability, a preparation of hemp." ^Sources for this general historical information on cannabis include: Abel, I976:xiii; Abel, 1980:1-35,101; Aldrich, 1971:1-19; Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:1-2,4; Grinspoon and Bakalar, 1993:3; Hermes and Galperin, 1992:29-30; and Weisheit, 1992:12-14. ^Specific examples cited are the "honeycomb" referred to in the Song of Solomon, 5:1, the "honeywood" found in I Samuel 14:25-45, and the claim that "calamus" in the Song of Solomon (presumably 4:14) is cannabis. Ezekiel 27:19, cited by Abel (1980:27) as containing the word "kaneh," is interpreted by The Prophets. a "new translation of the Holy Scriptures according to the traditional Hebrew text," as: "they trafficked with you in ... calamus." Abel disputes the contention that the Hebrew word kaneh refers to cannabis, stating it "is a very vague term that has disconcerted more than a few distinguished Biblical scholars." Abel claims that kaneh cannot be cannabis because Isaiah 43:24 refers not to a "sweet-smelling" but a "sweettasting" plant, and cannabis is not "sweet-tasting." Yet The Prophets (1978) interprets kaneh in Isaiah 43:24 as "fragrant cane." Abel bolsters his contention that kaneh is sugar cane by citing an additional two Biblical passages: Exodus 30:23 and Jeremiah 6:20. The Prophets simply states that the Jeremiah passage refers to "fragrant cane from a distant land." Exodus 30:23 (The Jerusalem Bible. 1968) refers to "fragrant cinnamon" but the next line, 30:24, refers to "scented cane."

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In A.D. 105, the Chinese reportedly used hemp to invent paper, a secret they kept hidden for hundreds of years (Abel, 1980:7-9).

Marijuana's first known industrial uses

in China were for weaving clothes and manufacturing shoes. Chinese archers used cannabis to fashion bow strings which were far superior to those made from bamboo.

In the

centuries to come, hemp provided the rope, sails and webbing that bound together the ships that sailed the seven seas. As a fiber and as a textile, hemp: the source of birdseed, canvas, cloth, oil, paper and twine, was a major industrial component throughout the world for thousands of years.® Table 1 provides us with a limited overview of cannabis' use as a medicine in ancient times.

Historically,

cannabis has been used medicinally to alleviate pain for a wide array of ailments, including arthritis and menstrual cramps.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, the

medicinal use of cannabis (a subject we will return to in Chapter 7) has proven to be effective in providing relief for patients suffering from cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and glaucoma.

®Herer (1991:5-11) cites additional industrial uses for hemp and claims that: (1) from the Fifth Century B.C. onward, "Ninety percent of all ships' sails" were made from cannabis hemp fiber, as were (2) "75-90% of all paper in the world" until 1883, and (3) "Eighty percent of all mankind's textiles and fabrics for clothes, tents, linens, rugs, drapes, quilts... until the 20th century."

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TABLE 1 MARIJUANA'S USE AS A MEDICINE OVER THE AGES Africa

China

India

Childbirth

Absentmindedness***

Appetite Loss

Dysentery*

Analgesic

Headaches

Fatigue*

Anesthetic

Indigestion

Fevers*

Constipation

Sleep Inducement

Malaria**

Female Disorders

Snake Bites

Rheumatic Pains

Venereal Disease

*Cannabis was additionally used for this ailment in India. **Cannabis was additionally used for this ailment in China. ***Grinspoon and Bakalar refer to cannabis being used in India to "quicken the mind."

Sources:

Abel, 1980:12-13; Grinspoon and Bakalar, 1993:5; and Weisheit, 1992:12-14.

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The Roots of Harinuana in the United States Marijuana is said to have come into the land of Uncle Sam via Mexican agricultural farm workers in the southwest, and it surfaced in New Orleans by 1910.

In 1915, California

and Utah were the first U.S. states to ban the drug, shortly after Pancho Villa's revolutionary army used the weed to march to victory in Mexico to the tune "La Cucaracha" (Walton, 1938:25; Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:4; Sloman, 1979:29; and Abel, 1980:201): La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha, Ya no puede caminar. Porque no tiene. Portae le falta. Marijuana que fumar.

The Cockroach, The Cockroach, No longer can walk, Because it doesn't have. Because it lacks. Marijuana to smoke.

Contrary to the theory that marijuana did not enter the United States until Mexican agricultural workers transported it north is the fact that the hemp plant was thriving in colonial Jamestown three hundred years earlier. Aldrich (1971:10) writes that within the slaveholding U.S.: it seems likely that colonial masters were shown the use of marihuana as a drug by their Africans; this was certainly done in Jamaica and the West Indies at the same time (late 18th century), following the introduction of ganga from India.

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It has been documented that George Washington recorded in his personal diary how he carefully separated the female and male hemp seeds, presumably because the female plant was thought to yield a more potent strain of cannabis (Brecher, 1972:403) In the newly-founded United States of America of the 1770s, paper money was practically worthless and the American economy operated on the barter system.

Due to

hemp's recognized value, durability, uniformity and the "universal and steady demand for it,"

hemp was actually the

standard economic commodity for the first three or four decades of the United States (Abel, 1982:90). After the Civil War, the decline of the labor intensive hemp industry came about due to three reasons: the cotton industry's increased use of labor-saving machinery, the unavailability of slave labor, and the introduction of wire baling.

With hemp fiber no longer a vital cash crop in the

nation, U.S. hemp manufacturers could not compete with foreign competitors who imported hemp from abroad at less expensive prices (Abel, 1980:80-83 and 93-96; Abel, 1982:50; Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:3; and Brecher, 1972:404).

’in a personal communication, Michael Aldrich, perhaps the foremost authority on marijuana in the U.S.A., disputes both Brecher's claim and his own (1971:10) that "Washington separated male from female plants, which is done only when potent resin is desired." "This part is wrong," Aldrich wrote me on December 19, 1990. "Geo. grew it for seeds, not sinsemilla." (Sinsemilla is a potent strain of marijuana which means "without seeds" in Spanish.)

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The hemp industry did not die out in the United States until marijuana was banned on the federal level through the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

In fact, after the U.S. entered

World War II and found its hemp supply in the Philippines cut off by the Japanese, the ban on hemp cultivation was temporarily lifted to support the war effort.

Legislative History of the Marihuana Tax Act The Marihuana Tax Act, originally entitled "The Marihuana Taxing Bill," was introduced as H.R. 6385 by Congressman Robert Doughton, chairman of the House of Representatives' Committee on Ways and Means, on April 14, 1937.

Hearings before Congressman Doughton's committee were

held on April 27-30 and May 4, 1937, and it was reported of committee, as H.R.

6906, to

out

the full House of

Representatives on May 11, 1937. On June 10, 1937, when the bill was first brought to the floor of the House by Congressman Doughton, the speaker of the House was asked:

"What is the bill?"

Sam Rayburn of

Texas replied (81 Congressional Record 1937:5575): It has something to do with something that is called marihuana. I believe it is a narcotic of some kind. Due to "the late bill was tabled until

hour of the day," consideration of the June 14,

when discussion of the

’°The 1942 documentary movie "Hemp for Victory," produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, encouraged U.S. farmers to grow hemp as part of a patriotic effort to assist the U.S. war effort.

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Marihuana Taxing Bill covered less than two pages of the Congressional Record.

H.R. 6906 passed the House without a

roll call, and upon being sent to the U.S. Senate, one hearing was held, on July 12, 1937, before a subcommittee of the Senate's Committee on Finance.

As researched through

the Library of Congress, virtually no other information is available from the Senate side of the congressional aisle. H.R. 6906 returned from the Senate as amended, was brought before the full House on July 26, 1937, and was quickly considered and adopted (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:174): The act passed Congress with little debate and even less public attention. ...The Marihuana Tax Act was hastily drawn, heard, debated and passed. It was a paradigm of the uncontroversial law. When the Marihuana Tax Act was signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt on August 2, 1937, the President made no public statement of any kind, and virtually no publicity accompanied the Act.

No newsprint

whatsoever was devoted to either the passage or the signing of the Marihuana Tax Act by the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the New Orleans Times-Picavune (Himmelstein, 1982:43).

Save for it being listed along with

nineteen other bills "pillowed... through the House," fJournal and Sentinel. Winston-Salem, N.C., August 22, 1937) no record of it could be located within the personal papers of the bill's sponsor, Rep. Robert Doughton of North Carolina.

The New York Times made note of the signing in

one wire-service sentence (Abel, 1980:247):

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President Roosevelt signed today a bill to curb traffic in the narcotic, marihuana, through heavy taxes on transactions. Ignored in the legislative shuffle to criminalize marijuana in 1937 was a massive amount of published scientific data concerning cannabis.

Specifically, in

enacting a federal prohibition on marijuana in the United States, the U.S. Congress did not consider two historic sets of reports, the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report (18931894) and the Panama Canal Zone Military Investigations (1916-1929).

Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report; 1893-1894 Appointed at the behest of the British government by India's colonial Government just over one hundred years ago, this seven member commission produced a thoroughly researched seven-volume document in which nearly 1200 witnesses (including 335 medical practitioners) were interviewed in 30 cities.

Covering over 3000 pages of text,

the report "sought to inquire" (Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report, 1894:1):” into the cultivation of the hemp plant in Bengal, the preparation of drugs from it, the trade in those drugs, the effect of their consumption upon the social and moral condition of the people, and the desirability of prohibiting the growth of the plant and the sale of ganja and allied drugs.

” The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report will hereafter be cited as "IHCR."

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The Commission addressed three questions concerning the hemp/crime connection to its witnesses (IHCR, 1894:256-257): (1)

whether any large proportion of bad characters are habitual consumers of hemp drugs, and whether there is any general connection between such consumption and crime.

(2)

whether these drugs are to any considerable extent taken by criminals to fortify themselves to commit premeditated crime of any kind.

(3)

whether criminals use hemp drugs to stupefy their victims.

Upon examination of its facts, the Commission concluded that: "the connection between hemp drugs and ordinary crime is very slight indeed."

The Commission then addressed the

"Reefer Madness" question: whether excessive indulgence in [hemp] drugs incites to unpremeditated crime and whether they knew cases in which it had led to temporary homicidal frenzy. After reviewing its body of evidence, obtained from nearly 600 witnesses, the Commission rejected that "any such connection" existed between hemp usage and homicidal frenzy or unpremeditated crime: ... in view of all the evidence[,] the tendency of the drugs often seems to be to develop or bring into play the natural disposition of the consumer.... If he aims at ease and rest and is let alone, he will be quiet and restful; but if he is naturally excitable and illtempered, or if he is disturbed and crossed, he may be violent. ...the fact that so many witnesses testify to the peaceable and orderly character of the excessive consumers goes far to prove that in this country experience shows that as a rule these drugs do not tend to crime and violence. After finding that it "has been clearly established that the occasional use of hemp in moderate doses may be

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beneficial" regarding the medicinal use of cannabis, the Commission focused "on the popular and common use of the drugs" as they affect "the physical, mental or moral nature."

Among the report's conclusions were (IHCR,

1893:263-264): (1)

In regard to the physical effects, the Commission have come to the conclusion that the moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all.

(2)

There are also many cases where... the people attribute beneficial effects to the habitual moderate use of these drugs; and there is evidence to show that the popular impression may have some basis in fact.

(3)

Speaking generally, the Commission are of opinion that the moderate use of hemp drugs appears to cause no appreciable physical injury of any kind.

(4)

In respect to the alleged mental effects of the drugs, the Commission have come to the conclusion that the moderate use of hemp drugs produces no injurious effects on the mind.

(5)

It appears that the excessive use of hemp drugs may, especially in cases where there is any weakness or hereditary predisposition, induce insanity. It has been shown that the effect of hemp drugs in this respect has hitherto been greatly exaggerated, but that they do sometimes produce insanity seems beyond question.

(6)

In regards to the moral effects of the drugs, the Commission are of opinion that their moderate use produces no moral injury whatever. There is no adequate ground for believing that it injuriously affects the character of the consumer.

(7)

[F]or all practical purposes it may be laid down that there is little or no connection between the use of hemp drugs and crime.

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(8)

Viewing the subject generally, it may be added that the moderate use of these drugs is the rule, and that the excessive use is comparatively exceptional. The moderate use practically produces no ill effects. In all but the most exceptional cases, the injury from habitual moderate use is not appreciable.

Although the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission can be criticized for gathering only narrative evidence which does not measure up to "present-day scientific standards," it cannot be disputed that for its time the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report was "a landmark study, impartial and objective" (Abel, 1980:132 and 1982:56).

In the ensuing

years prior to Reefer Madness' rise in the United States, the U.S. military drew on the findings of Indian Hemp Commission in conducting a series of investigations regarding the misuse of marijuana by U.S. military personnel stationed in Panama (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:134).

Panama Canal Zone Military Investigations: 1925-1931 The Panama Canal Zone studies were a series of three separate investigations that were conducted over the course of seven years.

The first investigation took place in 1925,

the second took place in 1929 and the last investigation took place in 1931 (Abel, 1980:205-207). The investigations were preceded by a 1923 edict by the U.S. Army which forbade its soldiers in the Panama Canal from using marijuana.

In 1926, after the investigation was

completed, the order banning marijuana use by soldiers was

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rescinded.

Nonetheless, in 1929, high-ranking military

brass ordered that a new inquiry be initiated.

Despite the

1929 report's concurrence with the 1925 probe, in 1930, the prohibition on marijuana use was reenacted.

For reasons not

made clear in the available literature, a third investigation was begun in 1930.

Although the third

investigation was in agreement with the findings of the two preceding reports, the ban on marijuana in the Canal Zone remained in effect. The 1925 investigation consisted of three types of evidence; the anecdotal testimony of officers regarding marijuana use by troops under their command; medical opinion by the superintendent of the Corozal Hospital for the Insane; and a number of controlled lab experiments of a total of fifteen subjects using marijuana.

Although, as in

the case of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report, the scientific methodology of the controlled use experiments "may be regarded as primitive" by today's standards, they represented the best research in the field at the time they were conducted (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:134). In 1933, these reports were compiled and published within the Journal of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States, The Military Surgeon, the only published account available to the public today.

Among the

conclusions of the three Canal Zone studies were (1933:269280) :

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(1)

There is no evidence that marihuana as grown here is a "habit-forming" drug in the sense in which the term is applied to alcohol, opium, cocaine, etc., or that it has any appreciably deleterious influence on the individual using it.

(2)

The influence of the drug when used for smoking is uncertain and has apparently been greatly exaggerated. Most of the reports appear to have little basis in fact. There is no medical evidence that it causes insanity.

(3)

All of the statements to the effect that two or three puffs produce remarkable effects are nonsense, judging from our experience.

(4)

[No] acts of violence were observed. The Health Department... and the Police Department of the Panama Canal have no knowledge of any ill effects from the use of the drug in the Canal Zone.

(5)

[N]o steps be taken by the Canal Zone authorities to prevent the sale or use of marihuana.

(6)

[U]se of the drug is not widespread and...its effects upon military efficiency and upon discipline are not great. There appears to be no reason for renewing the penalties formerly exacted for the possession and the use of the drug.

(7)

The evidence obtained suggests that organization Commanders in estimating the efficiency and soldierly quality of delinquents in their commands have unduly emphasized the effects of marijuana, disregarding the fact that a large proportion of the delinquents are morons or psychopaths, which conditions themselves would serve to account for their delinquency.

(8)

Delinquencies due to marijuana smoking which results in trial by military court are negligible in number when compared with delinquencies resulting from the use of alcoholic drinks which also may be classed as stimulants or intoxicants.

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In 1937, four years after the findings of the Canal Zone investigations were published in The Military Surgeon, no mention was even made of them in the congressional proceedings which resulted in the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act.

Since the conclusions of the Canal Zone studies,

like the Indian Hemp Commission Report, were contrary to the position of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the FBN "was able to drown them with silence" (Himmelstein, 1983:70).

The LaGuardia Committee Report f1939-1944f Within two years after the Marihuana Tax Act became law, another report on marijuana was commissioned, this time by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York City.

In 1939,

LaGuardia, who gained some knowledge about marijuana when he formerly served in the U.S. C o n g r e s s , s o u g h t to conduct "a thorough sociological and scientific investigation of "the marihuana problem in the City of New York."

In the

introduction to the report which bears his name, LaGuardia wrote (Solomon, 1966:280): My own interest in marihuana goes back many years, to the time when I was a member of the House of Representatives, and in that capacity, heard of the use of marihuana by soldiers stationed in Panama. I was impressed at that time with the report of an Army Board of Inquiry which emphasized the relative hazmlessness of the drug and the fact that it played a very little role, if any, in problems of delinopiency and crime in the Canal Zone. ’^It is interesting to note that as a member of Congress, LaGuardia played a pivotal role in the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited alcohol in the U.S. from 1920-1933.

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Following "widespread publicity describing the dangerous effects of marihuana usage," Mayor LaGuardia of New York asked New York's Academy of Medicine for its "opinion as to the advisability of studying the whole marijuana problem" (Solomon, 1966:403).

Mayor LaGuardia

explained in the report's introduction that the study was prompted by "rumors [which] were recently circulated concerning the smoking of marihuana by large segments of [New York City's] population and even by school children." Two sources of such rumors, as has been mentioned and will be discussed further in Chapter 2, were the Hearst publishing empire and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The research design of the LaGuardia Report was two­ pronged and consisted of a sociological component and a clinical component.

As outlined by the New York Academy of

Medicine, the scope of the study was (Solomon, 1966:278): (1)

a sociological study dealing with the extent of marihuana smoking and the methods by which the drug is obtained; in what districts and among what races, classes, or types of persons the use is most prevalent; whether certain social conditions are factors in its use; and what relation there is between its use and crime or antisocial acts; and

(2)

a clinical study to determine by means of controlled experiments the physiological and psychological effects of marihuana on different types of persons; the question as to whether it causes physical or mental deterioration; and its possible therapeutic effects on the treatment of disease or of other drug addictions.

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The LaGuardia Committee was comprised of thirty one individuals (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:200) who were appointed by the Mayor upon the recommendation of the New York Academy of Medicine.

The Committee was made up of

medical and social scientists, including four New York City officials.

In addition, six undercover "plain clothes"

investigators were also assigned to the Committee by New York City's Commissioner of Police for the purpose of gathering field information regarding marijuana use in the community. The six sociological questions which the committee sought answers to were (Solomon, 1966:290): 1.

To what extent is marihuana used?

2.

What

3.

What is the general attitude of the marihuana smoker toward society and toward the use of the drug?

4.

What is the relationship between marihuana and eroticism?

5.

What is the relationship between marihuana and crime?

6.

What is the relationship between marihuana and juvenile delinquency?

is the method of retail distribution?

Among the sociological conclusions of the study were the following (Solomon, 1966:307): (1)

The practice of smoking marihuana does not lead to addiction in the medical sense of the word.

(2)

The use of marihuana does not lead to morphine or heroin or cocaine addiction and no effort is made to create a market for these narcotics by stimulating the practice of marihuana smoking.

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(3)

Marihuana is not the determining factor in the commission of major crimes.

(4)

Marihuana smoking is not widespread among school children.

(5)

Juvenile delinquency is not associated with the practice of smoking marihuana.

(6)

The publicity concerning the catastrophic effects of marihuana smoking in New York City is unfounded.

The clinical portion of the study, subdivided into a number of lengthy sections, consisted of experiments of marijuana users both in the laboratory and in social environments such as "tea pads," where marijuana was smoked in a communal setting.

While the laboratory studies were of

a quantitative nature, the studies of marijuana smoking in the social environment were qualitative in scope.

Most all

of the criticisms of the LaGuardia Committee Report, both pro and con, have focused on the quantitative laboratory aspects of the Committee's findings, while the qualitative social environment studies have virtually been ignored. Likewise, a review of the literature reveals that in general, the clinical portion of the report has been highlighted, while the equally important sociological portion of the report has been all but forgotten. The laboratory conditions of the study were comprised of a hospital setting in which voluntary human subjects were supplied with varying amounts of marijuana under different conditions, and the effects were observed, measured and recorded.

Over ninety percent of the study's seventy seven

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participants were prisoners, two-thirds of whom had previously used marijuana.

Two of the most significant

clinical findings of the report, which refuted the image of marijuana as a "killer weed" and an "assassin of youth" were (Solomon, 1966:331): there was no aggressiveness or violent behavior observed. Erotic ideas or sensations when present took no active expression. In light of the "Reefer Madness" theme examined herein, clinical conclusions of the LaGuardia Committee Report worth noting included (Solomon, 1966:363,388-389 and 408): (1)

Indulgence in marihuana does not appear to result in mental deterioration.

(2)

Under the influence of marihuana the basic personality structure does not change but some of the more superficial aspects of [the user's] behavior show alteration.

(3)

With the use of marihuana, the individual experiences increased feelings of relaxation, disinhibition and self-confidence.

(4)

The new feeling of self-confidence induced by the drug expresses itself primarily through oral rather than through physical activity. There is some indication of a diminution in physical activity.

(5)

The disinhibition which results from the use of marihuana releases what is latent in the individual's thoughts and emotions, but does not evoke responses which would be totally alien to [the user] in [an] undrugged state.

(6)

In general the subject's attitude toward family and community ideologies... did not change markedly as a result of the ingestion of marihuana.

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(7)

There is definite evidence in this study that the marihuana users were not inferior in intelligence to the general population and that they had suffered no mental or physical deterioration as a result of their use of the drug.

(8)

The evidence available then -the absence of any compelling urge to use the drug, the absence of any distressing abstinence symptoms, the statements that no increase in dosage is required to repeat the desired effect in users- justifies the conclusion that neither true addiction nor tolerance is found in marihuana users.

(9)

Since psychological factors play a large part in the withdrawal symptoms of at least a certain proportion of morphine addicts, there are grounds for the assumption that a drug having the properties of marihuana might be of aid in alleviating mental distress during the withdrawal period.

(10) [T]hose who have been smoking marijuana for a period of years showed no mental or physical deterioration which may be attributed to the drug. The final portion of the LaGuardia Committee's clinical analysis was a lengthy "Pharmacological Study,"” which constituted "a great step forward in the understanding of the relationship between chemical structure and pharmacological activity," according to one historical observer (Kalant, 1968:23): Nearly a century of research into the chemical constitution of Cannabis had resulted only in the isolation and partial characterization of one compound, cannabinol, and it was devoid of pharmacological activity.

” Solomon published most, but not all, of the LaGuardia Committee Report. While the pharmacological portion of the original report covered more than sixty pages, Solomon (1966:399401) chose to cover the material in about two pages of text.

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The sociological and clinical findings of the LaGuardia Committee Report were in direct opposition to the pronouncements trumpeted by the FBN and the Hearst publishing empire.

Critics were quick to denounce the

report's conclusions while others wholeheartedly supported them.

As described by Kalant (1968:19-20): Generally, those who are strongly opposed to the popular use of marihuana, particularly people involved in law enforcement have accused [the LaGuardia Committee Report] of being unscientific and socially harmful; those who are equally strongly in favor of freedom of use of the drug, have accepted it as their gospel. Kalant, who contends that "from a purely scientific

standpoint this study deserves neither the extravagant praise nor the vicious attacks to which it has been submitted," offers us this perspective of the LaGuardia Report: This document is unique and of particular interest in the field of the literature on Cannabis not so much because of its scope or contents, as because of the extreme reactions that its publication produced.... [R]eactions stem from the nature of the major conclusions drawn from the study, which tended to contradict the sensational and lurid claims in the popular press of the U.S.A. at that time.... Seen in the social and legal context prevailing at the time... these conclusions seemed to negate the very basis of the campaign against marihuana and could be considered as either courageous or reckless depending on the point of view adopted.

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From 1942-1945, an intellectual battle had been waged in the pages of scientific journals” concerning preliminary accounts of the clinical laboratory study and the final report itself, which was published in late 1944. Samuel Allentuck and Karl Bowman of the LaGuardia Committee summarized their preliminary findings in the American Journal of Psychiatry (99, 1942:248-250): Prolonged use of [marijuana] does not lead to physical, mental or moral degeneration, nor have we observed any permanent deleterious effects from its continued use. Quite the contrary, marihuana and its derivatives and allied synthetics have potentially valuable therapeutic applications which merit future investigation. Shortly after the LaGuardia Committee Report was released, a scathing editorial indictment appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (127, 1945:1129).

Because of the editorial’s "tone and content...

[and the] subsequent collaboration between Anslinger and [JAMA]," Bonnie and Whitebread (1974:201) "have little doubt that the words themselves are Anslinger’s": For many years, medical scientists have considered cannabis a dangerous drug. Nevertheless... on [a] narrow and thoroughly unscientific foundation, [the LaGuardia Committee] draws sweeping and inadequate conclusions which minimize the harmfulness of marihuana. Already the book has done harm. One investigator has described some tearful parents who brought their 16-year old son to a physician after he had been detected in the act of smoking marijuana. A ^Preliminary results and discussion of the clinical study were published in the Journal of Psvchiatrv 99 (1942). The Journal of the American Medical Association fJAMA) continued the discourse, and ultimately changed its editorial position over time, in volumes 120 (1942); 121 (1943); 124 and 125 (1944); and 127, 128 and 129 (1945).

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noticeable deterioration had been evident for some time even to their lay minds. The boy said he had read an account of the LaGuardia Committee Report, and that this was his justification for using marihuana. The book states unqualifiedly to the public that the use of this narcotic does not lead to physical, mental or moral degeneration and that permanent deleterious effects from its continued use were not observed in 77 [sic] prisoners. This statement has already done great damage to the cause of law enforcement. Public officials will do well to disregard this unscientific, uncritical study, and continue to regard marihuana as a menace wherever it is purveyed. Bonnie and Whitebread (1974:202) maintain that through the 1945 JAMA editorial, Anslinger succeeded in **forg[ing] a wedge between the AMA and the acknowledged experts" in the medical community who questioned the FBN's marijuana/crime thesis.

Thus, the LaGuardia Committee Report "sank quietly

into oblivion."”

^Himmelstein (1983:83-84) points to additional evidence which leads him to the conclusion that "the 1945 editorial bears the unmistakable mark of Anslinger." He notes (1983:95) that: "How the Bureau [of Narcotics] was able to control so decisively the AMA's official stance is unclear. I merely wish to show that it did." In addition, it is interesting to note that in 1937, when the Marihuana Tax Act was being considered by the House of Representatives' Committee on Ways and Means, Dr. William Woodward of the American Medical Association (AMA) testified about the language of a January 23, 1937 JAMA editiorial. The passage in question read, in part: "Closely allied with the opium traffic is the present situation with regard to Indian hemp, or marihuana. There is as yet no Federal legislation penalizing traffic in this drug." Dr. Woodward referred to the language of the editorial as "mirroring the picture of the opium traffic given by Mr. Anslinger" in the FBN's 1936 report: "Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs for the Year Ended December 31, 1935." When questioned if whether the JAMA editorial was "other than an editorial comment," Dr. Woodward replied: "In answer to that, I shall have to say, most certainly I can say, that no person of judgment reading that editorial would attribute it to any source other than Commissioner Anslinger's report" (U.S. House of Representatives, 1937:100-101).

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Reefer Madness Solidified The LaGuardia Committee Report shared the same fate as the Panama Canal Zone Military Investigations and the Indian Hemp Drug Commission Report in that these three scientific studies of cannabis have been all but forgotten over the years.

As a result, history has witnessed the Rise of

Reefer Madness in the U.S.A.

Its reign, as established by

the Marihuana Tax Act and solidified by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, remains entrenched to the present day. This chapter has traced marijuana's evolution over thousands of years of human history.

It specifically has

examined marijuana's alleged link to insanity and violence, a theme which became popular in the 1930s.

The subsequent

chapter shall explore the social origins of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

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CHAPTER 2 THE SOCIAL CONTROL HYPOTHESIS The social origins of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, the federal legislation whereby cannabis became criminalized in the United States, remain shrouded in mystery.

Until the

1960s, the passage of the Act generated little academic interest or discussion, and although the social origins of the law have since been examined, there is a lack of consensus among sociologists and historians of how and why the federal prohibition on marijuana came to be enacted in the U.S.

This chapter aims to put forth a more precise

explanation of the social forces that lay behind the criminalization of cannabis in the United States. Historians and sociologists have claimed that the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act came about due to two competing theories which have been referred to by Himmelstein (1983) as the "Anslinger Hypothesis" and the "Mexican Hypothesis."

Scant evidence exists, however, to

support either theory. The "Anslinger Hypothesis," first put forth by Howard Becker (1963), posits that a federal bureaucrat was responsible for the national prohibition of marijuana.

This

hypothesis holds that an individual's sense of moral outrage 34

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against marijuana became manifested as a bureaucratic crusade.

Moreover, this crusade was driven by the pragmatic

need of the bureaucracy (the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, forerunner of today's Drug Enforcement Administration) to expand and perpetuate itself. The "Mexican Hypothesis" asserts that the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was prompted to support national anti­ marijuana legislation due to local pressures exerted by western and southwestern states.

It holds that anti-Mexican

sentiment in communities in such states as Colorado and Texas was exacerbated by the fact that crime and violence attributed to Mexicans and Mexican Americans there were causally linked to marijuana.

The image of marijuana as

"killer weed" and "loco weed" ("loco" meaning "crazy" in Spanish) thus emerged. By synthesizing the "Anslinger Hypothesis" and the "Mexican Hypothesis," this dissertation formulates a new theory which explains the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act; the "Social Control Hypothesis."

It additionally examines

another existing theory that seeks to explain the social origins of federal cannabis prohibition in the United States: the "Du Pont Hypothesis."

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Historical Background When John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency of the United States in 1961, he retained three holdovers from the Eisenhower Administration:

Allen Dulles at the Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA), J. Edgar Hoover at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Harry Anslinger at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).

While Dulles and Hoover

are well-known historical figures whose deeds and exploits have been well-chronicled, Anslinger in comparison is a relatively obscure entity. Harry Anslinger was to the FBN what J. Edgar Hoover was to the FBI.

Anslinger*s World War I intelligence work paved

the way for his federal career in Washington: he ascended to the number two position in the Prohibition Unit of the U.S. Treasury Department before being appointed by President Herbert Hoover in 1930 as the first Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. As the nation's first "drug czar," Anslinger shaped and directed the federal government's campaigns against the illicit substances of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana.” Harry Anslinger consistently fought and sought: he fought the concept of treating addiction as a medical problem, and he sought harsher prison sentences for those ^Stanley Meisler's February 20, 1960 article in The Nation. "Federal Narcotics Czar, Zeal Without Insight," does a good job of chronicling Anslinger's career and demonstrating how his personal philosophy on drugs guided not only the FBN, but Congress and the nation as a whole.

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convicted of violating U.S. drug laws.

More than any other

person, Anslinger was responsible for the development of U.S. drug control policies of the I930s-I950s; policies which have carried over to the present day.

Largely through

his efforts, the United States has pursued a drug policy which is based not on a public health perspective, but instead on a crime and punishment approach. Why, one may ask, would the Kennedy Administration retain the old fossil Anslinger while shaping its image of the "New Frontier"?

The answer, perhaps, can be found in

the words of Harry himself, in which he describes his relationship with Attorney General Robert Kennedy (DeMott, 1962:48): Bob called me right in after he took office. He said he got more help during that labor-rackets investigation of his from the Narcotics people than from anyone else in any department.... I've got a book on the Mafia. No a secret book. I gave a copy to Bob but I couldn't to anybody else. No, I couldn't give it to [J. Edgar] Hoover. I just wouldn't risk it. Yet less than two years after gaining office. President Kennedy accepted Anslinger's resignation.

In 1962,

Anslinger "was unthroned somewhat brusquely..., and his Bureau itself survived only a few more years."

According to

Rufus King (1972:229-239), Anslinger was axed by the Kennedys as part of their ongoing war with Richard Nixon: Ironically [Anslinger's] nemesis was the very phenomenon which had made him so powerful for so many years — the irresistible attractiveness of drug issues to politicians when they find themselves shy of better things to talk about.

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Pat Brown, then the governor of California and a strong Kennedy supporter in the i960 presidential election, was bracing for a gubernatorial challenge from Nixon.

Brown,

who was accused of being "soft" on drug offenders, convinced the White House to convene a conference which ultimately served to support Brown's California method of treating drug offenders through "lengthy and extensive parole supervision." Not coincidentally, approximately one month prior to the September, 1962 White House Conference on Narcotic and Drug Abuse, a new FBN director assumed office.

Anslinger

continued in his post as the U.S. representative to the United Nations' Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which was established -at Anslinger's behest- just after the end of World War II, and he attended the White House Conference in his U.N. capacity.

In that Anslinger's remarks take up less

than three pages of the over three hundred page report of the proceedings, it is clear that the once dominant star of yesteryear's drug czar, which had risen in 1930, was indeed setting by 1962. had passed.

A virtually unknown era of U.S. history

In this dissertation's pages, that unknown

history will be explored.

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The Criminology of Reefer Madness Criminology, a sub-section of the larger discipline of sociology, is the scientific study of crime.

It is an

enterprise which rests on both a theoretical foundation and the application of the scientific method.

To date, the

field has produced little of value in regards to expanding our knowledge of the social origins of the federal prohibition of cannabis in the United States. In his book Hustlers. Beats and Others. Ned Polsky (1967) put forth an undeveloped theory of how marijuana use spread in the United States.

Polsky's work, which

emphasizes the importance of studying criminals in their natural habitat (1967:117-149), emanates from the tradition of the University of Chicago's "Chicago School" of urban sociology and can be seen as an extension of William Whyte's Street c o m e r Societv (1943). Polsky argues in his book that the ultimate qualitative task of criminologists is "providing well-rounded contemporary, sociological descriptions and analyses of criminal lifestyles, subcultures, and their relation to larger social processes and structures."

Yet, wrote the

historian and prophet Polsky nearly thirty years ago, this "is just where criminology falls flat on its face" (1967:122).

Polsky thus attempted to fulfill his

sociological quest by focusing on "the hustler" who plays pool, and on the beatnik who smokes pot.

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In delving into the micro in an attempt to explain the macro, Polsky provided us with a chart, entitled "The Spread of Marihuana Use in America" (1967:172-173).

Other than

providing us with a sketchy diagram, Polsky really does not explain how marijuana use spread throughout the U.S.; he devotes a mere paragraph of his text to what his diagram states is "Culture Contact, Differential Association, and Subcultural Diffusion." By implication, however, he combines elements of two benchmark criminological theories: Clifford Shaw's and Henry McKay's Social Disorganization theory (also known as Cultural Transmission), and Edwin Sutherland's theory of Differential Association. Sutherland's theory of Differential Association (1939) can be reduced to the axiom that "crime is learned." Criminal behavior is learned through association, presumably with deviants or criminals who are "different" from non-criminals.

In focusing on how criminal attitudes and

behavior are transmitted in society, "differential association may vary in frequency, duration, priority and intensity."

Sutherland's theory is unique in the

criminological literature in that it can be applied to persons from all social strata; it explains insider trading on the stock exchange as easily as it explains shoplifting. Shaw and McKay's theory of Social Disorganization (1931), like virtually all positivistic criminological

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theories, focuses on lower-class crime. Using official arrest statistics in the city of Chicago, the theory sought to explain juvenile delinquency by mapping delinquency rates in relation to specific neighborhood characteristics. Researchers sought to distinguish between high and low delinquency areas by observing individuals in their everyday, natural environments. In specifically examining the "beat" (beatnik) culture, Polsky followed in the footsteps of Howard Becker's classic study of marijuana users (1963).

It is in this work that

Becker became the first proponent of the "Anslinger Hypothesis," a subject we shall now examine.

The Anslinger Hvpothesis The "Anslinger Hypothesis" (Himmelstein, 1983:24) "argues that the FBN, acting on its own initiative, turned marihuana use into a public issue and procured passage of the Marihuana Tax Act."

In christening

Anslinger a "moral

entrepreneur," Becker theorized that the activities of a "moral crusader," such as Anslinger, "can properly be called moral enterprise, for what [he is] enterprising about is the creation of a new fragment of the moral constitution of society, its code of right and wrong" (1963:145-148). For years, Becker's moral entrepreneur analysis was accepted without question as the definitive sociological work which explained the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

Today,

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it remains the primary model used to analyze why marijuana was outlawed by the federal government of the U.S.A.

Yet

Becker admittedly was not concerned with Anslinger's motives in seeking anti-marijuana legislation (1963:138): While it is, of course, difficult to know what the motives of Bureau [FBN] officials were, we need assume no more than that they perceived an area of wrongdoing that properly belonged in their jurisdiction and moved to put it there. However, others who ascribed to the Anslinger Hypothesis, such as Lindesmith (1965), Solomon (1966), Kaplan (1970) and Grinspoon (1971), were concerned with the motives of Anslinger and the FBN.

Dickson (1968) attempted

to expand and improve Becker's notion of the "moral entrepreneur" by examining the FBN as an organizational bureaucracy.

Wrote Dickson (1968:152):

What Becker ignores is that Anslinger was also a bureaucrat and thus responsive to bureaucratic pressures and demands as well. The distinction between these roles is difficult to make but it is fundamental in analyzing the legislation. In 1936, through the Secret Service Reorganization Act, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. sought to create a law enforcement "super agency" which would rival J. Edgar Hoover's FBI (McWilliams, 1990:89-91).

Anslinger

opposed the FBN being absorbed by other agencies, and he mobilized his "army" to testify in Congress against the bill.

Thereafter, President Roosevelt announced that he had

abandoned the Treasury reorganization plan.

Anslinger, the

bureaucrat, had survived.

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Within a year, the Marihuana Tax Act was introduced and it was soon passed with a minimum of opposition.

Through

it, according to King (1972:75), Anslinger sought to "attract favorable notice" which would "put [him] back in the limelight on Capitol Hill." The two "entrepreneur" theories, Becker's "moral" and Dickson's "bureaucratic," may be viewed as two sides of the same coin.

On each side of the coin, the image of Harry

Anslinger is imprinted.

Whether the theory is that of

Becker, Dickson, or other proponents of the Anslinger Hypothesis, in Himmelstein's view (1983: 25-27) they all fall short in adequately explaining the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937: The Anslinger Hypothesis ... remains primarily a description of the FBN's actions; it offers no convincing explanations. Its assumptions, moreover, remain unexamined by most of its proponents. In formulating this position, Himmelstein drew upon the work of Galliher and Walker (1977:369), who critiqued previous sociological versions of the Anslinger Hypothesis: Becker, Lindesmith, and Reasons see a national marihuana panic created by FBN propaganda which propelled the legislation through Congress. Dickson finds this panic to be a result of a FBN propaganda effort designed to increase the scope and power of the Bureau after the bill's passage. Musto finds a marihuana crisis prior to the bill's passage but one localized in the Southwest and not a result of Bureau propaganda. Bonnie and Whitebread see evidence of FBN propaganda but no national marihuana crisis.

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Galliher and Walker (1977 and 1978) provide a convincing and excellent case for sociological "systematic research error" regarding the Marihuana Tax Act and the FBN. They have demonstrated how a fact (in this case the Anslinger Hypothesis) can remain unchallenged, be accepted as truth, and be perpetuated for years despite the lack of evidence to support the original claim.

Galliher and Walker

have revealed that Becker's notion of the moral entrepreneur, which was accepted without question for fifteen years as the explanation of why the federal prohibition of marijuana came about, was a shallow and unsubstantiated argument.

In essence, they revealed the

nakedness of Becker's theory by stripping off its clothes. Yet the weakness in the work of Galliher and Walker is that they offered no alternate hypothesis of their own to account for the federal prohibition of marijuana.

Although

they successfully stood Becker's theory on its head, they failed to fill the theoretical void which they created. Instead, they pointed to the Mexican Hypothesis, which was rooted in anti-Mexican racism within the U.S., to suggest why the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was enacted.

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The Mexican Hypothesis

The "Mexican Hypothesis," like the "Anslinger Hypothesis," is a term coined by Himmelstein (1983:27-30). First put forth by Musto (1972 and 1973: 218-229 and 244245), and expanded upon by Helmer (1975), this thesis posits that the FBN did not seek a national anti-marijuana law, but only responded to political pressure which emanated from anti-Mexican sentiment in western and southwestern states. The battle cry to criminalize marijuana in the U.S. was first emitted in El Paso, Texas, and resulted in a recommendation that "loco weed" be included in the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914.

Thereafter, from 1914 to 1931, twenty

nine states prohibited the use of marijuana for non-medical purposes (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:51).

Federal

legislation against marijuana was not instituted, however, until 1937: seven full years after Anslinger was appointed director of the FBN. As exemplified by a 1236 letter from the city editor of an Alamosa, Colorado newspaper, Musto claims (1972:105 and 1973: 2 2 3 ) that Anslinger and the FBN were pushed into lobbying for the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

However,

Musto's evidence to support his claim — which essentially consists of a few letters, a few newspaper articles, and Anslinger's own statements—

is quite thin.

’^Also see p. 32 of the 1937 Taxation of Marihuana Hearings before the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives.

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Musto concludes his Marihuana Tax Act argument by stating (1972:107); From the evidence exêu&ined, the FBN does not appear to have created the marihuana scare of the early 1930s nor can the law be simply ascribed to the Commissioner's determined will. Such scapegoating offers no more than it did in the era when marihuana was blamed for almost any vicious crime. Ironically, according to Musto, his explanation of the origins of the Marihuana Tax Act was shaped in large part by an interview he conducted with Anslinger in 1970 (1973: 329) In that Musto's alternate theory to the Anslinger Hypothesis, which has gained popularity over the years, relies primarily on Anslinger's own word, it can be argued that the Mexican Hypothesis represents yet another case of systematic research error. Helmer (1975:55) accepts Musto's claim that the federal ban on marijuana "was a response to growing political pressure from the Southwest," and he thereafter extends Musto's brief introduction (1973:219-220) of the concept of surplus value (i.e., surplus labor) into the anti-Mexican equation. As documented by Carey McWilliams (1939), Mexicans and Mexican Americans who toiled in the agricultural "factories

’®Musto stated to me in a telephone interview on July 14, 1992 that he promised Anslinger that he (Musto) would never release a transcript of their 1970 interview to anyone. Thus, the original source of the Anslinger/Musto claim of "pressure" from the Southwest cannot be further examined.

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in the field" of the 1930s were exploited laborers.

In

1930, when Mexicans were seen as "the ideal answer to the state's agricultural needs," California's conservative governor recognized that (Daniels and Kitano, 1969:70): [the Mexican]... does tasks that white workers will not or cannot do [and] works— under conditions that are often too trying for white workers. By 1930, California's power elite viewed the Mexican and Mexican-American agricultural worker as; A docile steady laborer who "knew his place"; a laborer who could be replaced easily; a laborer who neither created serious international problems nor raised the hackles of organized labor. According to Helmer, with the onset of the Great Depression,’’ Mexican laborers were no longer seen as an ideal work force, but as an economic threat to the white majority.

Helmer contends (1975:57 and 74-75) that

marijuana laws were selectively enforced against Mexican laborers as part of "a struggle for a diminishing number of jobs in the unskilled sector and at declining wage standards." This theory holds that once the Mexican and Mexican American agricultural workers became expendable, marijuana laws in the U.S. were used as a means of exerting social control over this population.

Explains Morgan (1978:66):

’’Historians generally mark the beginning of the Great Depression with the stock market crash of October 1929 and its end with the U.S.' entrance into World War II.

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The Mexican immigrant ...was not the object of a marijuana scare until after their [sic] value as surplus farm labor had been exhausted. Helmer (1975:74) likens the plight of 1930s Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles to the earlier U.S. opium exclusion efforts which were waged against Chinese workers: Jail on drug or other charges, or repatriation by force or choice - these were the methods adopted for reducing the Mexican labor surplus in the city where surplus... was the fundamental economic threat. The situation was thus similar to the opium and Chinese exclusion campaign 50 years earlier. Then, as now, the use of a "narcotic" drug was one of many personal and social vices of the target group; Mexicans were lazy, dirty, promiscuous, violent, subintelligent, criminal, anarchistic, communistic - and intoxicated with marijuana. On the basis of citing a 1930 presidential Wickersham Commission statement:

"Mexicans in the United States, both

aliens and citizens, are frequently subjected to severe and unequal treatment by those who administer the laws,"

Helmer

concludes (1975:73) that the: pattern of enforcement of the law against the Mexicans must be understood as an essential ingredient of public policy toward their very existence in the city. Helmer's thesis is further explained by liyama, Nishi and Johnson (1976:12): Although they had been a significant part of the agricultural work force in the Southwest for several decades, it was not until the Depression years of the 1930s that Mexican Americans became surplus labor. At this time campaigns for restricting their immigration and encouraging their deportation were launched in full scale in a movement spearheaded by the American Federation of Labor. It was in this context that Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937, under heavy onslaught from local political leaders who... often cited fears of violent crimes which would be caused by marijuana use among Mexican Americans.

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Although it is clear that the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was a child of the Depression, I maintain, as have Himmelstein (1983) and Morgan (1990) before me, that support for Helmer's argument is lacking.

Through research I have

conducted, no evidence to support the Mexican Hypothesis could be found.2° That racist anti-Mexican sentiment played a role in the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act is undisputed.

What I take

issue with is the Anslinger/ Musto contention that "Southwestern police and prosecuting attorneys... protested constantly to the federal government about the Mexicans' use of the weed," (Musto, 1973:220) thus resulting in the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act. In refuting the Mexican Hypothesis, Himmelstein (1983:28-29) states that an "important relationship" has been identified, but that its nature has been "misconstrued."

Himmelstein argues that Musto and Helmer

fall short in documenting four points:

^°In an exhaustive search of the National Archive record groups for the FBN and the U.S. Departments of Treasury and Justice, I could find absolutely no correspondence or documents to suggest that such pressure existed. An analysis of that research, perhaps to be entitled "Searching for the Mexican Hypothesis," will be published separately as a forthcoming article.

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(1)

that the fear of marijuana was substantial in California of the early 1930s,

(2)

that there was a rise in marijuana arrests at the time,

(3)

that a broad coalition of anti-Mexican forces as related to the marijuana issue emerged, and

(4)

that significant direct evidence of local pressure on the federal government existed.

Himmelstein (1983:142) summarizes his position: The Mexican Hypothesis fails because it rests upon too simple a notion of the relationship between the social class of the user and the legal status of the drug - a flaw it shares with much of the drug control literature.... In other words, it does not appreciate the importance of ideology. Likewise, Morgan (1990:235-236) states that "contrary to the arguments raised by Helmer and Musto, the Mexican "anti-drug" crusade of the late 1930s actually had little basis in fact during the preceding two decades."

The FBN's

"anti-Mexican crusade," she concludes (1990:249): was engineered... in the mid-1930s for reasons that had little to do with the Mexican population in the Southwest or marijuana for that matter. Morgan takes us up a precipice, however, that leads nowhere.

Instead, she points us in the vague direction of

social control (1990:249), a subject that we shall next examine.

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Drug Control and Social Control Social control takes many forms.

A general definition

of social control offered by Stan Cohen (1985:2-3) includes: "all social processes to induce conformity... ranging from infant socialization to public executions."

In its most

totalitarian state, it is manifested through fascist dictatorships, such as in Nazi Germany.

In its most

invisible state, television may subliminally influence our behavior.

Social control can be informal, through such

vehicles as culture and the family, or it can be formal, through such institutions and mechanisms as courts, police and prisons. The term "drug control" refers to efforts by governments to control the consumption, manufacture, importation, sales and distribution of psychoactive substances.

U.S. drug control policies today may be viewed

as a stool which historically has been supported by three legs: the Harrison Narcotic Act, which federally outlawed opium, heroin and cocaine as of 1914; the Volstead Act, which prohibited alcohol from 1920-1933; and the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. Together, these three drug control laws: the Harrison Narcotic Act, the Volstead Act, and the Marihuana Tax Act, form the foundation upon which current U.S. drug policies are based.

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Similarly, the social control of illicit drugs in the U.S. today can be seen as resting upon the tripartite foundation of marijuana, cocaine and heroin.

The social

control of marijuana in the United States, although distinct and separate from that of heroin and cocaine, is intertwined with its brother and sister drugs. Anti-drug laws, such as the Harrison Narcotic Act, the Volstead Act and the Marihuana Tax Act, represent formal means of social control.

"In each instance," writes Musto

(1987:244-245) "use of a particular drug was attributed to an identifiable and threatening minority group." Certain drugs were dreaded because they seemed to undermine essential social restrictions which kept these groups under control: cocaine was supposed to enable blacks to withstand bullets which would kill normal persons and to stimulate sexual assault. Fear that smoking opium facilitated sexual contact between Chinese and white Americans was also a factor in its total prohibition. Chicanos in the Southwest were believed to be incited to violence by smoking marihuana. Heroin was linked in the 1920s with a turbulent age-group: adolescents in reckless and promiscuous urban gangs. Alcohol was associated with immigrants crowding into large and corrupt cities. Supporters of the Alcohol Prohibition campaign in the U.S., which had been building since 1840, saw the struggle as a defense of their "way of life."

The dominant culture,

comprised of largely rural Protestants, associated the drug with Irish Catholics, German Lutherans and other "alien" cultures (Gusfield, 1986:50-51,55-57,101-102,123-124). Meanwhile, since the mid-1850s, opium was symbolically associated with the Chinese, "who were actively persecuted.

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especially on the West Coast" (Musto, 1973:3).

As of 1883,

the U.S. Congress passed its first anti-opium legislation, and in 1887, Congress enacted a federal prohibition on the importation of opium by Chinese.

In 1890, a federal law

which "limited the manufacture of smoking opium to U.S. citizens" was passed, and in 1909, a total federal prohibition on the importation of smoking opium was put into place (Brecher, 1972:44). Musto documents that as of 1898 in the U.S. South, white "fear of the cocainized black coincided with the peak of lynchings, legal segregation, and voting laws all designed to remove political and social power" from citizens O f African descent (1973:7 and 282-283).

One of the most terrifying beliefs about cocaine was that it actually improved pistol marksmanship. Another myth, that cocaine made blacks almost unaffected by mere .32 caliber bullets, is said to have caused southern police departments to switch to .38 caliber revolvers. These fantasies characterized white fear, not the reality of cocaine's effects, and gave one more reason for the repression of blacks. Patricia Morgan writes that drug wars over the past 150 years have been "concerned less with drugs than with the population perceived to be the principal users" (1990:233). Unlike any other western industrialized country, the United States seems to have developed a drug war culture [which utilizes] the illicit use of drugs as a crusading mechanism not so much against the drugs themselves, but for other political, economic, or cultural reasons. That this is an element of social control goes without question.

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The Ideology of the Marihuana Tax Act Himmelstein's explanation of the criminalization of marijuana in the United States varies from those who preceded him in researching the Marihuana Tax Act.

His

theory is unique in that it combines elements of both the Anslinger Hypothesis and the Mexican Hypothesis. Himmelstein maintains that local pressure did not serve as the impetus which resulted in the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act.

Instead, his premise is that Anslinger

exploited prevalent anti-Mexican sentiment in the U.S., along with the image of "killer weed," to create an ideology which served the FBN's own devices.

Public discussion of

marijuana was thereafter framed on the basis of its association with violence, madness, mayhem and murder (1983:29): Because Mexican laborers and other lower-class groups were identified as typical marihuana users, the drug was believed to cause the kinds of anti-social behavior associated with these groups, especially violent crime. This led to a particular image of marihuana as a "killer weed," which was then used to justify... the Marihuana Tax Act. The ideology that Himmelstein speaks of, which essentially equates the drug with the devil, is exemplified by an Anslinger quote contained in the April 12, 1937 Washington Herald (Walker, 1989:106): If the hideous monster Frankenstein came face to face with the monster Marihuana, he would drop dead of fright.

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Two weeks later, at the Hearings on the Marihuana Taxing Bill before the House of Representatives' Committee on Ways and Means, Anslinger compared marijuana to opium (April 27, 1937:19): In medical schools the physician-to-be is taught that without opium medicine would a one-armed man. This is true, because you cannot get along without opium. But here we have a drug that is not like opium. Opium has all of the good of Dr. Jekyll and all the evil of Mr. Hyde. This drug [marijuana] is entirely the monster Hyde, the harmful effect of which cannot be measured. Himmelstein considers his explanation of why the Marihuana Tax Act came into existence to be a convergence between the competing Anslinger and Mexican hypotheses (1983:30): Since the proponents of the Anslinger Hypothesis have not developed an effective theory of whv the [FBN] acted as and when it did and the advocates of the Mexican Hypothesis have failed to show that local pressure pushed the bureau into seeking a national law, the basic questions about the [origins of the] Marihuana Tax Act... remain unanswered.... FAIlthouah the Mexican Hvpothesis was developed as a rebuttal to the Anslinger Hypothesis. the intellectual impulses underlying the two are not necessarily contradictory. (Emphasis added.) Himmelstein demonstrates that the two explanations which seek to explain the origins of the Marihuana Tax Act are not necessarily at odds with one another.

Himmelstein's

synthesis of the Anslinger and Mexican hypotheses are encompassed in what may be referred to as the "Social Control Hypothesis."

^’The term "Social Control Hypothesis" is the author's own creation (Eisner, 1994), not that of Himmelstein.

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The Social Control Hypothesis In the aftermath of the alcohol Prohibition Era (19201933), the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 did not represent an end in itself, but a beginning.

The Marihuana Tax Act

enabled the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to articulate and formulate U.S. drug control policies in a method which clearly defined the enemy. For decades to come, on the ideological foundation which was popularized through the Marihuana Tax Act, a war could be waged not only against the illicit substance of cannabis and its users, but on the brother and sister evils of heroin and cocaine as well.

Through the eyes of Harry J.

Anslinger, opium trafficking could be blamed on Communist ("Red") China, and domestic marijuana users, such as jazz musicians, could be seen as potential subversives who were targeted for surveillance.^ The beauty of the Social Control Hypothesis is two­ fold: it allows the Marihuana Tax Act to be seen in the larger context of U.S. drug control policies, and it enables drug control to be seen in the larger realm of social control.

^^The anti-jazz campaign of Anslinger and the FBN (Abel, 1980: 214-222, Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:182-186, McWilliams, 1990:99-100, and Sloman, 1979:133-151) is discussed in depth within Chapter 3.

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In formulating the Social Control Hypothesis, this dissertation specifically addresses how, through the estcüDlishment of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, the United States government could exert its influence and establish its political dominance both domestically and abroad.

In

viewing drug control as social control, U.S. drug control laws can be seen as having served two objectives: (1)

they have been used for the purpose of ensuring domestic social control by the dominant culture over ethnic and cultural minorities; and

(2)

they have been used for the purpose of extending and solidifying U.S. political hegemony in other nations throughout the globe.

Although a number of scholars have conducted research on the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, virtually none, with the exception of Alan Block and John McWilliams, have addressed the role of the FBN as other than a law enforcement agency with the sole purpose of drug control.

Therefore, the

political objectives of Anslinger and the FBN have, to a great extent, been ignored.

McWilliams and Block (1989:354

and 368) thus criticize historians and criminologists for their: disturbing tendency to concentrate on Anslinger solely as an anti-marijuana zealot, or as a "Neanderthal right-winger." ...[They] have neglected or misunderstood the bureau's agents' full range of diverse activities, preferring to focus on the more obvious and traditional drug enforcement role. Without stating it as such, historian William 0. Walker III (1989:107 and 116-117) summarizes the Social Control Hypothesis:

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These forces [which brought about the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937] resulted in a bureaucratic atmosphere which can only be described as one in which the [FBN] under the direction of Harry J. Anslinger possessed hegemony over the development and direction of domestic drug policy.... [T]he presence of the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act served three general purposes: [1]

it perpetuated the existence of an already wellestablished federal drug law enforcement bureaucracy;

[2]

it extended in the guise of liberal reform a continuing, repressive form of social control whose propriety would not soon be challenged; and

[3]

it supported the formulation and execution of a foreign policy consistent with the domestic drug control objectives of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

While the Federal Bureau of Narcotics evolved into the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) and later into the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Social Control Hypothesis evolved with it.

As stated by Jonathan

Marshall (1987:138): The ideology of drug control has become a front, and the apparatus of enforcement a tool, for counterinsurgency. Cold War propaganda wars, and covert action campaigns in the Third World. On the heels of the U.S.’ December 1989 invasion of Panama, and the January 1990 surrender to the DEA of accused cocaine-trafficking Panamanian President Manuel Noriega, three authors: Marshall (Drug Wars. 1991), Scott and Marshall [Cocaine Politics. 1991) and McCoy [The Politics of Heroin. 1991) have published books that demonstrate how U.S. drug control policies over the years have clearly served to support larger foreign policy concerns.

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In The Politics of Heroin, "a completely revised and expanded edition" of his original The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (1972), Alfred McCoy has documented "CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade," including extensive agency involvement with the commodities of opium, heroin and cocaine.

In regards to the historical origins of the Social

Control Hypothesis, McCoy states in his book's Introduction (1991:16): Absorbed in domestic drug control, Anslinger did not assign FBN agents abroad before [World War II], and instead relied on the League of Nations or liaisons with foreign police. After the war, writes McCoy, Anslinger lent his agents to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor of the CIA, "thereby setting a postwar pattern of cross­ fertilization between the two agencies." While not disputing that the FBN and the OSS did in fact collaborate after and

the war, McWilliams and Block (1989

1990) contend that prior to both

the war and the

creation of the OSS, the FBN operated as a clandestine, overseas counterintelligence agency.

The FBN, they claim,

actually served as the prototype for the OSS.

The authors

conclude their latter article by stating (1990:187): What must be stressed is the discovery of the FBN as a secret intelligence agency participating in clandestine programs totally unrelated to narcotics enforcement.... An accurate understanding of the real nature and organization of the FBN reveals several policy-makers posing as law enforcers while engaging in classified and controversial activities affecting American foreign affairs.

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Central to the role of FBN as a counterintelligence agency is Anslinger's connection, in the intervening years between World Wars I and II, with the "intelligence subculture": "a secret group of individuals who believed that peacetime intelligence was important" (1989:356). Access to the "subculture" was provided to the first FBN director by his immediate superior, the powerful industrialist and Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon.^ McWilliams (1990:15) informs us that: At least three of the FBN's top agents were on loan to the OSS in the 1940s and continued to perform classified chores for the CIA, yet they remain relatively unknown and obscure. They were involved for years in international activities with the full knowledge and approval of their boss. Consequently, the relationship among the FBN, the CIA, and the OSS is critical in ascertaining the role of Harry Anslinger as intelligence gatherer. Unfortunately, the details of those projects may remain buried in the files of their respective agencies; they are not immediately available, but the existing evidence is worth investigating. The relationship between Anslinger and Mellon merits deeper analysis and shall be examined further within the context of an additional theory which seel:s to explain the Marihuana Tax Act: "the Du Pont Hypothesis."^*

^As documented by McWilliams (1990:15), members of Mellon's immediate family, including his son-in-law David Bruce, "the well-known Chief of Station (COS) in London," served in the OSS. ^*The "Du Pont Hypothesis" is the author's term (Eisner, 1994).

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The Du Pont Hypothesis An extension of Becker's and Dickson's notions of the moral and the bureaucratic entrepreneur may be applied to the "Du Pont Hypothesis," which is simply entrepreneurship in its rawest form.

Very little has been written of the Du

Pont Hypothesis, which posits that the industrialist billionaire Du Pont family and its corporate interests worked behind the scenes to secure the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. According to Herer (1990), the Du Pont Corporation sought to outlaw hemp, or the entire marijuana plant (as opposed to its smokable leaves).

For centuries, hemp has

been used to create products such as clothing, paper and rope.

Herer theorizes (1990:6 and 22) that by successfully

prohibiting the use of hemp for industrial purposes in the U.S., the Du Pont Corporation

created a situation whereby

two of its new products could be marketed: a new sulfuricacid process for wood pulp paper, which would replace paper made from hemp; and nylon, a new synthetic product referred to as "plastic fibers," which would replace hemp cloth and rope.

The corporate body of the Du Pont family thus engaged

in "a conspiracy to wipe out the natural competition." Although Herer provides us with little documentation to support his hypothesis, further research that I have conducted cannot refute this theory.

In fact, my research

establishes that links among the alleged conspirators did

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exist.

Just as Himmelstein has shown that the underlying

impulses of the Mexican and the Anslinger Hypotheses are not necessarily contradictory, it is my intention to demonstrate here that the Du Pont Hypothesis and the Social Control Hypothesis are likewise not necessarily at odds. Besides the Du Ponts, according to Herer, the conspiracy to outlaw marijuana on the federal level involved other influential players.

They were:

William Randolph

Hearst, the powerful newspaper publisher; Andrew Mellon, the banker and financier of the billionaire Mellon family; and Harry Anslinger, director of the FBN. According to Herer, Hearst stood to gain financially through utilizing timber acreage (as opposed to hemp) for his Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division.

As Mellon and his

Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh reportedly were Du Pont's chief financial backers, the Mellon fortune was tied to that of the Du Ponts. Anslinger enters the picture not as a moral entrepreneur "enterprising about... the creation of a new fragment of the moral constitution of society, its code of right and wrong" (Becker, 1963:145), but as the husband of Mellon's niece, the former Martha Denniston (Sloman, 1979: 40).

Uncle Andrew, who was Secretary of the Treasury from

1921-1932, appointed Anslinger as the Acting Commissioner of

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the FBN in 1930.^

(Two months later. President Hoover

officially appointed Anslinger Chief of the Bureau of Narcotics.) The conspiracy comes full circle in light of the relationship between Hearst and A n s l i n g e r . T h e role Hearst played in Anslinger's appointment as FBN director is documented by Musto (1973:209), who obtained his information in his 1970 interview with Anslinger: [Anslinger's] patriotism and his belief in the menace of certain foreign ideologies, such as Communism, gained ..., in Anslinger's opinion, the crucial support of William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was widely known for promoting racist views in his San Francisco-based newspaper chain.

His anti-Chinese

and anti-Asian sentiments were embodied by his newspapers' use of the term "the yellow peril."

His tirades against

Hispanic people in relation to the 1898 Spanish American War and the Mexican Revolution (1911-1914) are legendary, and he expanded that anti-Latino rhetoric to include Mexican and Mexican American laborers in the U.S.

Headlines of Hearst's

^Musto told me in our July 14, 1992 interview that Anslinger denied to him that he was related to Mellon. In a technical sense this may be true, for he was related to Mellon through marriage. ^^he subject of the Hearst/Anslinger relationship merits a separate study in itself, as stated by Bonnie and Whitebread within a footnote in their otherwise definitive book (1974:320): "Someone should do a study on the activity of the Hearst papers on the drug front during the formative years."

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publications linked vices and minorities:

Chinese with

opium, blacks with cocaine, and Mexicans with marijuana. Hearst used Anslinger and Anslinger used Hearst. Together they successfully framed the image of drug use within the U.S. in the context of violence, insanity and racial minorities.

Thus, in 1937, when the Lawyers

Legislative League of America "moved to end the deadly narcotic menace of marihuana cigarettes" by agreeing "to sponsor Federal legislation outlawing the weed," they also passed a unanimous resolution which commended William Randolph Hearst and the Hearst newspapers "for pioneering the national fight against dope" (Silver,1979:276). Becker writes (1963:145-146) that: [w)henever rules are created and applied ... we should expect to find people ... using the available media of communication to develop a favorable climate of opinion. Where they do not develop such support, we may expect to find their enterprise unsuccessful. We can apply Becker's theorem not only to the Hearst/ Anslinger newsprint relationship, but also to two altogether different forms of media by which ideas are conveyed to the public through popular culture.

Music, in this case

specifically jazz music of the 1930s, shall be examined in Chapter 3, and Chapter 4 shall explore the motion picture industry. ^^Mustc related to me (July 14, 1992 interview) that according to Anslinger, Hearst purportedly personally wrote all of his newspapers' editorials on drugs. Anslinger, according to Musto, "was astounded that Hearst would be involved in something so grubby."

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Reefer Madness Reformulated This chapter has examined four theories that seek to explain why the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was enacted: the Anslinger Hypothesis, the Mexican Hypothesis, the Du Pont Hypothesis, and the Social Control Hypothesis.

Of the four,

the Social Control Hypothesis stands alone in offering an all-encompassing explanation of why the federal prohibition against cannabis came to be instituted. Since 1914, despite the failure of

alcohol

prohibition, the prohibition model has been dominant in the U.S. "war" that has been waged against heroin, cocaine and cannabis.

Upon the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of

1937, the United States has utilized the issue of international and domestic drug control to maintain its hegemony abroad while stifling internal dissent at home. No clearer example of the latter form of social control is more evident than the campaign waged by the FBN against jazz musicians and jazz music, a subject the next chapter shall address.

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CHAPTER 3 REEFER BLUES Jazz is a unique form of music which originated in the United States and evolved from "the blues."

As slaves

toiled in the cotton, tobacco and agricultural fields of the South, the blues emerged as a musical byproduct of forced labor.

The blues were thus born in slavery, and jazz was

-and is- its offspring. Detached from their homeland, the chants and work songs of captured West Africans came to reflect their lives in captivity.

As the sons and daughters of Africa grew up

enslaved in a foreign society, the lyrics of their work songs were sung not in their native or ancestral tongues, but in English. After black slaves in the United States were declared to be free by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, the blues took on a new life.

The post-Civil War blues, steeped

in a new economic form of exploitation, gave a musical voice to the sweat, blood and toil of ex-slaves, who now, as field hands and farmers, could be likened to serfs laboring in a quasi-feudalistic society.

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Jazz has been described as instrumental blues.

Jazz

evolved as wordless music, and the feelings evoked by it cannot be discussed in any meaningful fashion by the literary word.

We can look at sheet music and follow the

notes, but the essence of the music itself: how the sounds of the trumpet, the clarinet, the saxophone and the piano blend together and crescendo, cannot be captured on paper. Jazz has emanated from slavery, but it cannot be enslaved by the written page. In the 1920s, "jazz -the most distinctive form of black music- was influential enough to pose an unmistakable challenge to white cultural domination" (Ogren, 1989:11).

A

common criticism of jazz was that its listeners were liable to lose self-control, sexual and otherwise.

Ogren

(1989:158) captures the racist overtones of such criticism: The most strident critics feared that jazz would lead to a degeneration of "civilized" refinements to "primitive" instincts.... To illustrate this point, the sounds of jazz were compared, unfavorably, to animal noises in order to emphasize some presumed bestiality in the music. "The noble trombone is made to bray like an ass, ...and moan like a cow in distress. The silver-tongued trumpet, ...is made to screech and produce sounds like ...the wailing of a tomcat." The writer concluded that jazz "would lower the prestige of the white classes." By the 1930s, the freedom of jazz and its free-flowing form made many conservative white middle Americans uncomfortable.

The music of jazz was out of their reach and

beyond both their control and understanding.

The status-quo

was threatened by a new type of music and a new way of

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looking at the world.

As stated by Baraka (Jones, 1963:152-

153) Music, as paradoxical as it might seem, is the result of thought. It is the result of thought perfected at its most empirical, i.e., as attitude or stance.... Negro music can be seen to be the result of certain attitudes, certain specific ways of thinking about the world. The thoughts associated with jazz music are what Harry Anslinger, and the social forces that guided him, feared. In the early 1930s, wrote Abel (1980:220), reefer songs "were the rage of the jazz world."

In the context of those

times, Harry Anslinger expressed his opinion about jazz within some personal notes (Sloman, 1979:134-135): Music hath charms, but not this music. It hails the drug [marijuana]. The well-informed would just as soon hear a song about sitting in the pleasant shade of the hood of a cobra.

Blowing Reefer Smoke In the passage just cited, Anslinger specifically referred to seven marijuana-related jazz songs:

"Reefer

Man, Smoking Reefers, Chant of the Weeds, Send in the Viper, Muggles, Vipers Moan, and Texas Tea Party." Although Anslinger's unpublished manuscript is undated, to a degree, we can pinpoint when he put his thoughts to paper.

Chronologically, the marijuana-oriented jazz songs

mentioned by Anslinger were recorded between 1928 and 1936: ^ o t e d jazz critic Leroi Jones, who wrote Blues People in 1963, is known today as Amiri Baraka. He is referred to as Baraka in this text, although he is cited as Jones.

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"Muggles" was recorded by Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra on December 12, 1928 (Rust, 1978:44). "Chant of the Weed" (not "Chant of the Weeds, as cited by Anslinger), was recorded by Harlan Lattimore and His Connie Inn's orchestra on September 24, 1931 (Rust, 1978:1279). "The Reefer Man," was recorded by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra on June 9, 1932 (Rust, 1978:255). "Texas Tea Party" was recorded by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra on October 27, 1933 (Rust, 1978:593). "Sendin' the Vipers" (not "Send in the Viper," as cited by Anslinger) was recorded by Mezz Mezzrow and His Orchestra on May 7, 1934 (Rust, 1978:1052). "A Viper's Moan" (not "Vipers Moan" as cited by Anslinger) was recorded by Willie Bryant and His Orchestra on January 4, 1935 (Rust, 1978:191). "Smoking Reefers" was first recorded by Larry Adler in April, 1936 (Rust, 1978:3).

In 1932, however, the song was

copyrighted under the title "Smokin' Reefers" as part of the Broadway play "Flying Colors." Based on when the seven cited songs were recorded, it is likely that Harry's telling words were written no earlier than 1936, and certainly not prior to 1935, when "A Viper's Moan" was first recorded. Ironically, the first two songs cited by Anslinger, "Muggles" and "Chant of the Weed" were purely instrumental

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compositions.

As the songs had no lyrics, no meaning could

be conveyed through them.

Other than their titles, which

refer to slang terms for marijuana, what could Anslinger have found to be so upsetting about these two songs?

The

answer can be found through the words of Dr. James Hunch, a pharmacologist who was associated with Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (Sloman, 1979:145-146): the chief effect [of marijuana] as far as they [the FBN] were concerned, is that it lengthens the sense of time.... In other words, if you're a musician, you're going to play [the music] the way it's printed on a sheet. But if you're using marijuana, you're going to work in about twice as much music in between the first note and the second note. That's what made jazz musicians. The idea that they could jazz things up, liven then up, you see. Within an article entitled "Marihuana - Assassin of Y o u t h , A n s l i n g e r wrote in 1937 (Anslinger and Cooper, 1938:5): Although an ancient drug, the menace of marijuana is comparatively new to the United States. It came in from Mexico, and swept across the country with incredible speed.... Among those who first spread its use were musicians. They brought the habit northward with the surge of "hot" music.... Along the Mexican border in southern seaport cities it had long been known that the drug has a strangely exhilarating effect ^This article first appeared in the July, 1937 edition of American Magazine, a Hearst publication, and portions of it were thereafter reprinted in 1938 within the pages of Reader's Digest. Co-written by Anslinger with Courtney R. Cooper, the 1937 article was entitled "Marihuana: Assassin of Youth." The condensed 1938 version of the article, however, replaces the word "Marihuana" with the correctly spelled Spanish "Marijuana." It is interesting to note that although the 1938 version appeared in print after the Marihuana Tax Act had become law, the article ends as does the 1937 version: "Every state except one has laws to cope with the traffic, but unfortunately there is no federal law dealing with it."

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upon the musical sensibilities. The musician who uses it finds that the musical beat seemingly comes to him quite slowly, thus allowing him to interpolate improvised notes with comparative ease. He does not realize that he is tapping the keys with a furious speed impossible for one in a normal mental state. "Tea puts a musician in a real masterly sphere, and that's why so many jazzmen have used it," clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow wrote in his autobiography, which was first published in 1946 (Mezzrow and Wolfe, 1990:74): You hear the basic tones of the theme and keep up your pattern of improvisation without ever getting tangled up.... Nothing can mess you up. You hear everything at once and you hear it right. When you get that feeling of power and sureness, you're in a solid groove. What Anslinger and the FBN saw as detrimental is just what Mezzrow and his fellow "cats" saw as beneficial. Reefer enhanced their music, and they prided themselves on their ability to improvise (Mezzrow and Wolfe, 1990:125): We were all music-makers too, instrumentalists as well as creators- to us the two things were one, a guy composed as he played, the creating and the performing took place at the same time- and we kept thinking what a drag it must be for any musician with spirit to have to sit in a symphonic assembly-line.... A creative musician is an anarchist with a horn, and you can't put shackles on him. Written music is like handcuffs; and so is the pendulum in white-tie-and-tails up on the conductor's stand. Symphony means slavery in any jazzman's dictionary. Jazz and freedom are synonyms. Jazz, with or without reefer, clearly is improvisation. Improvisation, which Anslinger found so distasteful, is "the best known musical element in jazz [and]... is central to all jazz performance" (Ogren, 1989:13).

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Baraka found that Negro Creole musicians in middle class downtown New Orleans, who were trained in the European musical tradition, shared Anslinger*s dislike of the music of their lower class "uptown" musical brothers (Jones, 1963:74-75 and 79-80): the Downtown Creole bands would have nothing to do with the "raw and raucous playing of those dark folks." ...The Creoles resisted "Negro" music because they thought they had found a place within white society which would preclude their being Negroes. With the segregation acts of the late nineteenth century, however, the "uptown" and the downtown black musicians of New Orleans came to merge their music.

As

music evolved in New Orleans, the black middle class* disdain for jazz dissipated (Jones, 1963:74-80).^ What Negro Creole musicians, and later Harry Anslinger and white "middle America" in general feared about jazz was its freedom.

This fear can explain if not the passage of

the Marihuana Tax Act, its enforcement.

This fear is best

exemplified by the lyrics of the 1932 song "Smokin* Reefers": It's the kind of stuff that dreams are made of. It's the thing that white folks are afraid of.

^°The division between "uptown" and downtown black New Orleans could be seen as late as late as 1955, notes Baraka, when "out of respect for PaPa," no jazz was played at the funeral of the great New Orleans trumpet player PaPa Celestin.

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U p the River with Jazz In the 1960s, Ned Polsky, a sociologist who was discussed in the previous chapter, followed up on Anslinger*s scenario of how marijuana use "swept across the country."

In a diagreua entitled "The Spread of Marihuana

Use in America" (1967:173) Polsky traced marijuana's origin in the U.S. to Mexico. Mexican laborers in the southwestern U.S. are said to have brought the weed into the land of Uncle Sam around 1910.

By 1920, Mexican Americans in New Orleans supposedly

introduced so-called Negroes to marijuana.

This scenario of

marijuana's geographical distribution has been repeated with authority by the likes of Abel, Musto and others.

Today, it

is widely accepted today as fact, and it holds that marijuana use was transfused into both black and white America by the jazz culture.

Reefer, wrote marijuana

historian Michael Aldrich (1971:14): went up the [Mississippi] River from New Orleans with jazz, quickly adopted by ghetto Blacks and Puerto Ricans and a few white musicians. The "Reefer Menace," Aldrich later wrote in the High TimesEncyclopedia of Recreational Drugs (1978:137): ... crept up the river in a burst of jazz. Newspapers ran hot articles about white kids being turned on by black and Spanish speaking reefer puffers. Louisiana banned the weed in 1927, Texas and Colorado in 1929, Illinois and New York in 1931 and 1933.... It was a blatant attempt to suppress the first great flowering of black and Latino culture in America- the Jazz Age. Musicians toured the country in buses, providing an underground distribution network, and were singled out as special targets.

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Yet the notion of jazz emerging in New Orleans and spreading to Chicago and other locations has been disputed by Baraka (Jones, 1963:70); Jazz began in New Orleans and worked its way up the river to Chicago," is the announcement most investigators of mainstream popular culture are apt to make when dealing with the vague subject of jazz and its origins. And while this is certainly a rational explanation, charmingly simple, etc., it is more than likely untrue. Jazz, or purely instrumental blues, could no more have begun in one area of the country than could blues. "The true history of jazz," according to Aldrich (1978:137-138): is a progression from stompin' booze blues to eerie dope bop a switch heard distinctly in Louis Armstrong's classic "Muggles" (1929) and other dope tunes of the era. [T]he real Jazz Age did not emerge in Scott Fitzgerald's stories, but in the autobiographies of reefer peddlers like Malcolm X and Mezz Mezzrow.^’ Vipin' Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow, a white jazz musician who lived exclusively in a black world, grew to some distinction in Harlem as a marijuana supplier.

The slang term "mezz,"

which can be found within literature and reefer-related jazz music of the time, came to describe "the kind of fat. ^’Malcolm X's accounts of his "Jazz Age" take place in the early 1940s (1973:99), post-dating both Fitzgerald and Mezzrow. In a paragraph deliberately written "to display a bit more of the slang that was used by everyone I respected as 'hip' in those days," Malcolm X wrote (1973:56): "Shorty would take me to groovy, frantic scenes in different chicks' and cats' pads, where with the lights and juke down mellow, everybody blew gage [reefer] and juiced back and jumped. I met chicks who were fine as May wine, and cats who were hip to all happenings."

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well-packed and clean [marijuana] cigarette I used to roll," Mezzrow wrote in his autobiography (Mezzrow and Wolfe, 1990:215). The term also had a second meaning, Mezzrow tells us in the first person: I was knocked out the other day when I picked up a copy of Cab Calloway's Hipster's Dictionary and found "mezz" defined there as "anything supreme, genuine"; and in Dan Burley's Original Handbook of Harlem Jive the same word defined as meaning "tops, sincere"! Mezzrow, known as "the Reefer King, the Link Between the Races... [and] the White Mayor of Harlem," was unique not only because he claimed that "I became a Negro," (Mezzrow and Wolfe, 1990:210) but also because as a good friend of Louis Armstrong's, he chronicled many a tale about Satchmo' within his book Really the Blues.

"If we look at

jazz history without benefit of maps, but with only the concrete musical evidence of recordings," Williams has written (1966:75-78): the first firm artistic fact we encounter is that from the mid-Twenties through the late Thirties Louis Armstrong's genius as an intuitive improviser affected the work of every jazz musician.... It is no coincidence that the word swing came into use among musicians while the music was under Armstrong's tutelage, for it istheir word to describe his idea of jazz rhythm.... Inshort, his influence was profound, and from 1923 to 1943, most jazz, big band or small, is significantly "Louis Armstrong Style." Louis Armstrong was not only the most influential jazz musician of his day, and perhaps of all time, but he was also a notorious user

ofmarijuana, or in the argot of the

period, a "viper."

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Armstrong's song "Muggles," recorded in 1928, is one of the earliest jazz records which refers to marijuana. us," Mezzrow expounded,

"To

(Mezzrow and Wolfe, 1990:93):

a muggle [a marijuana cigarette) wasn't any more dangerous or habit-forming than those other great American vices, the five-cent Coke and the ice-cream cone, only it gave you more of a kick for your money. Armstrong, who was arrested on a marijuana possession charge in 1931 and spent nine or ten days in the Los Angeles County jail, said of marijuana (Jones and Chilton, 1971:113 and 116): Speaking of 1931 - we did call ourselves Vipers, which could have been anybody from all walks of life that smoked and respected gage. That was our cute little name for marijuana, and it was a misdemeanor [sic] in those days.... We always looked at pot as a sort of medicine, a cheap drunk and with much better thoughts than one that's full of liquor. But with the penalties that came, I for one had to put it down though the respect for it (gage) will stay with me forever.... Mary Warner, honey, you sure was good and I enjoyed you 'heep much'. But the price got a little too high to pay (law wise). At first you was a 'misdomeanor.' But as the years rolled on you lost your misdo and got meanor and meanor. (Jailhousely speaking.) Sooo 'Bye Bye,' I'll have to put you down. Dearest. Of course, in speaking of the long arm of the law, Louis was referring to the enforcement of the Marihuana Tax Act.

In this regard, Mezzrow (1990:214) expressed a similar

sentiment to that of his friend Louis Armstrong: I laid off five years ago, and if anybody asks my advice today, I tell them straight to steer clear of it because it carries a rap. That's my final word to all the cats: today I know of one very bad thing the tea can do to you -it can put you in jail. Such a confession must have made Harry Anslinger proud.

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Anslinger, in making a point within his "Marijuana: Assassin of Youth" article, took the liberty of paraphrasing and mixing two verses of the 1932 song "Reefer Man" (1938:5) Have you seen That funny reefer man? He says he swam to China; Any time he takes a notion. He can walk across the ocean.

^^he actual lyrics of the copyrighted 1932 song "Reefer Man," which was written by Andy Razaf, are as follows. Each of the six verses begins with the two line refrain: Have you ever met Have you ever met

that funny Reefer Man. that funny Reefer Man.

1.

If he says he swam to China, wants to sell you South Car'lina, Then you know you're talking to that Reefer Man.

2.

If he says that Hoover writes him, to the White House he invites him Then you know you're talking to that Reefer Man.

3.

If he says he walks the ocean, any time he takes the notion Then you know you're talking to that Reefer Man.

4.

If he trades you dimes for nickels and calls watermelon pickles Then you know you're talking to that Reefer Man.

5.

If he gets a sudden mania, want to give you Pennsylvania Then you know you're talking to that Reefer Man.

6.

If he says Wall Street is frantic, 'cause he won't sell the Atlantic Then you know you're talking to that Reefer Man.

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"It sounded funny," Anslinger wrote: Dancing girls and boys pondered about "reefers" and learned that these cigarettes could make one accomplish the impossible. Sadly enough, they can - in the imagination. The girl who decides suddenly to elope with a boy she did not even know a few hours before, does so with the confident belief that this is a thoroughly logical action without the slightest possibility of disastrous consequences. Command a person "high" on "mu" or "muggles" to crawl on the floor and bark like a dog, and he will do it without a thought of the idiocy of the action. Everything, no matter how insane, becomes plausible. Conversely, in referring to marijuana as "muta," Mezzrow (1990:95-96) painted a picture of reefer that was diametrically opposed to the image projected by the FBN: Muta takes all the goddam hardness and evil out of you.... and makes you think straight, with your head instead of your fists; it digs the truth out and dangles it right in front of your nose. Everything comes out in the wash starched and clean. A viper doesn't like lies -he's on the-up-and-up and makes you get on the ground floor with him. You call your shots all the way in viperland. The battle of the dueling images of marijuana continues as Anslinger's unpublished notes go on to say (Sloman, 1979:135): And when some Harlem nightclub entertainer flashes pearly white teeth while extolling that "Reefer Man," it may seem like a lot of nonsense to us, but to him and many of his theatrical brothers, both white and black, that "Reefer Man" is just about as real and important as the milkman to the average American family. Here, Anslinger introduces evidence that supports the view that middle class norms are universal to U.S. society. In sociological terms, this is called the consensus ideology.

Promulgated by sociologists such as Talcott

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Parsons (1937) and Robert Merton (1949), this structural-functionalist model of U.S. society holds that that which is outside the norm is deviant.

Societal norms

were defined by the likes of Merton, Parsons and Anslinger, all of whom were White Anglo Saxon Protestant males.

From

this perspective, ethnic, cultural, religious, and class differences among individuals and groups are viewed as foreign and "unAmerican."

This consensus ideology guided

Harry Anslinger in his anti-marijuana campaign. In the world of Harry Anslinger and those of his ilk. Middle America resides in a quaint home surrounded by a white picket fence.

While Middle America is sustained by

the milkman, the Reefer Man, who promotes values different than the so-called societal consensus, belongs in jail.

The Anti-Jazz Campaign The Social Control Hypothesis holds, in part, that the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act enabled the U.S. law enforcement net to be expanded against targeted individuals and groups who were perceived to be a threat to the status quo.

In respect to the jazz world of the 1930s and the

1940s, evidence which confirms the ideological basis of the Social Control Hypothesis is ample. The anti-jazz campaign of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics first surfaced in February 1938, when two Mexicans were arrested in Minneapolis and charged with violating the

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Marihuana Tax Act (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:182).

The

arrest prompted the FBN District Supervisor there to tell the Minneapolis Tribune (Sloman,1979:135): The tempo of the present-day music and the big apple dance and these jcun sessions seem to do something to the nerves. As a result, use of marihuana is on the increase. Not only is it being used by dance band musicians, but by boys and girls who listen and dance to these bands. They seem to think they need a stimulant for their nerves. By 1940, wrote Sloman, "the time was right for another great marijuana crusade" (1979:132): And here was a ready-made enemy; an alien subculture of kooks, strange musicians and bizarre habits, who played late into the night, partied well into the morning, slept smack into the afternoon. Refugees from the American Protestant Ethic, flaunting their new-fashioned (and fashionable) morality with every hot lick of their licorice sticks and every tinkle of their ivories. The story of the forties with respect to marijuana is the story of the prosecution and assassination of the Marquis de Swing, as performed by the agents of the Bureau of Narcotics and their extremely handy adjunct, the informer man. Sloman may be overstating his case, but it is has been documented by others that the FBN investigated a number of jazz musicians who were suspected of marijuana use.

FBN

files were maintained on such artists as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton and Thelonius Monk, among others (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:184 and McWilliams, 1990:99).:% ^^Although Bonnie and Whitebread were granted access to the FBN's files by what presently is the Drug Enforcement Administration (1974:307), researchers today are unable to gain access to said files without undergoing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. As of this writing, the FOIA request that I filed with the DEA on July 7, 1992 has not been processed.

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In a 1943 memorandum, Anslinger urged his FBN field agents to coordinate a nationwide roundup of jazz musicians who were suspected of marijuana use.

Anslinger's plan did

not yield fruit, however, because his field agents reported that there were few cases involving big name musicians. Nonetheless, throughout the 1940s, Anslinger's idea of conducting a nationwide roundup of jazz musicians remained alive (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:183): Each time a musician was alleged to smoke marihuana, particularly if his group were well known or had a large following among young people, the commissioner would send letters to all agents urging them to prepare a number of cases so that a nationwide, synchronized arrest could be executed. Two incidents in which Anslinger took a personal interest involved the 1943 arrest of jazz drummer Gene Krupa (McWilliams, 1990:100) and the 1944 investigation of Tommy Dorsey and his band (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:183-184). In the midst of World War II, Anslinger attempted to build cases against jazz musicians by working closely with the Selective Seirvice System.

Lists were developed of

musicians who were suspected of "dodging the draft via the marijuana 'addiction' route" (Sloman, 1979:140). Investigations were then conducted of these suspected draft dodgers' bands and of their known associates.

Efforts to

build cases against prominent jazz musicians "were doomed," according to Bonnie and Whitebread (1974:185), because of "the unwillingness of anyone inside the jazz world to become an informant."

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Mezzrow (1990:220-221), in discussing "jive," the language of the hip, graphically illustrates the problems that the FBN must have had in attempting to both recruit informants and initiate undercover law enforcement operations: How can any outsider latch on to the real flavor of a secret code in which tick twenty means ten o'clock and line forty means the price is twenty dollars; friends are addressed as gate or slot,... they or them people means, not two or more persons, but a man's wife or mistress; Tenth Street isn't a city thoroughfare but a ten-dollar bill; specific places are known by special nicknames -New York as The Apple, Seventh Avenue as The Stroll, the Savoy Ballroom as The Track; doubletalk nonsense syllables like lozeerose, that resemble no regular words in any regular language, are invented to refer to private matters like marihuana? Guys talk that way when they don't want to be spied on, resent eavesdroppers; when they're jealously guarding their private lives, which are lived under great pressure, and don't want the details known to outsiders -[including] detectives [and]... informers[.] Despite its inability to infiltrate the jazz world, the FBN's anti-jazz campaign continued into the 1950s.

In

testifying about marijuana before a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1949, Anslinger stated (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:185 and Sloman, 1979:148-149): We have been running into a lot of [marijuana] traffic among these jazz musicians and I am not speaking about the good musicians but the jazz type. In 1952, concerned about the spread of both jazz and marijuana overseas, Anslinger proposed that the U.S. Department of State cancel the passports of musicians who had court involvement with marijuana.

Although the plan was

rejected by the State Department, Reefer Madness lived on.

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Examining Reefer Songs To date, only one author has conducted a serious content analysis of marijuana-related songs from the 1930s and 1940s.

In his book Reefer Madness. Sloman (1979:126-132

and 150-151) traces the lyrics and themes of thirteen such songs, ranging in time from Cab Calloway's 1932 "Reefer Man," to the "Spinach Song" by Julia Lee and her Boy Friends' in "the late 1940s. To better understand Polsky's theory ("Culture Contact, Differential Association, and Subcultural Diffusion") that marijuana use in the United States was spread by jazz musicians, we can apply Williams' suggestion (1966:75-78) that "we look at jazz history without reference to maps, but with only the concrete musical evidence of recordings." If we specifically examine jazz recordings that pertain to marijuana, we can better trace the road to Reefer Madness. Locating recordings and sheet music of reefer-related music from the 1920s-l940s is an arduous and difficult task. One of the only auditory sources available is Jass/Stash Records of New York, with whom Sloman collaborated in 1979. By supplementing works cited by Sloman and others with Jass/Stash recordings, and then conducting extensive

^The actual title of "The Spinach Song" is "I Didn't Like It the First Time (The Spinach Song)," according to out-of-print liner notes for the 1977 Stash Records album entitled "Weed, A Rare Batch." The 1947 recording date that I use is based on Julia Lee and Her Boy Friends' recording of "Lotus Blossom" in the same year.

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research at the Library of Congress' Recorded Sound Reference Center and its Copyright Office, it was possible to compile Tables 2 and 3, which alphabetically and chronologically list all known marijuana-related songs of the era. Tables 2 and 3 utilize recording dates and copyright dates, both of which may not be ascertainable for certain songs.

When available, the tables cite a song's recording

date rather than its copyright date.

"Smokin' Reefers," for

instance, was copyrighted in 1932, but it was not recorded (as "Smoking Reefers") until 1936. Contrary to Polsky's claim (1967:173) that Louis Armstrong's 1928 "Muggles" is "the earliest of many jazz records whose titles refer to marihuana," the earliest reefer-related recording that can be located is "Golden Leaf Strut," recorded by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings on January 23, 1925 (Rust, 1978:1132) .25

25jones and Chilton (1971:113-114) cite "Golden Leaf Strut," along with a number of other titles, as examples of marijuanarelated songs of the 1920s and 1930s.

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85 TA BLE 2

REEFER-RELATED MUSIC; CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING Song Title

Year

Recorded Bv

Golden Leaf Strut

1925 New Orleans Rhythm Kings

Golden Leaf Rag

1925 Manone's San Sue Strutters

Muggles

1928 Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines

Jive Man Blues

1929 Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon

The Viper's Melody

1930 Copyright; Lillian Armstrong

Viper's Drag

1930 Cab Calloway and His Orchestra

The Viper Song

1931 Garland Wilson

Chant of the Weed

1931 Don Redman and His Orchestra

Reefer Man

1932 Cab Calloway and His Orchestra

The Man From Harlem

1932 Cab Calloway and His Orchestra

Texas Tea Party

1933 Benny Goodman and His Orchestra

Reefer Lady

1933 Copyright: Frank Crolene

The Stuff Is Here And It's Mellow

1934 Mills Blue Rhythm Band

Sendin' the Vipers

1934 Mezz Mezzrow and His Orchestra

Marahuana

1934 Copyright: Paramount Productions Music Corporation

Garden of Weed

1934 Lee Stone and

A Viper's Moan

1935 Willie Bryant and His Orchestra

Mellow as A 'Cello

1935 Joe Venuti and His Blue Four

Weed Dream

1935 Copyright: George Caffrey

Viper's Dream

1935 Freddy Taylor From Harlem

Blue Drag

1935 Freddy Taylor and His Swing Men From Harlem

His Band

and His Swing Men

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TABLE 2 (CONTINUED) REEFER-RELATED MUSIC: CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING Song Title

Year

Blue Reefer Blues

1935 Richard Jones and His Jazz Wizards

My Blue Heaven

1935 Jimmy Lunceford and His Orchestra

All The Jive Is Gone

1936 Andy Kirk and His 12 Clouds Of Joy

You'se A Viper

1936 Stuff Smith and His Onyx club Boys

When I Get Low I Get High

1936 Chick Webb and His Orchestra

Smoking Reefers

1936 Larry Adler

Weed Spook

1936 Copyright: Bobby Lutz

Vipers Dream

1936 Copyright: Jack Gleason, Jack Palmer, Savy Martin and Roy Masters

Here Comes the Man With the Jive

1936 Stuff Smith & His Onyx Club Boys

The Weed Smoker's Dream (Why Don't You Do It Now?)

1936 The Harlem Hamfats

Viper Mad

1937 Noble Sissle's Swingsters

Reefer Smoke

1937 Copyright: W.R. Calaway and Mack Rinehart

The Onyx Hop

1937 Frank Newton and His Uptown Serenaders

Reefer Man's Dream

1937 Sammy Butler and His Nite Owls

If You're A Viper

1937 Rosetta Howard

The Stuff Is Here

1937 Georgia White

Jack, I'm Mellow

1938 Trixie Smith

Reefer Head Woman

1938 Jazz Gillum and His Jazz Boys

Recorded Bv

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87 table

2 (CONTINUED)

REEFER-RELATED MUSIC; CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING Song Title

Year

Recorded Bv

01' Man River

1938 Cootie Williams and His Rug Cutters

Feelin' High and Happy

1938 Gene Krupa and His Orchestra

Reefer Hound Blues

1938 Curtis Jones

Weed

1938 Bea Foote

Light Up

1938 Buster Bailey's Rhythm Busters

Killing Jive

1939 The Cats and the Fiddle

The Jive Is Here

1939 Rosetta Howard

Junker's Blues

1940 Champion Jack Dupree

Knockin' Myself Out 1941 Lil Green Reefer Rhapsody

1942 Copyright: Albert E. Garrett

The Reefer Song

1943 Fats Waller

Save The Roach For Me

1944 Buck Washington

Weed Dreams

1944 Copyright: Thomas R. Talbert

The "G" Man Got the "T" Man

1945 Cee Pee Johnson and His Band

Reefer Head Woman

1945 Copyright: Joseph (Buster) Bennett and Lester Melrose

Sweet Marijuana Brown

1945 Barney Bigard Sextet

Weed Dream

1945 Copyright: Joseph A. Levey

Lotus Blossom (Sweet Marijuana)

1947 Julia Lee and Her Boy Friends

I Didn't Like It The First Time (The Spinach Song)

1947 Julia Lee and Her Boy Friends

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When a given song has been recorded by more than one artist. Tables 2 and 3 list the earliest recorded version of the song.

The song "Reefer Man," for instance, was

copyrighted in 1932.

The cover of its sheet music states

"Introduced by Don Redman," and it is accompanied by a photograph of the musician.

Although Gold (1964:247) links

the song with Don Redman in 1931, "Reefer Man" was first recorded on June 9, 1932 by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra (Rust, 1978:255). followed.

Soon thereafter, other recorded versions

Two bands which featured Don Redman, Harlan

Lattimore and His Connie's Inn Orchestra and Baron Lee and His Blue Rhythm Band, respectively recorded "Reefer Man" on June 17 and August 17, 1932 (Rust, 1978:935 and 1072). Yet, since Cab Calloway's version of "Reefer Man" was recorded first. Tables 2 and 3 associate him, and not Don Redman, with the song. Other songs were re-released over the years under different names.

Perhaps the most well known of these is

Fats Waller's 1943 "The Reefer Song," which he also recorded as "You're A Viper" in the same year (Sears, 1980:921).

The

song was originally recorded in 1936 as "You'se A Viper," and later as "If You're A Viper." In cases where a copyright date was discovered well after the song was recorded ("Reefer Head Woman"), or where a song title has two copyright dates ("Weed Dreams") the song title is listed twice.

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89 TA BLE 3

REEFER RELATED MUSIC: ALPHABETICAL LISTING Song Title

Year Recorded Bv

A Viper's Moan

1935 Willie Bryant and His Orchestra

All The Jive Is Gone

1936 Andy Kirk and His 12 Clouds of Joy

Blue Drag

1935 Freddy Taylor and His Swing Men From Harlem

Reefer Blues

1935 Richard Jones and His Jazz Wizards

Chant of the Weed

1931 Don Redman and His Orchestra

Peelin' High and Happy

1938 Gene Krupa and His Orchestra

Garden of Weed

1934 Lee Stone and His Band

Golden Leaf Rag

1925 Manone's San Sue Strutters

Golden Leaf Strut

1925 New Orleans Rhythm Kings

Here Comes the Man With the Jive

1936 Stuff Smith and His Onyx Club Boys

I Didn't Like It The First Time (The Spinach Song)

1947 Julia Lee and Her Boy Friends

If You're A Viper

1938 Bob Howard and His Boys

Jack, I'm Mellow

1938 Trixie Smith

Jive Man Blues

1929 Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon

Junker's Blues

1940 Champion Jack Dupree

Killing Jive

1939 The Cats and the Fiddle

Knockin' Myself Out 1941 Lil Green Light Up

1938 Buster Bailey's Rhythm Busters

Lotus Blossom (Sweet Marijuana)

1947 Julia Lee and Her Boy Friends

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90 TA BLE 3

(C O N T IN U E D )

REEFER-RELATED MUSIC: ALPHABETICAL LISTING Song Title

Year Recorded Bv

Marahuana

1934 Copyright: Parêunoiint Productions Music Corporation

Mellow As A 'Cello

1935 Joe Venuti and His Blue Four

My Blue Heaven

1935 Jimmy Lunceford and His Orchestra

Muggles

1928 Louis Armstrong & Earl Hines

01' Man River

1938 Cootie Williams and His Rug Cutters

Reefer Head Woman

1938 Jazz Gillum and His Jazz Boys

Reefer Head Woman

1945 Copyright: Joseph "Buster" Bennett and Lester Melrose

Reefer Hound Blues

1938 Curtis Jones

Reefer Lady

1933 Copyright: Frank Crolene

Reefer Man

1932 Cab Calloway and His Cotton Club Orchestra

Reefer Man's Dream

1937 Sammy Butler and His Nite Owls

Reefer Rhapsody

1942 Copyright: Albert E. Garrett

Reefer Smoke

1937 Copyright: W.R. Calaway and Mack Rinehart

Save The Roach For Me

1944 Buck Washington

Sendin' the Vipers

1934 Mezz Mezzrow and His Orchestra

Smoking Reefers

1936 Larry Adler

Sweet Marijuana Brown

1945 Barney Bigard Sextet

Texas Tea Party

1933 Benny Goodman and His Orchestra

The "G" Man Got the "T" Man

1945 Cee Pee Johnson and His Band

The Jive Is Here

1939 Rosetta Howard

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91 TA BLE 3

(C O N T IN U E D )

REEFER-RELATED MUSIC; ALPHABETICAL LISTING Song Title

Year Recorded By

The Man From Harlem 1932 Cab Calloway and His Orchestra The Onyx Hop

1937 Frank Newton and His Uptown Serenaders

The Reefer Song

1943 Fats Waller

The Stuff Is Here

1937 Georgia White

The Stuff Is Here

1934 Mills Blue Rhythm Band And It's Mellow

The Viper Song

1931 Garland Wilson

The Viper's Melody

1930 Copyright; Lillian Armstrong

The Weed Smoker's Dream ((Why Don't You Do It Now?)

1936 The Harlem Hamfats

Viper Mad

1938 Noble Sissle's Swingsters

Viper's Drag

1934 Fats Waller and His Rhythm

Viper's Dream

1936 Freddy Taylor and His Swing Men From Harlem

Vipers Dream

1936 Copyright: Jack Gleason, Jack Palmer, Savy Martin and Roy Masters

Weed

1938 Bea Foote

Weed Dream

1935 Copyright: George Caffrey

Weed Dream

1945 Copyright: Joseph A. Levey

Weed Dreams

1944 Copyright: Thomas R. Talbert

Weed Spook

1936 Copyright: Bobby Lutz

When I Get Low I Get High

1936 Chick Webb and His Orchestra

You'se A Viper

1936 Stuff Smith and His Onyx Club Boys

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In cases of obviously entitled reefer songs, such as "The Viper's Melody," "Reefer Lady," "Reefer Smoke," and "Vipers Dream," for which recording dates could not be ascertained. Tables 2 and 3 list the copyright holder and the copyright date in lieu of performers.

For other songs,

such as "Weed Blossom Blues," "Weed Chains," and "Spinach," the song title alone could not determine if the composition was in fact marijuana-related.

Since, in the absence of

lyrics, it could not be verified that the subject matter of these compositions pertained to marijuana, these possible reefer songs are listed together in Table 4. Another difficult grouping of song titles, which may or may not be reefer-related tunes, involve the word "jive." Although one of jive's many former meanings was as a slang term for marijuana, another acceptes meaning since 1930 was "as the trade name for swing music" itself (Gold, 1964:168). Without written or auditory verification of the lyrics to such tunes as "Jive Lover" and "The Jive's Been Here and Gone," we cannot assume that they pertain to marijuana, despite their being performed by artists who have recorded other reefer songs.

Thus, said compositions are also listed

in Table 4.

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93 TABLE 4

POSSIBLE REEFER SONGS (NO LYRICS AVAILABLE) Song Title

Year Performer or Coovrioht Holder

Jive Me Blues

1930 Clifford Gibson

Spinach

1932 Edward Gruber and Leo Kleinman

Jive (Stomp)

1932 Duke Ellington and His Jive Famous Orchestra

Weed Chains

1935 Frank Martinez Miranda

I'm Reelin' High and Happy

1936 Marion Sunshine

Spinach

1936 Nancy Clancy

Jivin' the Vibres

1937 Lionel Hampton

Jive Lover

1938 Bea Foote

Weed Blossom Blues

1938 Charles L. Clover

Jive At Five

1938 Cab Calloway and His Orchestra

Jive (Page One of the Hepster's Dictionary)

1938 Cab Calloway and His Orchestra

The Jive is Jumpin' 1939 The Four Clefs Hep, Hep! The Jumpin' Jive

1939 Cab Calloway and His Orchestra

Hep, Hep! The Jumpin' Jive, Jim Jamp Jump

1939 Edward B. Marks Music Corporation

J iveinformation, Please

1939 Cab Calloway and His Orchestra

Jive Me, Baby

1940 Johnnie Temple, Buster Bailey and Lil Armstrong

Spinach

1940 Augusta Zuckerman Cassel

The Jive's Been Here and Gone

1943 Cab Calloway, Buster Harding and Jack Palmer

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Sloinan contends that the "Marihuana Tax Act had a visible effect on the music culture, as seen through the [reefer] songs."

He writes that after the Act was passed

(1979:129): The references to marijuana became more muted, the argot became more obscure, and the attitude toward the drug itself much more critical. Upon examining the reefer songs contained in Tables 2 and 3, I cannot refute Sloman's claim.

My only dispute with

Sloman's analysis is that he overstates his case.

For

instance, Sloman cites Georgia White's version of the song "The Stuff Is Here," which was recorded on October 5, 1937, four days after the Marihuana Tax Act became law: Close the window and lock the door Take the rug up off the floor Hey, hey, let's all get gay The stuff is here. The song, writes Sloman, "was no longer a cause for public celebration."

Yet, in 1935, two years prior to the

passage of the Marihuana Tax Act, the copyrighted version of the song, entitled "The Stuff Is Here And It's Mellow" and sung by Cleo Brown, contained nearly identical lyrics: Lock the windows, close the door Start the party rollin' once more Hey let's get gay The stuff is here and it's mellow. Sloman's analysis assumes that the public, or at least the jazz world, was aware of the enactment of the Marihuana Tax Act.

Yet since the Act's passage received virtually no

publicity, this assumption may not be valid.

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Due to the fact that the year 1938 produced more new reefer songs than did the year 1937,^ it is quite possible that the impact of the Marihuana Tax Act was not felt within the jazz world by 1938. Sloman, however, depicts a different scenario.

In

December 1938, he contends, Buster Bailey and his Rhythm Busters were "celebrating the weed in 'Light Up,' yet at the same time, cautioning their fellow vipers" (1979:131): Light up, I know how you feel You find what I mean in any old field. Now get your gig going. I'll say that's the thing. Don't let that man getcha. Just puff on your cig and blow those smoke rings. Sloman obviously interprets "that man" as the embodiment of the FBN: "the G-man, the government agent who could bust a hundred vipers in a single collar."

Sloman,

however, takes a long step in assuming that "that man" means "the G man"; could it not just as easily mean "the white man"? After discussing "Light Up," Sloman skips seven years of musical history to tell us that "C.P. Johnson and his band spoke for a multitude of muggle-heads in 1945 when they told the sad saga of the day as the 'G Man Got the T Man'" (1979:131):

t a b l e s 2 and 4 reveal that a minimum of seven and perhaps as many as eleven reefer songs were recorded in 1938, whereas six, or possibly seven, such songs were recorded in 1937.

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Cats can't buy their jive at night So now they hurry home, since the G Man got the T Man and gone... Boy one night when the joint was jumping and a knock came at the door In stepped a man with a shiny badge and a brand new forty four They've arrested my connection And I can't find it any more •Cause the G Man got the T Man and gone. The lyrics of "The G Man Got the T Man" support the Social Control Hypothesis.

Coupled with the diminishing

number of reefer songs that appear in the historical record, this song clearly tells us that the ramifications of the selective enforcement of the Marihuana Tax Act had affected the jazz world by the year 1945. By 1947, the clandestine nature of marijuana-smoking is evident in examining Julia Blossom."

Lee and Her Boy Friends' "Lotus

Compare its lyricswith

the original 1934 version

of the song "Marahuana," from the motion picture "Murder At the Vanities" (Meeker, 1977:1286): Marahuana (19341 Soothe me with your caress Sweet Marahuana Marahuana Help me in my distress Sweet Marahuana Please do.

Lotus Blossom fl9471 Soothe me with your caress Sweet Lotus Blossom Lotus Blossom Help me in my distress Sweet Lotus Blossom Please do.

You alone can bring My lover back to me Even tho I know It's all a fantasy.

Now you alone can bring My lover back to me Even tho I know It's just a fantasy.

And thenPut me to sleep Sweet Marahuana Marahuana.

And thenKnock me clear out Sweet Lotus Blossom Lotus Blossom.

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Sloman contrasts "the image of the weed smoker" in the pre-Marihuana Tax Act reefer songs as being "diametrically opposed to the [FBN's] conception of the homicidal, mentally impaired [marijuana] fiend" (Sloman, 1979:129).

This

positive image of marijuana is captured by Bea Foote's 1938 song, "Weed": Key Gate, I think I'm goin' to settle myself "What you gonna do, bud?" I'm goin' to light up. Jack. I'm the queen of all vipers, I mean I smoke my weed. You know it makes me feel kind of happy When I'm in need. Dreams come from my weed all day long. Put my heart at ease In sweet dreams. Sloman theorizes (1979:130) that: One consequence of the Tax Act was to make the marijuana subculture more furtive, more ritualized. By virtue of its prohibition, reefer was seen to be more attractive, a weed powerful enough to move legislators and bureaucrats to action. If anything, smoking marijuana became more romantic to most on the scene; however, its illegal status dictated a less casual attitude toward its use. Despite Sloman's claim, we can see that in the intervening years between 1938 and 1945, the lyrics of a number of reefer songs demonstrate that marijuana was still being used in a light-hearted way.

Let us examine, for

instance. Fats Waller's 1943 "The Reefer Song" and Buck Washington's 1944 composition, "Save the Roach for Me."

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Waller's song begins with a narrative introduction and then is followed by its melody and accompanying lyrics: Here we are in Harlem. Everybody's here but the police an' they'll be here any minute. It's high time, so catch this song. Here it 'tis: Dreamed about a reefer five feet long A mighty mezz but not too strong You'll be high but not for long If you're a viper. I'm the king of everything I gotta gotta gotta gotta be high before I swing Let the bells ring: ding dong ding If you're a viper. Say you know you're high when your throat gets dry Mmmmm! Everything's dandy! You run down to the candy store Bust your conk on peppermint candy. Then you know your little brown body's sent You don't give a d a m if you don't pay rent Cause the sky is high and so am I... Oh dear, oh dear - viper! Buck Washington's 1944 "Save the Roach for Me" refers not to an insect, but to the end of a marijuana cigarette: Folks say that I'm lonesome Say I'm as blue as I can be Well, if your smokin' that jive when I pass by. Then save that roach - Ain't talking 'bout Camels Then save that roach - I Ain't talkin' 'bout Luckys Save the roach for me. Compare these light, fanciful depictions of marijuana smoking with Harry Anslinger's image of the crazed piano player described in "Marijuana: Assassin of Youth" (1938:5): "He does not realize that he is tapping the keys with a furious speed impossible for one in a normal state."

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In 1936, that literary image of the "reefer mad" piano player could visually be seen in movie houses across the country within a film originally entitled "Tell Your Children."

In the next chapter, we will further explore the

Social Control Hypothesis in relation to this and other anti-marijuana films of the 1930s.

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CHAPTER 4 REEFER MOVIES

It has been the conclusion of more than one historical commentator (Cloyd, 1982:68; Starks, 1982:51 and 102; and Woodiwiss, 1988:31) that Harry Anslinger collaborated with Hollywood in the 1930s to produce a number of motion pictures that were meant to sway public opinion against marijuana.

In so doing, it has been theorized, a favorable

climate was produced whereby the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 could be passed. Becker has written (1963:145-146) that we should expect the moral entrepreneur to use the available media of communication to develop a favorable climate of opinion in relation to the creation and application of laws.

Although

Becker's study of the moral entrepreneur focused on Harry Anslinger's manipulation of the print medium in relation to the passage and enforcement of the Marihuana Tax Act, others have applied this theorem to 1930s and 1940s Federal Bureau of Narcotics anti-marijuana propaganda in general. An anti-marijuana poster distributed by the Inter-State Narcotic Association, allegedly on behalf of the FBN, is credited with having been "effective in molding attitudes" 100

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101 against the drug (Witters and Venturelli, 1988:127-128). Said to be "widely circulated," (Woodiwiss, 1988:31) the poster reads as follows (M. Cohen, 1985:43): BewareI Young and Old - People in All Walks of Life! This [picture of a marijuana cigarette] may be handed to you by a friendly stranger. It contains the Killer Drug "Marihuana"— a powerful narcotic in which lurks MURDER! INSANITY! DEATH! WARNING! Dope peddlers are shrewd! They may put some of this drug in the [picture of a tea or coffee pot] or in the cocktail or in the tobacco cigarette. These same fears were captured on motion picture video within a number of anti-marijuana "scare" films that were released prior to the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

In this chapter, we will review available 1930s-era

anti-cannabis films, including 193l's "Sinister Menace," 1935's "Assassin of Youth," and two 1936 films: "Tell Your Children" and "Marihuana, Weed With Roots in Hell." What kind of messages did these 1930s anti-marijuana films send to their audiences?

The answer is clear: fear of

youths becoming homicidal maniacs, fear of high school girls losing their virginity, and fear of the criminal class in general.

While the extent to which these films helped shape

public opinion of the time has thus far been unexplored, it can be assumed that they played at least some kind of role in the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. Cloyd (1982:68) claims that the U.S. public and its legislators were influenced by a these anti-marijuana movies "which depicted young and naive high school students being

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102 enticed into using the drug by unprincipled criminals."

"In

the end," writes Cloyd, "the youths find only personal deterioration, crime and insanity as the outcome of their actions."

Woodiwiss (1988:31) writes that these films

exploited public interest and "have messages which are basically the same": marijuana.

"Nice, well-brought-up kids smoke

This experience is quickly and inevitably

followed by sexual depravity, rape, crime and murder." When the most well-known of these films, "Tell Your Children," was re-released in the 1970s under the title "Reefer Madness," its "simpleminded scare tactics" were seen as "more comical than instructive."

ABC Television then

called Reefer Madness (Hermes and Galperin, 1992:58): a major influence in forming the attitudes that led to the present legal situation regarding marijuana... Hilarious when viewed from the other side of the generation gap, a gap this film did so much to create. These anti-marijuana movies were independently produced without the sanction of Hollywood because of the Motion Picture Code that outlawed references to drugs.

Although

introduced in 1930, "the year that talkies made it big," the code was not effectively enforced until 1934 (Starks, 1982:51).

Independent films were those which were not

produced and distributed by the "big eight" film industry companies: Fox, Loew's (MGM), Paramount, RKO, Warner, Columbia, United Artists and Universal.

Together, these

companies earned 95 percent of all domestic film rental receipts for 1935-1939 (Parker, 1986:147).

While the "big

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eight" also accounted for 95 percent of all large budget or "A" films produced in those years, 34 percent of all U.S. feature films made from 1935-1939 were small budget "B" films, which included motion pictures about crime.

The

anti-marijuana films reviewed in this chapter clearly were "B" films. At first, the Motion Picture Code was not taken seriously by Hollywood's movie producers, but by 1934, the major motion picture studios acquiesced to pressure exerted by backers of the code, such as the Catholic Church's Legion of Decency.

"An admission to an Independent Movie is a

ticket to Hell," read a placard wielded by parochial school children (Atkins, 1984:62).

In an address to an annual

convention of Catholic Charities in 1933, a high church official stated: Catholics are called by God, the Pope, the Bishops and the priests to a united and vigorous campaign for the purification of the cinema, which has become a deadly menace to morals. At Catholic mass on one Sunday per year, a given church's priest read the Legion's pledge aloud for his congregation to repeat.

In part, the pledge read (Parker,

1986:148): I shall do all that I can to arouse public opinion against the portrayal [in moving pictures] of vice as a normal condition of affairs, and against depicting criminals of any class as heroes and heroines, presenting their filthy philosophy of life as something acceptable to decent men and women.

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When the Legion of Decency threatened to order their ten million members to boycott Hollywood's films, the "big eight" tailored its scripts to comply with the church's demands (Atkins, 1984:62).

"The vision of millions of

unsold movie tickets spurred Hollywood to action" (Gardner, 1987:xix). The Motion Picture Production Code consisted of three general principles (Gardner, 1987:207-208): 1.

No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.

2.

Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.

3.

Law -divine, natural, or human- shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

Twelve particular applications were cited by the code: crime, brutality, sex, vulgarity, obscenity, blasphemy and profanity, costumes, religion, special subjects, national feelings, titles, and cruelty to animals.

In that marijuana

was neither a well-known drug nor one which was necessarily considered to be addicting, the language of the sub-section of the crime section is worth noting (Gardner, 1987:209):

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Drug addiction or the illicit traffic in addictionproducing drugs shall not be shown if the portrayal: a. Tends in any manner to encourage, stimulate, or justify the use of such drugs,; or b. Stresses, visually or by dialog, their temporarily attractive effects; or c. Suggests that the drug habit may be quickly or easily broken; or d. Shows details of drug procurement or of the taking of drugs in any manner; or e. Emphasizes the profits of the drug traffic; or f. Involves children who are shown knowingly to use or traffic in drugs. Although the subject matter of the anti-marijuana films to be discussed in this chapter was forbidden by the Motion Picture Production Code, these films certainly abided by the code's three general principles.

In reviewing the anti­

marijuana films of the 1930s, it is clear that while these films may have violated the letter of the code, they followed its spirit.

While the anti-marijuana movies showed

"drug procurement [and] the taking of drugs," they portrayed such activity in a negative light. These anti-cannabis movies of the 1930s will now be reviewed, beginning with the earliest of these films, "Sinister Menace."

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Sinister Menace In "Sinister Menace," produced in 1931, the hidden hand of Harry Anslinger is self-evident.

Directed by Dwain Esper

and produced by the government of Egypt, footage for the this motion picture was taken from a number of films on file under the Federal Bureau of Narcotics at the National Archives, including:

"Dope Fiends: What They Are and How

They End," Central Narcotics Bureau of Egypt, 1931 (10 minutes, silent and subtitled); "The Drug Evil in Egypt," filmed for the Central Narcotics Bureau of Egypt by H. Helbawy, 1931 (47 minutes, silent and subtitled); "Dope In Egypt," Central Narcotics Bureau of Egypt, 1931 (11 minutes, silent); and "The Drug Evil In Egypt, 1931 (11 minutes, sound). "The Drug Evil in Egypt" contains the same sound track, albeit distorted, as that of "Sinister Menace," a poor quality version of which is available for viewing within the FBN film archives at the National Archives' Motion Picture, Sound and Video Research Room. Because of a written narrative which immediately follows the movie's opening credits, this film may be confused with a later 1937 Dwain Esper film entitled "Narcotic."

According to Starks (1982:80), however, the

plot of "Narcotic" centers on a morphine-addicted doctor. The first words to appear on screen inform the viewer of "Sinister Menace" that:

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The following films were made by the Egyptian Government, shown at the Geneva Anti-Narcotic Conference and presented to the producers of "Narcotic" by HARRY J. ANSLINGER Federal Narcotics Commissioner and one of the United States representatives to Geneva in 1932. Since "Sinister Menace" was produced in 1931, and the opening subtitled narrative includes a reference to the year 1932, it is plausible that in 1937, "Sinister Menace" may have been part of a double feature that included "Narcotic." Moreover, since the introduction uses the word "films," we can assume that one or more of the aforementioned films produced by the Egyptian government were shown in conjunction with Dwain Esper's 1937 and 1931 movies. Following the preamble, the viewer of "Sinister Menace" is provided with a subtitled introduction to the movie; As the illicit narcotic trade from Europe and the Near East diminishes, the Far East steps in to supply the demand. How does that effect [sic] America? Our Pacific Coast has become the danger spot of the smuggled dope traffic.... Unless there is an immediate estoppal the country will be cursed with a deplorable increase of narcotic addiction. New York American^^ The introduction continues: These remarkable pictures are random shots taken in Egypt's drug infested areas. It is to be hoped that they may enlighten other countries and individuals to the horrible curse of drug addiction.

^^The New York American was one of many newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst.

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Sound then is added to the picture, as the Egyptian footage rolls to "a single man, barefoot and in the boiling sun," carrying a 300 pound bale of cotton.

Other "common

but powerful examples of Egypt's young manhood" are shown conducting manual labor with no mechanical support, only "primitive, hard endurance."

The movie's narrator tells the

viewer that in these muscular male workers: One can readily see the mark of the builders of the pyramids and the Sphinx. But there is a sinister menace undermining the workers. Egypt, for the past few years, has been the center of drug traffic from the east. Great quantities of destructive narcotics have been smuggled into this country in shipments of fruit. A very wholesome-looking orange can shelter destruction.... "Sinister Menace," which does not distinguish between opium and hashish, shows us that drugs can not only be smuggled in fruit, but in bread as well.

Additional

footage shows smugglers being detected in attempting to conceal hashish within the fake fur of a caravan of camels. The film equates hashish with opium: both drugs are depicted as addicting narcotics which cause irreparable harm to the unfortunate user. Contrasted with the physical specimens who "compare favorably with our own football huskies" are decrepit, gaunt drug addicts who are shown walking single file in prison garb as the film's narrator tells us; The plight of these victims is pathetic. See their pitiful attempts at bringing back their health. Look at their miserable bodies creeping along the backyard of the prison.

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At the root of this evil are not only "ruthless smugglers" who possess "the craftiest underworld minds," but also the despicable "dope peddler" who: creates his vile trade by promise of greater sexual ability. He is not even satisfied with creating addicts but also keeps his trade by adulterating drugs with crushed human skulls. The narrator tells us:

"Not content with assuming

control of the forces of the body, drugs make their onslaught on the mind."

It is explained to the movie-goer

that "before the habit has formed its grip upon the nervestrings of its victim": the effect is soothing, stimulating and excitingly pleasurable. But once the habit becomes mastered and has fastened deep its hold, the picture changes.... Gone are the pleasurable sensations of the drug. Now to feel normal he must take his narcotic. The victim of drugs, the movie-viewer is told, "is a slave [who] must obey the weight of this world curse": Gone is their desire for work. Gone are the thoughts and glories of Egypt. Gone are ambitions, health and friends.... Where is his vaunted will power? Where is his physical resistance, his resolution, his strength, his optimism? The flesh cringes under the demand. The nervous system is ripped into shreds; the toll: its physical pain and mental chaos. It is only a question of hours until the will surrenders. The mind is obsessed by the delusion that tomorrow it will conquer, but tomorrow never comes. Every drug fiend goes through a daily battle, the battle of reason against havoc.... Drugs ruin health, wreck careers, fill prisons and asylums. Bringing to mind the Social Control Hypothesis, the viewer of "Sinister Menace" is told "drug addiction is a municipal, state, national, and international problem" against which there are three avenues of attack:

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110 (1)

reduce the number of addicts by isolating them and curing them, thus reducing the demand for drugs.

(2)

the discouragement and arrest of the street trafficker and distributor, thus striking at supply.

(3)

coordinate all law enforcing agencies by information records and movement of the narcotic criminal through an international clearinghouse.

As the movie draws to a close, the scene shifts to a massive graveyard as we are told: Here is the pleasant end to which all must come sooner or later. The addict is fortunate indeed who is properly buried, for there are very few who have any money left. A lone, impoverished man walking with the aid of a stick then is shown suddenly keeling over and slumping to the ground.

A man approaches the presumably dead body and

pushes it over a cliff as the viewer is informed that: he, without sufficient money for burial, has but one alternative: the pit where the dying go to await the end, to be devoured by vultures in death as they were devoured by drugs in life. "THE END" abruptly flashes across the screen.

Assassin of Youth In the background of the opening credits of "Assassin of Youth," which was released in 1935 (Starks, 1982:102), shadowy figures of men and women are shown dancing in the midst of swirling smoke.

The film's first scene is that of

a car crash, and we next see three successive newspaper headlines:

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Ill AGED WOMAN KILLED, MARIJUANA CRAZED YOUTH KILLS, MARIJUANA DEALS DEATH. A newspaper editor then unleashes a young cub reporter on the story, which includes an "eccentric clause" in the will of the deceased: "a morals clause that might make news again."

Another newspaper headline then informs the viewer:

ACCIDENT VICTIM LEAVES WILL WITH MORALS CLAUSE Wealthy Woman Leaves All To Her Granddaughter Upon Provision of Good Behavior. The young newspaper reporter ventures to the unnamed town where the movie is set, and he befriends the youths there.

The first character we see in the town is played by

Fern Emmett, who is more well known for her portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz. involves a number of related tangents:

The plot

the plight of Joan

Barrie, the heiress in question; Joan's sister, Marjorie, who espouses the "free love" doctrine and smokes marijuana; and their scheming cousin Linda, who sells reefers to the town's youths and plots with Jack Howard, to whom she is secretly wed, to corrupt Joan's morals and thereby gain her grandmother's inheritance. As "muggles" enters the picture, the newspaper editor has his cub reporter view a film, "The Marijuana Menace," which has been "compiled from articles published by some of our best magazines, newspapers, and from lectures delivered

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112 by the eminent A.E. Fessier and other noted crusaders against this dreaded weed. In one prison, the movie within a movie tells us, 125 of 450 prisoners are marijuana addicts.

In one police

district, 17 of 37 murderers committed their crimes due to marijuana intoxication.^’

The Marijuana Menace" movie

goes on to depict talcs of suicide, murder and insanity, including the myth that the word "assassin" has its

“ a .E. Fossier was the author of a 1931 article entitled "The Marihuana Menace," which contended that marijuana use led to insanity and violence. On the basis of Fossier's article. New Orleans' local district attorney Eugene Stanley circulated a pamphlet in 1931 that contained "a sweeping assertion which was to be reproduced in practically every commentary on marihuana published during the 1930s" (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:67-69); It is an ideal drug to cut off inhibitions quickly.... At the present time the underworld has been quick to realize the value of this drug in subjugating the will of human derelicts to that of a master mind. Its use sweeps away all restraint, and to its influence may be attributed many of our present-day crimes. It has been the experience of the Police and Prosecuting Officials in the South that immediately before the commission of many crimes the use of marihuana cigarettes has been indulged in by criminals so as to relieve themselves from the natural restraint which might deter them from the commission of criminal acts, and to give them the false courage necessary to commit the contemplated crime. ^’These facts concerning prisoners, murders and the hashish myth were taken directly from Fossier's New Orleans-based article, which Stanley repeated in his 1931 publication. Upon examining Fossier's 1931 article, the inherent racism contained within it is evident (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1974:152): The debasing and baneful influence of hashish and opium is not restricted to individuals but has manifested itself in nations and races as well. The dominant race and most enlightened countries are alcoholic, whilst the races and nations addicted to hemp and opium, some of which once attained to heights of culture and civilization[,] have deteriorated both mentally and physically.

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etymological roots in the word "hashish," which the movie informs the viewer is "known to us as marijuana. We first see marijuana smoking in "Assassin of Youth" at a "wienie bake" where one youth tells another: "Say, you've missed a real kick, something different!"

"That's

right!" chimes in another, "and Linda says the man who sells them said they wouldn't hurt us."

— Soon, of course, the

viewer of the movie sees just how harmful marijuana can be. At a party where the kids are dancing to jazz music and reefer is being smoked, Joan's sister Marjorie undresses and exposes a bare breast to the camera for a brief, fleeting moment before she and her male companion bed down.

After

another party, at which a marijuana-intoxicated Marjorie nearly stabbed a female party goer to death, a physician explains the true nature of marijuana to Marjorie's mother: Your daughter is a psychopathic case. She is on the verge of insanity. She has marked symptoms of drug addiction and I strongly believe she has been using marijuana, a cigarette made out of a narcotic weed. Your daughter is the fourth case I've examined today, all young people with similar symptoms.

^°It is perhaps no coincidence that Harry Anslinger, within his 1937 article entitled -like the movie"Assassin of Youth," perpetuated the assassin myth. In his congressional testimony on the Marihuana Tax Act before the House Ways and Means Committee (1937:29-30), Anslinger repeated the myth: "In fact, from the Arabic "hashishan" we have the English word "assassin.... It is said that Mohammedan leaders, opposing the Crusaders, utilized the services of individuals addicted to the use of hashish for secret murders."

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Soon, the young newspaper reporter, Arthur Brighton, reveals his true identity to Joan Barrie and convinces her to assist him in an undercover capacity to expose the deadly weed.

•’You've got your story," Joan says.

print it?"

"Why don't you

Arthur replies:

But it's more than a story, Joan. Terrible things are happening to young people like your sister all over the country. If these boys and girls won't admit it when they're so sick, why then what chance have I got to prove it? You've got to help me get more evidence. At the film's end, within a courtroom where Joan stands accused of moral turpitude. Art Brighton reveals that he is really a reporter.

He reads his hot-off the presses front­

page article to the Court: Marijuana, the assassin of youth, the scourge of our country, is reaching out like a mad killer, mowing down the youth of our land, distorting their minds and leading them in lives of degradation and crime. The reporter then addresses the judge: This evil has struck here, your honor, right into your own homes, and has turned innocent play into tragic orgies. Why at this very moment your courtroom is filled with smokers of this terrible weed. How dare anyone accuse Joan Barrie? She was helping me to uncover the source of this living death in your town. After Joan is acquitted, she and Arthur announce their engagement and presumably live happily ever after.

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Tell Your Children Later released under its more popular title, "Reefer Madness," the 1936 film "Tell Your Children" parallels "Assassin of Youth" in a number of ways: both films are initially set at local soda fountains, they depend on newspaper headlines to inform the viewer, they utilize the educational device of a movie within a movie, and their plots involve jazz music, dancing, sex, murder, insanity, and courtroom drama.

The films also share the same musical

director (Abe Meyer) and a lead actress (Dorothy Short). The movie begins with a written disclaimer that any similarity between it and "actual occurrences & living or deceased persons is coincidental."

We are then warned:

The motion picture you are about to witness may startle you. It would not have been possible, otherwise, to sufficiently emphasize the frightful toll of the new drug menace which is destroying the youth of America in alarmingly increasing numbers. MARIHUANA is that drug — a violent narcotic and unspeakable scourge— THE REAL PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE! Its first effect is sudden, violent uncontrollable laughter; then come dangerous hallucinations — space expands— time slows down, almost stands still.... fixed ideas come next, conjuring up monstrous extravagances — followed by emotional disturbances, the total inability to direct thoughts, the loss of all power to resist physical emotions... leading finally to acts of shocking violence... ending often in incurable insanity. In picturing its soul-destroying effects no attempt was made to equivocate. The scenes and incidents, while fictionalized for the purposes of this story, are based upon actual research into the results of Marihuana addiction. If their stark reality will make you think, will make you aware that something must be done to wipe out this ghastly menace, then the picture will not have failed in its purpose.... Because the drug Marihuana may be reaching forth next for your son or daughter.... or yours.... OR YOURS!

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Five newspaper headlines next appear in succession on the screen: POLICE WAGE WAR ON NARCOTIC RING! DOPE PEDDLERS CAUGHT IN HIGH SCHOOL, POLICE RAID MARIHUANA FLAT, FEDERALS AID POLICE IN DRUG WAR, SCHOOL-PARENT ORGANIZATIONS JOIN DOPE FIGHT. The viewer then sees a flyer which exhorts its reader to: Come! Hear! Learn! Meeting Tonight 8:30 P.M. School-Parents Association Subject: Tell Your Children. Dr. Alfred Carroll then urges his parent audience: You, and all the school-parent groups about the country, must stand united on this and stamp out this frightful assassin of our youth. You can do it by bringing about compulsory education on the subject of narcotics in general, but dreaded marihuana in particular. That is the purpose of this meeting, ladies and gentlemen, to lay the foundation for a nationwide campaign by you to demand by law such compulsory education because it is only through enlightenment that this scourge can be wiped out. The parents are then told by Dr. Carroll that the "ceaseless fight against the drug traffic is directed by the Department of Narcotics, Washington," and he proceeds to read a letter of "vital importance from the Narcotics Bureau."

In part, the letter reads:

The suppression of the use of marihuana, and of the forces lurking behind it, are the most important jobs this department is now engaged in.... The schoolparent associations of this country... can be invaluable in stamping out this scourge. Their help, their eternal vigilance, could be the deciding factor in our fight against it. The weed marihuana is grown in every state in the union.

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Dr. Carroll then shows us film footage, similar to that of the FBN which is now housed in the National Archives, in the movie within the movie.

We see marijuana plants grown

in Brooklyn, New York, where "the weed was... being cultivated regularly, stripped, dried and sold in schools and government army posts in and around New York."

We are

shown how "the dried leaves and berries are ground up and made into cigarettes by a simple hand machine.

The deadly

narcotic is then quickly and easily prepared for its market." Next, more FBN-like footage reveals how heroin, morphine and opium can be hidden and smuggled within the false heels of shoes, in fake jewelry cases, in hollowed shaving brushes, in the back of pocket watches, within books with false centers, and in large olive oil barrels.

Yet, we

are told: The sale of marihuana is even more difficult to detect and halt than the traffic in drugs such as opium, morphine and heroin.... more vicious [and] more deadly than these soul-destroying drugs is the menace of marihuana! Dr. Carroll then leads us into the actual plot of "Tell Your Children" by saying: No doubt many of you do not believe that these things do happen, that they cannot happen to you. You may also believe that the facts have been exaggerated. Let me tell you of something that happened right here in our own city. You probably read about it in the paper. However, I'll give you the real facts behind the case. There was an apartment near one of our high schools. It was run by a woman named Mae Coleman.

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He are soon introduced to who may be the bestremembered character in any of the anti-marijuana movies of the 1930s:

the film's crazed jazz piano player who smiles

maniacally and smokes reefers incessantly.

The main

protagonists in the plot are high school students:

Mary,

her brother Jimmy, and her boyfriend. Bill Harper.

Jimmy

and Bill are soon enticed into the apartment of Mae Coleman, where Mae and her companion Jack Perry introduce the kids to marijuana and soon have them hooked.

Ralph, a reefer

smoking fiend who leads the innocents to the den of iniquity, is reduced by movie's end to a state of total insanity.

His hysterical fits of laughter are followed by

frantic screams of "Get me some reefers!" which lead him into a near-catatonic state. In the meantime. Dr. Carroll enters the story by traveling to the "Federal Offices" of the "Bureau of Investigation" to tell an agent there that "You government men have got to find some way to put an end to it," it being "an organized gang distributing the narcotic [marijuana] to students; not only in my school, but all over the city." The G-Man agrees with Dr. Carroll and explains that: Marijuana is not like other forms of dope.... it grows wild in almost every state in the union, therefore there is practically no interstate commerce in the drug. As a result, the government's hands are tied....

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The G-Man continues, in language eerily similar to that later used by Anslinger in his "Assassin of Youth" article:*’ In 1930, the records on marijuana in the Washington office of the Narcotics Division scarcely filled a small folder like this. Today, they fill cabinets. Dr. Carroll is then shown information contained in a number of case files:

a would-be robber: "sixteen years old

and a marijuana addict!"; "a flagrant case" in West Virginia; "a most vicious case" in Michigan where a seventeen year old reefer-smoking girl was arrested in a raid along with five young men; and "a tragic case" in which "a young boy under the influence of the drug killed his entire family with an a x . T h e

federal officer tells Dr.

Carroll that there are "hundreds" of such cases, and "new ones every day."

With records in hand. Dr. Carroll returns

home to combat "the evil" in his school.

*’The specific language used by Anslinger (1938:5) was: "In 1931, the marijuana file of the United States Narcotic Bureau was less than two inches thick. The traffic's most rapid growth came in 1935 and 1936, and today our reports crowd many large cabinets. They indicate that high school students particularly are the prey of the reefer peddlers." *^The story of the youth who killed his family with an ax was based on the Victor Licata case, "Anslinger's favorite" (McWilliams, 1990:59). "Crazed Youth Kills Five of Family With Ax in Tampa," read the 1933 headline. Although Anslinger and others attributed the murders to marijuana, substantial evidence indicated that "his crime resulted from a long-standing psychosis rather than from any drug effect" (Kaplan, 1970:94-97). Anslinger nonetheless cited the Licata case as an example of the dangers of marijuana in his Marihuana Tax Act hearing testimony before the House of Representatives (1937:23), and he continued to recount the case more than twenty years later (Anslinger, 1961:38).

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120 There, Dr. Carroll confronts Bill, "an excellent student" whose grades have slipped:

"Isn't it true that you

have, perhaps unwillingly, acquired a certain harmful habit through association with certain undesirable people?"

Bill,

whose "mother says he never lies," then lies to Dr. Carroll: "No, sir." Soon thereafter, Mary, looking for her brother, goes to Mae's apartment and smokes a cigarette, presumably unaware that it is marijuana. as a kite.

Within minutes, she is laughing, high

Ralph forces himself upon her and begins

unzipping her dress as she screams:

"Leave me aloneI"

The

stoned Bill emerges from a bedroom where he had been having sex, comes to the aid of Mary, and is knocked out by Jack, whose gun accidently discharges and kills Mary.

Bill is

framed for the murder, is found guilty, and is saved only after Mae pleads guilty to a charge of fostering moral delinquency and confesses all before throwing herself out of a window to her death. In testifying as a character witness at Bill's trial. Dr. Carroll informs the Court of changes that he has noticed in Bill over the last three months:

"disassociation of

ideas" and "errors in time and space," both of which "could be attributed to the use of marihuana." Justice prevails as newspaper headlines inform us: HARPER CASE GANG LEADERS CAPTURED All Higher-Ups of Gang Behind Scenes In Harper Case Taken Into Custody.

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121 Bill is ordered by the judge to witness the next court case on the calendar, so that he can see what he "so narrowly escaped."

"We can express only the hope that your

experiences may not alone keep you but thousands of others from the vicious pitfalls of marihuana," the judge tells Bill.

The next court case is that of Ralph, who in a

marijuana-induced frenzy had earlier beaten Jack to death with a club of some kind.

Ralph is declared to be

"hopelessly and incurably insane, a condition caused by the drug marihuana, to which he was addicted."

The lawyers in

his case stipulate that he be sent to an institution for the criminally insane for the rest of his natural life. The film concludes with Dr. Carroll back at the SchoolParents Association meeting; Yes, that happened right here to your neighbors. It is not too much to say that in your hands lies the possibility of arresting other tragedies like it. We must work untiringly so that our children are obliged to learn the truth, because it is only through knowledge that we can safely protect them. Failing this, the next tragedy may be that of your daughter, or your son, or yours [Dr. Carroll points to his right], or yours [Dr. Carroll points to his left], OR YOURS [Dr. Carroll points to the movie audience]I The concluding message of the movie, in capital letters that fill the screen, pleads with its audience to: TELL YOUR CHILDREN.

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122 Marihuana; Weed w ith Roots In Hell The motion picture "Marihuana: Weed With Roots In Hell" was originally released in 1936 under the title "Marihuana" (The Library of Congress Copyright Office, 1951:522).

In

later years, an art theater version of the film, with spliced-in nudity, was released under the title of "The Pusher."

Following its initial credits, which emerge in the

midst of swirling smoke and bare-breasted women, the format of "Marihuana" is quite similar to that of "Tell Your Children."

The movie begins with a written foreword that

warns the viewer: For centuries, the world has been aware of the narcotic menace. We have complacently watched Asiatic countries attempt to rid themselves of DRUGS [sic] CURSE, and attributed their failure to lack of education. We consider ourselves enlightened and that never could we succumb to such a fate. But— did you know that the use of Marihuana is steadily increasing among the youth of this country? Did you know that the youthful criminal is our greatest problem today? And that Marihuana gives the user false courage and destroys conscience, thereby making crime alluring, smart? That is the price we are paying for our lack of interest in the narcotic situation. This story is drawn from an actual case history on file in the police records of one of our large cities. NOTE: MARIHUANA, Hashish of the Orient, is commonly distributed as a doped cigarette. Its most terrifying effect is that it fires the user to extreme cruelty and license. Like "Assassin of Youth," a major part of the plot of "Marihuana: Weed With Roots in Hell" takes place at a "wienie bake."

Like "Tell Your Children," the film begins

with jazz music and dancing before moving to newspaper headlines.

Directed by Dwain Esper, who also directed

"Sinister Menace," this 1936 movie juxtaposes and

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123

interchanges the evil imagery of marijuana with that of hard narcotics. The cast of characters of the movie includes Burma, her friend Joan, her boyfriend Dick, her sister Elaine, and the wealthy Morgan Stewart, to whom Elaine is first engaged and is later married.

The lead gangster's name is Tony, and his

partner in crime, who speaks English with a halting Spanish accent, remains nameless throughout the film. The movie begins in a beer hall, where the movie's youths are dancing wildly in varying stages of intoxication. "In the old days," a non-teenage man says to his female companion, "parents knew what their kids were doing evenings."

"If my mother and dad came to places like this,"

responds the companion, "I wouldn't be here now." In the midst of befriending Burma, Dick and their friends, Tony the gangster takes leave to transact a drug sale in the bathroom.

Interestingly, the small packet of

drugs is concealed in a hollow shoe heel, as depicted by the 1931 FBN-like footage in "Tell Your Children."

Tony soon

invites the young innocents to have a party at his house, where all hell breaks loose.

Tony signals his silent

partner, who takes a stash of marijuana from a hiding place in the wall and places it by the bottles of booze.

Two of

the young female high schoolers exclaim: "These are the funniest cigarettes I ever saw!" and "The funniest I ever tasted!"

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124

Burma takes one puff and her somber facial expression is instantly transformed into one of joyful laughter.

All

six girls are laughing hilariously, and Joan suddenly strips down to her underwear before embarking on a swim in the ocean.

Burma's four companions decide to go skinny dipping

in the moonlight, laughing, frolicking and giggling all the while, while Burma and Dick roll around on the beach.

It is

there, we later learn, where Burma was impregnated. The scene shifts to Tony and his nameless associate, who says, in a stilting, heavy Spanish accent: sure uses up the joy weed don't they."

"This bunch

Tony responds:

"Well, that's one way of creating business.

When they're

that age they're not suspicious and easily hooked." Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the gangsters and the partying kids, Joan has drowned in the ocean.

Tony gathers the kids

around and tells them: Under no circumstances are you to say you were in this house. The police will pass as an innocent wienie roast on the beach, but should they know of your actions here, that there's been a drinking party, nude bathing, an investigation will surely take place, and that will mean your becoming wards of the juvenile court. Newspaper headlines then begin to cover the screen: DROWNED AS AFTERMATH OF BEACH PARTY Body of Joan Marsh, Fairmont High School Student, Found on Beach Today. Burma's sister Elaine is concerned that word of Burma's involvement in the affair could leak to her beau's wealthy family.

The sisters argue, and Burma decides that she

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125

cannot live in the same house with her mother and Elaine. "Dick," she says, "you must marry me."

It is then we learn

that Burma, as a result of the wild beach party, is pregnant. money.

Dick agrees to marry Burma, but he has no job or

"I'll do anything," he says.

"I'll see Tony."

A day after seeing Tony, Dick, the nameless gangster, and others are observed smuggling bales of marijuana by plain-clothed police of the narcotic squad who have been staking out a harbor. and killed.

Dick flees, is chased, and is shot

The next day's newspaper carries two stories

side-by-side which affect Burma's family in different ways. The two headlines read: POPULAR YOUNG BACHELOR, MORGAN STEWART TO WED and

CRIME DOES NOT PAY YOUTH KILLED AS POLICE SEIZE MARIHUANA SHIPMENT. Burma confronts Tony, and threatens to turn him in to

the police, but the wily gangster puts some unnamed powder in

glass, mixes it in a drink, and says:

will quiet your nerves."

"Try this.

It

He then convinces Burma that he

should send her away to have her baby, and once the baby is b o m , he convinces her to give it up for adoption and to work for him.

Dick and Elaine marry, and unbeknownst to

Burma, they adopt her daughter. As Burma becomes "Blondie," a heartless dope pusher, Tony congratulates his new partner in crime: The way your marijuana customers are hooked on the stronger stuff like H and C [Heroin and Cocaine], you'll soon be ice queen of the snow family, Blondie.

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126

In the midst of numerous hands exchanging cash and small packets of dope, the movie viewer next sees a newspaper headline take form: MARIHUANA SMOKING SHOWS ALARMING INCREASE Drug Evil, Of Which Marihuana Often the First Step, Is A Fast Growing Menace. As the scene quickly shifts to a background voice on a police radio saying "Calling All Cars," and then to the screams of women, another headline take shape: NARCOTICS BRING RUIN The Drug Habit Is Expanding And The Usefulness Of The Victim Is Gone. Still another headline brings us news that the federal government must act against the killer weed: FEDERAL ENFORCEMENT POWERLESS TO SURPRESS [Sic] •MARIHUANA' TRAFFIC No Jurisdiction Over Sale, Use Or Growth. With the wailing of police sirens and the moaning of human voices in the background, the last of the barrage of newspaper headlines tells us: WAVE OF BRUTAL CRIMES LINKED TO MARIHUANA SMOKING. As the movie watcher hears the sound of machine gun fire and other sound effects, we witness the ruthless Burma demand a woman customer's engagement ring in exchange for five dollars she is owed as part of a heroin buy.

Burma

returns to her partners with "a $150,000 idea" which she shares with them only after shooting some dope in her arm. She proposes that the trio of criminals kidnap her sister's child and demand a ransom.

Soon, the kid is snatched.

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127

Meanwhile, the police are on Burma's trail, who they suspect of having stolen the ring that she exacted in exchange for five dollars worth of heroin.

In searching for

the ring in the gangsters' apartment, the police instead find not only a cache of dope, but the missing daughter of the socialite Morgan Stewart.

Burma has meanwhile learned

that the kidnapped child is actually her own daughter.

She

takes another "pop" of dope before entering the apartment, and overdoses.

As she enters the doorway and takes one last

look at her child, she collapses to the ground and dies. Seconds before "THE END" flashes across the screen, the viewer sees marijuana cigarettes -first three, then four, and then more than a dozen- fall to the ground around Burma's dead body. The lesson of "Marihuana: Weed With Roots In Hell" is clear: reefer kills.

Its message, that marijuana use leads

to heroin and cocaine, will be empirically examined in the next chapter: "Testing the Stepping Stone Hypothesis."

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CHAPTER 5

TESTING THE STEPPING STONE HYPOTHESIS In Harry Anslinger's day, the notion that marijuana use leads to harder drugs was referred to as the "stepping stone hypothesis."

In 1937, the "stepping stone hypothesis" was

flatly rejected by the Commissioner of Narcotics in his testimony before Congress concerning the Marihuana Tax Act (U.S. House of Representatives Hearings before the Committee on Ways and Means, 1937:24): Mr. Dingell.

I am just wondering whether the marihuana addict graduates into a heroin, an opium, or a cocaine user.

Mr. Anslinger. No, sir; I have not heard of a case of that kind. I think it is an entirely different class. The marihuana addict does not go in that direction. Whereas Anslinger definitively stated in 1937 that marijuana use does not lead to the use of harder drugs, by 1951 the Commissioner of Narcotics had changed his tune (U.S. News and World Report, as cited in Kaplan,1970:234): Q[uestion]:

Is marijuana habit forming? Is it as dangerous as other narcotics?

A[nslinger]:

It is habit forming but not addiction forming. It is dangerous because it leads to a desire for a greater kick from narcotics that do make addicts.

128

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129

In 1955, Anslinger articulated the stepping stone hypothesis in testimony before the U.S. Senate.

However,

the FBN director (Himmelstein, 1983:87): omitted any reference to violent crime or any other danger tied directly to marihuana.... He gave no rendition of marihuana crimes and even de-emphasized the importance of the crime connection. Clearly, the public image of marijuana that Anslinger and the FBN had promoted in the 1930s and 1940s had indeed changed.

Whereas marijuana was seen as an "assassin of

youth" and a "killer weed" in the 1930s, in the 1950s it was considered to be "stepping stone" to harder drugs. In the aftermath of Anslinger, in the 1960s and beyond, the public image of marijuana in the U.S. has shifted even more.

Whereas opponents of reefer formerly portrayed the

marijuana menace as a catalyst to violence, in recent times anti-marijuana zealots such as PRIDE (National Parents' Resource Institute for Drug Education, Inc.) have labeled the drug an amotivational dullness producer.

Himmelstein

refers to this evolution of marijuana as "From Killer Weed to Drop-Out Drug" (1983:121-136). Meanwhile, yesteryear's stepping stone hypothesis has survived into the 1990s with a new name: the "escalation" or "gateway" theory.

Trebach (1987:82) describes the "gateway"

theory as one in which; medical experts seem to imply that... [marijuana use] sucks many young occasional users through that gate and on to harder drugs and into the whole drug culture. Thus if the gate is kept closed to our youth, then that illegal culture is never entered.

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130

The polar opposite of the gateway theory is the "filter theory" of the British psychiatrist Dale Beckett, who claims that the availability of marijuana "may actually filter off some adolescents who... [otherwise] would be likely to use narcotics" (Trebach, 1987:84).

This theory holds that "for

many young people, marijuana acts as a filter to keep them away from harder drugs, rather than as a gateway to those more potent substances" (Trebach, 1987:92).

Beckett's drug

control philosophy is shared by the government of the Netherlands (Holland), which has established a drug control policy, called "normalization," that we shall soon discuss.

Historical Foundations of Drug Control The origin of drug control policies in both Holland (the Netherlands) and the United States can be traced to the Hague Opium Convention of 1912, which sought to solve the opium problems of China and the Far East.*^

Until then,

anti-drug legislation was virtually non-existent throughout the nations of the globe.

*^The Hague Convention of 1912 attempted to provide for effective domestic control of opium, morphine and cocaine, and their derivatives. Its aims were to gradually suppress the abuse of these drugs and to prevent their use for other than "medical and legitimate purposes" through an international agreement. The Convention specifically targeted the production, manufacture, export, trade and distribution of opium. It also sought to classify the illegal possession of opium, morphine and cocaine as penal offenses (Renborg, 1947:15-16).

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131

While the U.S. passed the Harrison Narcotic Act in 1914 and thereafter spearheaded an international effort to assure compliance with the Convention, Dutch legislation introduced in 1919 paralleled the U.S. Harrison Act.

Each nation's

drug control policies, however, have been shaped within the context of distinct nationalistic and cultural factors. In the U.S., a "twin campaign" provided the impetus for the prohibition of alcohol (1920-1933) and the Harrison Narcotic Act, which outlawed cocaine and heroin for nonmedicinal uses.

In many ways, the prohibition of alcohol

has served as the prototype in the United States for the continual and present day prohibition of cocaine, heroin and cannabis. In 1914, U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryant, "a man of deep prohibitionist and missionary convictions and sympathies," urged that the Harrison Narcotic Act be enacted as a means of the U.S. fulfilling its international obligations under the new treaty (Brecher, 1972:48-49).

After the Harrison Narcotic Act became law in

the United States, the U.S. led an international movement whereby other nations would comply with the Hague Convention.

Thus, domestic and international drug law

enforcement were born. "The Anti-Drug Campaign" became manifested first through the League of Nations and then through the United Nations.

In the years prior to World War II, international

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132

treaties came about through drug control conventions which took place at the Hague in 1912, and at Geneva, Switzerland in 1925, 1931 and 1936 (Bailey, 1936 and Renborg, 1947). In 1948, the U.S. launched a United Nations campaign, with Hariry Anslinger at the helm as the U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics at the U.N., "to consolidate all international drug agreements into a new Single Convention" (King, 1972: 91).

Behind this effort was Harry Anslinger, who remained

in his United Nations post for eight years following his 1962 retirement from the FBN.

In 1964, through "the

remarkable phenomenon of direct international manipulation" by the U.S., the Single Convention finally came into force (King, 1972:220). In dmig control matters, largely through the efforts of Harry Anslinger, the international community succumbed to the will of the United States of America.

Anslinger, as

has been mentioned, was equally effective in formulating, executing and instituting domestic drug control policies within the United States.**

Yet, despite the worldwide

prevalence of the prohibition model of drug enforcement that Anslinger promoted, in 1976, the government of the Netherlands chose to steer a separate drug control course from that of their U.S. counterparts.

**The reader is again referred to Stanley Meisler's 1960 article from The Nation which chronicles Anslinger's career.

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133

Dutch Cannabis Policy The Dutch approach to drug control has largely been ignored, misunderstood or misrepresented by proponents of the "war on drugs" in the United States.

The Netherlands'

somewhat contradictory drug control policy permits "soft" (cannabis) and "hard" (heroin and cocaine) drug use but vigorously prosecutes trafficking in "hard" drugs. Frits Ruter (1988), a law professor at the University of Amsterdam, has described the drug control system of the Dutch as "a policy of encirclement, adaptation, integration and normalization, rather than a policy of social exclusion through criminalization, punishment and stigmatization." While hemp products (cannabis; i.e., marijuana and hashish) remain illegal in the Netherlands, their use and small-scale sales are permitted.

In other words, through a

policy of prosecutorial discretion, marijuana and hashish laws remain on the books but are not enforced by the Dutch authorities.

In fact, cannabis may be purchased off menus

in numerous coffee houses throughout Holland, and it is also available through "youth centres" (in both instances, the sale of cannabis to youths under the age of sixteen is not condoned). The underlying philosophy by which the Dutch shaped their cannabis policy is this:

have

if "hard" and "soft"

drugs were viewed by the government in the same way, then drug-seeking youths would have to purchase illicit

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134

substances from a "pusher."

Access to "hard" drugs would

thereby be easy for the youths of Holland, and this would run contrary to the Dutch government's goal of preventing drug abuse among its citizens. In developing their cannabis policy, the Dutch authorities have sought to create two markets: above-ground, where cannabis may used by youths without fear; and underground, where the Dutch authorities do not want their youths to venture.

Holland's cannabis policy, however,

cannot be separated from its larger overall drug control policy of "normalization," which is worthy of further examination.

Normalization: the Dutch Svstem of Drug Control In response to the same pressures that brought forth the U.S. Harrison Narcotic Act, the first criminal drug legislation was introduced in the Netherlands in 1919.

This

Act remained virtually unchanged until 1976, when maximum penalties for "hard drugs" were, in keeping pace with the trend set by the international community, significantly increased. The Amended Opium Act of 1976 draws a distinction between "drugs presenting unacceptable risks," such as cocaine, opiates, LSD and amphetamines, and "hemp products," such as marijuana and hashish.

In keeping in line with

their international commitment through treaties, the Dutch

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135

have tried to steer a course that is a compromise between a "war on drugs" and "legalization" (Engelsman, 1588:7). The Dutch view drug abuse as a public health problem, not one of the police or the criminal justice system.

Thus,

national drug policy in the Netherlands is coordinated by the Minister for Welfare and Public Health.

The role of

drug law enforcement in Holland is to reduce the supply, and not to criminalize the use, of drugs. Rather than utilizing a policy which criminalizes, stigmatizes and punishes drug users, the Dutch integrate drug users into their society (Engelsman, 1990:50-51). The Dutch view this policy of "normalization" as a pragmatic and conservative one.

It is based on the

realization that a nation surrounded by water, such as the Netherlands, cannot conquer the sea.

Rather, by building

dikes and locks, Holland adapted and learned to live with the water in its midst.

Just as the Dutch control the sea

to the best of their ability, their social control policy of normalization is applied to illicit drug use and its consequences. Because "the function of Dutch criminal law is an instrument of social control rather than an instrument for expressing moral values," the Dutch distinguish between policies aimed at drug users and policies aimed at drug traffickers (Engelsman, 1990:51-52).

Therefore, in 1976,

when the Amended Opium Act was adopted, so were a set of

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136

guidelines that set national policy regarding the investigation and prosecution of drug offenses.

It is under

these guidelines that priorities are set and "prosecutorial discretion" is employed (Ruter, 1990:193); (1)

sale of cannabis in small quantities by a "reliable person" (known as a "house dealer") in a "youth center" results in no prosecution unless a dealer trades provocatively or openly advertises.

(2)

possession of a small quantity of "hard" drugs for personal consumption results, as a rule, in no police investigation, no pretrial detention and no prosecution.

(3)

dealing, possessing and producing a maximum of thirty grams of marijuana results, as a rule, in no police investigation, no pretrial detention and no prosecution.

(4)

when confronted with users who deal in "hard" drugs to provide for their own needs, or those found in possession of more than a small quantity, the public prosecutor employs discretion in determining the prison sentence that must be demanded.

The question of how effective Dutch cannabis policy is, then, is a logical one.

If cannabis use can be considered

to be a viable measure of the effectiveness of policy, then Holland's program of normalization may be viewed as a success.

In Table 5, it can be seen that the prevalence of

cannabis use among students in the Netherlands is quite low, particularly when contrasted with similarly aged students in the United States.

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137 TA B LE 5

CANNABIS USE AMONG STUDENTS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS (13-18 YEARS) IN THE NETHERLANDS AND THE USA*®

13-14 Years Male USa-HL Lifetime:

15% 3%

Last Mo.:

5% 2%

Female

15-16 Years

17-18 Years

Male

Female

USA-HL USA-NL

USa-HL

USA-NL

14% 2% 40% 12%

30% 9%

44% 18%

5% 1% 17%

7% 13% 4%

Male and Female

17%

5%

*®These data concerning cannabis use in the Netherlands and the U.S. were taken from a larger table entitled "Substance Use Among Students In Secondary Schools (13-18 Years) In The Netherlands And United States of America," which was provided to the author via a September 28, 1990 personal communication with Eddy Engelsman, who directs the Alcohol, Drugs and Tobacco Branch of the Ministry of Welfare, Health and Cultural Affairs for the Netherlands. Engelsman, who has been called the Dutch "drug czar," interpreted the table from Dutch to English as it originally appeared in a Dutch publication (1990): Roken. Alcohol-Endruaaebruik Onder Scholieren Vanaf 10 Jarr (Smoking. Alcohol and Drug Use Among School Students from 10 Years! by HN Plomp, H. Kuipers and M. Van Oers. Stratified by age group and gender, the table lists "lifetime" and "last month" prevalence not only for cannabis, but also for tobacco, alcohol, inhalants, cocaine, heroin, stimulants, sleeping tablets and tranquilizers. The data provided, for an unknown reason, are not stratified by gender for the 17-18 age group. The larger table has been published in a volume edited by Arnold Trebach and Kevin Zeese (1990a:58), Drug Prohibition and the Conscience of Nations (Washington, D.C.: Drug Policy Foundation). The sources for the U.S. data are cited as: American Health Association, 1989, and Johnston, Lloyd, The National High School Survey, NIDA, 1990.

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138

While Table 5 convincingly demonstrates that rates of cannabis use among youths are much lower in the Netherlands than they are in the United States, comparative rates of cannabis use do not constitute a test of the "stepping stone hypothesis."

Moreover, the underlying assumption of the

"gateway" or "escalation" theory: that cannabis use precedes the use of "harder" drugs, may not necessarily be valid. Nonetheless, if we accept this assumption for the sake of argument, a test of the "stepping stone hypothesis" must analyze not only cannabis use trends, but also use patterns for other substances, such as heroin and cocaine. Table 6 provides us with such a measurement of cannabis, cocaine and heroin use among youths in the United States and the Netherlands.

It clearly refutes the

"stepping stone hypothesis" by revealing that the prevalence of illicit drug use among students in the Netherlands is quite low in comparison to similarly aged students in the United States.

This holds true not only for cannabis use,

but for the substances of heroin and cocaine, as well.

It

can be argued, therefore, that the Dutch policy of normalization has been successful on two fronts:

(1) it has

separated the cannabis and "hard drug" markets; and (2) it has limited the size of the cannabis market through programs of education and social control.

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139 TA B LE 6

ILLICIT DRUG USE AMONG STUDENTS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS (13-18 YEARS) IN THE NETHERLANDS AND THE USA*^ 13-14. Years

15rl6_ Years

17-18 Years

LIFETIME

ML

ML

um

ML

USA

CANNABIS

2.6%

14.6%

10.8%

35.0%

17.7%

43.7%

COCAINE

0.6%

3.6%

1.2%

7.7%

1.6%

10.3%

0.5%

1.3%

HEROIN

USA

—

— — — —

PAST MONTH

NL

USA

—

ML

—

—

USA

ML

USA

CANNABIS

1.3%

5.4%

5.2%

14.9%

4.6%

16.7%

COCAINE

0.2%

1.6%

0.5%

2.7%

0.2%

2.8%

0.3%

0.3%

HEROIN

— — — —

----

— —

^ h e source of these data are the same as for Table 5. Again, in the original Dutch source, the data are not stratified by gender for age category 17-18 years. Here, I have likewise chosen to combine the gender categories for age groups 13-14 and 15-16 years.

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140

Table 6 reveals that U.S. secondary school students use cannabis and cocaine at considerably higher rates than do their Dutch counterparts.

This is true for both lifetime

and past month prevalence. In terms of past month drug use prevalence, U.S. youths use cannabis and cocaine at significantly greater rates than do Dutch youths.

The "past month" data indicate that

thirteen and fourteen year olds in the U.S. use both cannabis and cocaine more frequently than do any age group of Dutch youths.

The ratio of U.S. to Dutch past month use

rates range from a low of 2.9 times as great (for fifteen and sixteen year olds who have used cannabis) to 14 times as great (for seventeen and eighteen year olds who have used cocaine). When the same age groups are compared for lifetime prevalence, it is seen that U.S. youths use cannabis, cocaine and heroin at significantly greater rates than do Dutch youths.

The ratio of U.S. to Dutch lifetime use rates

range from a low of 2.5 times as great (for seventeen and eighteen year olds who have ever used cannabis) to 6.4 times as great (for both fifteen-sixteen and seventeen-eighteen year olds who have ever used cocaine).

On a lifetime basis,

U.S. seventeen and eighteen year olds use heroin at 2.6 times the rate than do their Dutch age cohort. To further test the "stepping stone hypothesis," it would be logical to compare Dutch and U.S. illicit drug use

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141

trends of adults in addition to youths.

Such a comparison

would be possible if two similar data bases could be analyzed, one Dutch and one U.S. Due to qualitative and quantitative differences between nations in research design methodology, including how a given data set is gathered, how data categories are defined, and statistical techniques utilized for the sake of analysis, comparing

transnational data sources may be a

misleading, or even an inaccurate, undertaking. Measuring and comparing crime rates across borders, for instance, may be a useless exercise if the nations in question define their crime categories in vastly different ways.

An assault in Country A may not be defined as an

assault in Country B.

Countiry C may differentiate between

larceny below and above a given monetary amount while Country D may make no such distinction.

Country E may

classify the crimes of robbery, burglary and larceny as separate offense categories while Country F simply categorizes them all as theft. In the case of illicit drug use, however, we are fortunate in that there are available comparative data bases in the United States and the Netherlands that stand up to statistical scrutiny.

In the United States, the National

Household Survey on Drug Abuse, which is conducted annually by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides us with

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142

the best possible demographic measurement of nationwide drug use.

In the Netherlands, a similarly conducted survey,

perhaps more rigorous in its statistical design, is conducted annually in the city of Amsterdam.

Both surveys

cover the same year (1990) and the same aged population (12 years and older) While comparing a nation's overall rate of illicit drug consumption to that of a city may be seen as comparing apples and oranges, in this case, we can assume that the rate of illicit drug use in Amsterdam is greater than that of the entire nation of Holland.

This assumption can be

made because drug use is known to occur more in urban areas than in rural areas, and much of the Netherlands is comprised of rural areas.

Thus, the Dutch figures contained

in Table 7 would undoubtedly be lower if the numbers for Amsterdam were replaced by overall numbers for the Netherlands as a whole.

‘^While the Amsterdam data presented do not distinguish between age groups, but simply list all age groupings in one category, the U.S. data divide the population by ages 12-17, 18-25, and 26 and older. By multiplying given percentages for each age group by the sample number for each, and then dividing that sub-total into the whole population sampled (N), I was able to create a U.S. category that was comparable to the Amsterdam age category of "12-70 years and older."

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143 TABLE 7

ILLICIT DRUG USE IN THE UNITED STATES AND AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS (12-70+ YEARS)

Lifetime Use ML

USA

Past Year

PastHonth

ML

USA

ML

USA

CANNABIS

24.1% 32.3%

9.8%

12.1%

6.0%

6.0%

COCAINE

5.3%

10.8%

1.3%

3.5%

0.4%

1.0%

HEROIN

1.1%

0.8%

0.1%

0.3%

0.0%

N/A^

Sources:

Licit and Illicit Drug Use In Amsterdam: Report of a Household Survey in 1990 on the Prevalence of Drug Use Among the Population of 12 Years and Over by J.P. Sandwijk, P.D.A. Cohen and S. Husterd (University of Amsterdam, Instituut voor Sociale Geografie, 1991), Table 3.2, page 20; National Household Survey on Drug Abuse; Main Findings 1990. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991) pp. 20-30.

^ h i s category, "heroin use-past month," was unavailable in the U.S. data because "estimates based on only a few respondents are omitted because one cannot place a high degree of confidence in their statistical accuracy."

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Table 7 demonstrates that despite the Dutch normalization policy being in place in the city of Amsterdcun, illicit drugs are used there at lower rates, among both adults and youths, than they are in the United States.

On a lifetime basis, more than one third times as

many of the U.S. sample have used cannabis than have their Dutch counterparts, and the U.S. group has used cocaine at a rate which is over two times the rate (more than two hundred percent) than that in Amsterdam.

While the U.S. lifetime

rate of heroin use is slightly lower than that in Amsterdam, the difference is statistically insignificant, for when rounded off, both figures stand at a mere one percent of the populations' sampled. Past year use figures are similar, in that the U.S. sample population uses all three drugs: cannabis, cocaine and heroin, at a greater rate than does the sample population in Amsterdam.

Past year cannabis use is slightly

higher in the U.S. than in Amsterdam, past year cocaine use is more than two times as great in the U.S. than in Amsterdam, and past year heroin use is three times as great among the sampled U.S. population than it is among the Amsterdam sample. For the past month figures, due to a U.S. statistical concern, rates of heroin use cannot be compared, but literally zero percent of the Amsterdam sample used heroin in the last thirty days.

While cannabis use was comparable

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in the two samples, past month cocaine use was two and a half times as great in the U.S. as in Amsterdam. Thus, on the basis of analyzing available comparative transnational data, it is clear that the "stepping stone hypothesis" must be rejected.

Just as Tcible 6 revealed that

youths in the U.S. use both cannabis and "hard" drugs at considerably higher rates than do their Dutch counterparts. Table 7 shows us that for adults and youths alike, illicit drugs are used at lower rates in Amsterdam than they are in the United States.

No empirical evidence examined herein

supports the "gateway" or "escalation" theory in any way, shape or form.

Comparing U.S. and Dutch Drug Control Policies Although the U.S. and the Netherlands are bound by the same international drug control treaties, aspects of each nation's drug policies are quite distinct from one another. In the Netherlands, through a system of "normalization," illicit drug users are not treated as criminals, but instead are integrated into society.

Through the de-facto

decriminalization of both "hard" and "soft" drugs, heroin, cocaine and cannabis are available to users although they remain illegal substances.

While the Dutch have adopted

innovative strategies to cope with illicit drug use and related social harms, the U.S. prohibitionist stance has remained virtually unaltered since the 1930s.

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Drug policy in the Netherlands further differs from that of the United States.

Whereas the U.S. is content to

tell drug users to "just say no," the Dutch have a national "harm reduction" strategy in place.

Part of this strategy

is based, as we have seen, on the idea of separating the "hard" and "soft" drug markets.

Another aspect of Dutch

drug control policy, which this chapter has not discussed, targets the injectable drug using population.

By providing

clean syringes and hypodermic needles to intravenous drug users (Engelsman, 1990:55 and Ruter, 1988:4), Dutch drug control policy aims to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus. Clearly, the U.S. could benefit from devoting serious study to the "harm reduction" and "normalization" models of drug control that are in effect in the Netherlands.

Just as

the Dutch have developed their own innovative drug control programs within the context of distinct cultural and nationalistic factors, so can the United States. The Social Control Hypothesis not only places marijuana control within the larger context of drug control, but it places drug control within the larger context of social control.

In this regard, it is important to point out

differences between the public health and public welfare policies of Holland and the U.S.A., in that the user of illicit drugs may be in need of either governmental service.

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While the Dutch have a program of nationalized medicine in place, the United States not only has yet to adopt such a system, but there is a question as to whether the national health plan currently being debated in Congress will cover drug treatment services.

In addition, the system of "social

security" in place in the Netherlands is widely considered to be far superior to the "welfare" program of the United States, a system that President Clinton has proposed to reform. Data presented in this chapter have refuted the "stepping stone hypothesis," the notion that marijuana use leads to harder drugs.

Utilizing the drug control system of

the Dutch as a model, it has been demonstrated that the adoption of a national cannabis decriminalization policy does not necessarily lead to an increase in illicit drug use. The Dutch policy of normalization is but one form of drug decriminalization.

Since the mid-1970s, twelve states

in the United States have enacted methods of marijuana decriminalization that operate similarly to the way traffic laws are enforced.

The next chapter will further examine

marijuana decriminalization.

As well, it will distinguish

between the cannabis policy options of marijuana decriminalization and marijuana legalization, two terms that are often mistaken for, and inappropriately interchanged with, one another.

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CHAPTER 6 BEYOND CRIMINALIZATION The Dutch policy of normalization discussed in the previous chapter is but one form of decriminalization. The prefix "de" denotes a reversal or undoing, and decriminalization policies permit nations, states or localities to selectively enforce -or not enforce- cannabis laws.

Under a policy of decriminalization, marijuana use or

possession is not condoned, but is instead treated on a non­ criminal basis. As we have seen, the Dutch view drug control as social control.

In that all governments aim to control the people

under their jurisdiction, governmental drug policies: whether viewed as liberal, conservative, socialist or fascist are -at their root- social control. Under the Dutch system of normalization, laws against cannabis and other controlled substances are still on the books, but they are ignored through either police or prosecutorial discretion. The fact that coffee houses and youth centers in the Netherlands openly sell cannabis to their customers, while such transactions are technically illegal, adds to the murky, grey area that lies between the realms of legalized 148

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149

and decriminalized cannabis.

Although the concepts of drug

legalization and drug decriminalization are quite distinct, the ambiguous cannabis policy of the Dutch may well serve to create confusion, rather than clarification, in regards to marijuana decriminalization discussions in the U.S.A. Decriminalization has been defined as "[c]rime without punishment" (Packer, 1968:19).

Marijuana decriminalization

differs from its legalization in that under the latter, marijuana would be available for consumers to purchase in the licit marketplace, as are alcohol, cigarettes, coffee or tea. Opponents of marijuana decriminalization and marijuana legalization argue that even the medical use of marijuana, to relieve suffering from diseases such as AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and multiple sclerosis, cannot be justified.

They

fear that the medical use of marijuana would send the "wrong message" to the rest of society, namely that recreational marijuana use would be unofficially condoned. This chapter examines two distinct but related issues which pertain to national marijuana policy in the United States:

(1) the decriminalization and (2) the legalization

of marijuana.

While this chapter sets out to clarify how

the concepts of marijuana decriminalization and marijuana legalization differ, the following chapter addresses marijuana's use as a medicine.

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Decriminalization In their book entitled The Honest Politician's Guide to Crime Control. Norval Morris and Gordon Hawkins cite seven areas of the criminal law for which they advocate legal reform through decrimiralizatiir..

Morris and Hawkins

initially provide their readers (1970:3) with "a bare statement" of their program, which targets seven areas of the criminal law.

In the more than two decades which have

since passed, substantial changes have occurred in each of these areas: Abortion: Abortion performed by a qualified medical practitioner in a registered hospital shall cease to be a criminal offense. Disorderly Conduct and Vaarancv: Said laws will be replaced by laws precisely stipulating the conduct proscribed and defining the circumstances in which the police should intervene. Drug Offenses: Neither the acquisition, purchase, possession, nor the use of any drug will be a criminal offense. The sale of some drugs other than by a licensed chemist (druggist) and on prescription will be criminally proscribed; proof of possession of excessive quantities may be evidence of a sale or of intent to sell. Drunkenness: Public drunkenness shall cease to be a criminal offense. Gambling: No form of gambling will be prohibited by the criminal law; certain fraudulent and cheating gambling practices will remain criminal. Juvenile Delinguencv: The juvenile court should retain jurisdiction only over conduct by children which would be criminal were they adult.

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151

Sexual Behavior; Sexual activities between consenting adults in private will not be subject to the criminal law. The role of the criminal law is excessive in regards to adultery, bestiality, bigamy, fornication, homosexuality, illicit cohabitation, incest, obscenity, pornography, prostitution, sodomy and statutory rape/ carnal knowledge.) Today, abortion presently is legal throughout the United States.

While Disorderly Conduct is still a crime

across the nation. Vagrancy has been declared to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Public

drunkenness has likewise been declared unconstitutional and is no longer a crime.

Gambling, formerly the exclusive

domain of organized criminal syndicates, now is sanctioned and operated by many states throughout the United States via lotteries, which serve as a major revenue source for state operating budgets.

Status offenses, wrongful behavior

committed by juveniles for which adults cannot be arrested (such as truancy), are no longer treated as delinquent acts by the juvenile courts.

Sexual behavior by consenting

adults, while not legal, for the most part is widely ignored by the net of criminal justice throughout the United States. — And although drug offenders continue to be caught in the net of the U.S. criminal law, in the 1970s, twelve U.S. states decriminalized marijuana possession.

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Marijuana Decriminalization in the United States As of 1978, nearly twenty five percent (twelve) of the fifty states in the U.S. decriminalized the offense of possession of marijuana.

Across the nation, a few local

jurisdictions, including Ann Arbor, Michigan, Berkeley, California, and Madison, Wisconsin also decriminalized the possession of marijuana for personal use.

An additional

decriminalization city, Seattle, Washington, was forced to revert to the recriminalization of marijuana in 1987 when its state legislature invalidated the city's legal jurisdiction to decriminalize. Of the twelve states which have decriminalized marijuana, one state legislature (South Dakota) voted to recriminalize after one year.

In the state of Alaska, which

will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter, voters passed a referendum that recriminalized marijuana possession in that state as of 1991.

Despite the passage of

the Alaskan referendum, the criminalized status of marijuana in the forty ninth remains tenuous, for Alaska's state Supreme Court has ruled that marijuana possession is a protected legal right under its state Constitution. Each of the remaining ten decriminalization states has chosen its own method of enforcing, or not enforcing, laws that govern the possession of marijuana for personal use. Thus, in these states, the crime of marijuana possession is enforced in a similar fashion as are traffic violations.

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153

Civil Law Versus Criminal Law Enforcing or ignoring the criminal law through the discretion of police or prosecutors, as is done in the Netherlands, is but one form of decriminalization.

In quite

a few states within the U.S., for instance, the criminal law is not used to enforce parking violations. civil law is utilized.

Instead, the

When it is time for a "scoff law"

violator (someone who ignores their parking tickets) to either register their automobile or renew their automobile insurance, one is unable to do so until his or her legal obligations have been met. Another method by which parking tickets are enforced through the civil law is when "the Denver boot," a mechanical device which prohibits a motor vehicle from being moved, is locked to the vehicle's wheel.

Thus, for the

scoff law violator's vehicle to be driven again, the violator's civil responsibilities must first be fulfilled. As is seen in Table 8, of the ten marijuana decriminalization states in the U.S., five employ a civil system of law enforcement while five utilize a petty offense (or a minor misdemeanor) type schemata.

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154 TA B LE 8

LAWS IN U.S. STATES THAT HAVE DECRIMINALIZED THE OFFENSE OF MARIJUANA POSSESSION

State

Maximum Fine

Maximum Amt. Possessed

Classification Of Offense

California

$100

1 Ounce

Misdemeanor

Colorado

$100

1 Ounce

Petty Offense

Maine

$200

1.25 Ounces

Civil

Minnesota

$100

1.50 Ounces

Civil

Mississippi

$250

1 Ounce

Civil

Nebraska

$100

1 Ounce

Civil

New York

$100

0.89 Ounces (25 Grams)

Violation

No. Carolina

$100

1 Ounce

Misdemeanor

Ohio

$100

3.57 Ounces (100 Grams)

Misdemeanor

1 Ounce

Civil

Oregon

$1000

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155

The Unicrue Case of Alaska The state of Alaska is a former marijuana decriminalization state that employed the civil law, rather than the criminal law, in enforcing marijuana possession violations.

Although not reflected in Table 8, it is

important to understand how Alaska differs from the ten decriminalization states.

In 1975, the Alaskan state

Supreme Court ruled in Ravin v. State that the possession of marijuana by adults for personal use within the privacy of the home is a protected right, and not subject to a fine. Since 1975, when Alaska's decriminalization statute was ruled to be unconstitutional, the possession of marijuana by adults for personal use within the privacy of their own home has been legal in Alaska.

Possession of up to one ounce of

marijuana outside the home, however, remained a civil offense which was subject to a $100 fine. In November 1990, via a ballot proposition, Alaskan voters recriminalized the offense of marijuana possession by replacing the civil penalties that were on the books with criminal penalties.

The law took effect in February 1991,

but its constitutionality has subsequently been challenged in court.

In October 1993, in the first test case of

marijuana recriminalization in Alaska (McNeil v. State) an Alaskan lower court ruled that Ravin is still the law of the land in the forty ninth state.

A decision of the state

Supreme Court takes precedent over a voter referendum, the

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156

Alaskan lower court ruled.

Until the constitutionality of

the new recriminalization law is resolved, marijuana's illegal status in Alaska remains tenuous. The Alaskan debate on marijuana recriminalization served as the last stand of "drug czar" William Bennett, who served as President Bush's first director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).

In his final days in

office, Bennett, an outspoken, controversial figure who personified President Bush's drug control strategy, campaigned in Alaska for the recriminalization initiative. On the day after Alaska's historic election to recriminalize marijuana, William Bennett announced his resignation as director of the ONDCP.

The Overreach of the Criminal Law Morris and Hawkins use the terms "overreach of the criminal law" and "overcriminalization" in arguing that the enactment of criminal statutes to enforce such laws as drug offenses is counter-effective.

Samuel Walker, expounding on

Morris and Hawkins' treatise, states that decriminalization has four principal rationales (1989, 236-237); 1. Many laws are criminogenic (or cause crime). 2. Overly broad statutes tend to build disrespect for the law. 3. Overcriminalization places serious burdens on the criminal justice system. 4. Laws that legislate morality ("victimless crimes") violate individual rights.

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According to Walker, laws may be criminogenic in three interrelated ways;

(1) by creating a "crime tariff,"

(2) by labeling, and (3) by encouraging secondary deviance.

The "Crime Tariff" When demand for a given commodity is said to be inelastic, economists theorize that the price for the commodity will not have an effect on the rate at which it is purchased.

Economists speculate in this regard about

consumer buying habits for such goods as cigarettes and motor fuel.

A "crime tariff" is essentially a kind of risk-

taking tax that the retail consumer of an illegal commodity pays to the wholesaler. The tariff precisely, it illegal [or] run a

Packer (1968;278) explains;

in question is the criminal law, or more the particular criminal statutes that make to do such things as traffic in narcotics gambling enterprise[.]

Both Packer and Morris and Hawkins (1970;5-6) discuss the "crime tariff" in terms of supply and demand.

When the

demand for "goods and services" such as drugs, gambling and prostitution drives up prices, this leads to the development of large-scale organized crime groups who control the market.

These groups then tend to diversify their

operations and both finance and promote additional criminal activity.

Due to the high prices of a given commodity, the

consumer may resort to crime to pay for his or her vices. Alcohol prohibition provides us with "a classic case of the crime tariff" in action (Packer, 1968;279);

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Traffic in liquor became the monopoly of the lawbreakers, who proceeded to eaim enormous monopoly profits and, behind the protective wall of the crime tariff on liquor, to build criminal organizations that could rapidly take advantage of any other crime tariffs. After alcohol prohibition was repealed, the void created in the marketplace of the criminal underworld came to be filled by the illicit drug industry.

Notes Packer

(1968:279): With the disappearance of the crime tariff on liquor, a similarly profitable traffic in narcotics developed... What we have done is... to drive the price of the commodity to new heights. Although few people would contend that marijuana users commit crimes to support their habits, it is obvious that marijuana's high price is due to its illegal status.

The

criminalization of marijuana additionally results in increased criminal justice system costs for police, judicial, and "correctional" operations.

L a b e l i n g and S e c o n d a r y D e v i a n c e

In the classic words of Howard Becker (1963:9), labeling, also known as the social reaction perspective (Taylor, Walton and Young,1973;139-171), is defined; Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application [of] rules and sanctions to an "offender." The deviant is one to whom that label has been successfully applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label.

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Labeling "implies that social control leads to, and creates, deviance" (Pearson, 1975:187).

The labeling or

social reaction perspective begins when an original act is defined as "deviant" and continues when negative social sanctions are applied to the "offender," who then becomes stigmatized and thereafter accepts his or her deviant status and the label (e.g., "criminal") that is attached to it. Primary deviance is the original act, such as drugtaking, which is viewed outside the norm.

When negative

social sanctions are applied to the act, secondary deviance (Lemert,1951:75-78), also known as "deviance amplification" (Wilkins, 1964), may ensue.

Using the Dutch drug control

policy of normalization as an illustrative example, we can see how primary deviance differs from secondary deviance (Engelsman, 1990:50): From the beginning of the 1980s, Dutch political leaders have acknowledged the existence of primary and secondary effects of illicit drug use. Primary effects, such as tolerance, mood swings and addiction, are those caused by the drug use itself. Secondary effects, such as drug-related crimes, prostitution and AIDS, are at least partly induced by the mere illegality of the drug. Unfortunately, the secondary and primary effects of drug use are often confused with one another. In other words, the effects of drug use are often mistaken for the effects of drug policies. Morris and Hawkins comment that (1970:10) "by treating marihuana as equivalent to opiates,

[the law] may well

foster the belief that there is no difference between them." Underlying this sentiment, as we have seen in Chapter 5, are two central objectives of Dutch normalization policy:

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160

(1) to avoid stigmatization on part of the drug user, and (2) to separate the "soft" (or cannabis) and the "hard" drug markets.

Thus, it is clear that the national drug control

policies of Holland are grounded in the labeling or social reaction perspective and strive to avoid secondary deviance. Engelsman (1990:50) notes that internationally, the secondary effects of drug use manifest themselves and are amplified in three ways, through: "organized crime, [the] erosion of the judicial system, and [the] high costs for police, justice and prison apparatuses." In the United States, a case can likewise be made that the criminalization of drug use, including cannabis, has resulted in similar secondary effects.

Firstly, it cannot

be disputed that the tentacles of organized crime grip the illicit drug market.

Secondly, it cannot be disputed that

the processing of drug cases by law enforcement agencies, the courts and "correctional" institutions (which include probation and parole services, as well as prisons) certainly has a high price tag attached to it.

Thirdly, it is

abundantly clear that judicial system calendars and dockets throughout the country are inundated with drug cases, while other pressing criminal and civil cases must be placed on the back burner of the stove of justice. U.S. marijuana policy has not been created in a vacuum apart from heroin and cocaine policy, but in conjunction with it.

Cannabis policy in today's United States,

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originally formulated and developed by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, can be viewed as a rudderless ship that is sailing on the ocean of time.

Wandering in the Desert of U.S. Drug Policv On August 2, 1977, forty years to the day after the Marihuana Tax Act was signed into law. President Jimmy Carter recommended that criminal sanctions for marijuana use and related non-profit transfers of the drug be removed.

In

a word. President Carter recommended that marijuana use in the United States be decriminalized. The view epitomized by President Carter: that marijuana is a relatively benign drug, was a fleeting one which seemed to dissipate in a cloud of smoke over the next decade.

In

retrospect. President Carter, who was fond of Biblical analogies, can be seen as a lone voice crying out in the wilderness. The "backlash" against marijuana decriminalization, the reverberations of which were felt within the Carter White House, was rooted in three elements (Himmelstein, 1986): [1] federal officials virtually reversed their stance on marijuana; [2] the New Right became a major social force and made an antimarijuana stance part of its program; and [3] hundreds of parents' groups concerned about marijuana use by adolescents emerged.

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By 1980, with the coming of the "Reagan Revolution," the marijuana decriminalization pendulum reversed its direction.

President Reagan marked the official change in

attitude about marijuana by declaring in a 1982 radio address that (Wisotsky, 1986:3-4,223): The mood toward drugs is changing in this country and the momentum is with us. We are making no excuses for drugs -hard, soft, or otherwise. Drugs are bad and we are going after them. The sentiment of President Reagan is perhaps best evidenced by the 1988 Congressional testimony of two distinguished law enforcement professionals, Jerald Vaughn and John Lawn.

Lawn and Vaughn can be seen as being

spiritual descendants of what has been termed the "Anslinger Philosophy" (Schur, 1962:191-198). Vaughn, who then was the Executive Director of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, voiced his concern about illicit drugs this way (U.S. House of Representatives, 1988:76):

"Drugs are diabolical and

destructive not only to the human system, but to the democratic way of life and a responsible citizenry." Lawn, who then served as the Administrator of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) and thus testified as the chief federal drug law enforcement officer in the United States, expressed himself through the following statement (U.S. House of Representatives, 1988:70-72): bad because they are illegal.

"Drugs are not

They are illegal because they

are bad."

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President Carter's 1977 recommendation to decriminalize marijuana nationwide, however, had historical roots in a previous President's Commission: President Nixon's National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, known as the Shafer Commission. The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse: 1970-1973 Chaired by Raymond Shafer, the former governor of Pennsylvania, the Commission was established in 1970 and consisted of thirteen members: nine presidential and four congressional appointees.

In the report's March 22, 1972

cover letter to President Nixon, Raymond Shafer defined the 1972 report as: an all inclusive effort to present the facts as they are known today, to demythologize the controversy surrounding marihuana, and to place in proper perspective one of the most emotional and explosive issues of our time.... We hope this Report will be a foundation upon which credibility in this area can be restored and upon which a rational policy can be predicated. The Commission published its findings in two volumes: Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding (1972) and In America: Problem in Perspective (1973).

Drug Use

Whereas the

latter report expounded on the larger issue of drug use in general, the former report focused solely on marijuana, for, as stated by the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse*’ (1972:2): 49 t 'Hereafter,

the National Commission on Marihuana Abuse will be referred to as the NCMDA.

and Drug

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By separating [marihuana] from the rest of the drug controversy, we have been better able to analyze the unique position marihuana occupies in our society. Covering a broad mandate, the NCMDA sought to examine the nature and scope of marijuana use, the effects of the drug, its relationship to other behavior and "the efficacy of existing law” (1972:1).

As federal funds were made

available by Congress to enable the NCMDA to conduct a comprehensive research and fact-finding effort, the inquiry consisted of more than fifty projects, which included formal hearings, informal hearings, and "a nation-wide survey of public beliefs, information and experience” which came to be known as the National Survey. Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding refuted the marijuana/crime thesis by declaring (1972:91 and 94): ... the weight of the evidence is that marihuana does not cause violent or aggressive behavior; if anything, marihuana generally serves to inhibit the expression of such behavior.... No evidence exists that marihuana use will cause or lead to the commission of violent or aggressive behavior by the large majority of psychologically and socially mature individuals in the general population.... In essence, neither informed current professional opinion nor empirical research, ranging from the 1930*s to the present, has produced systematic evidence to support the thesis that marihuana use, by itself, either invariably or generally leads to or causes crime, including acts of violence, juvenile delinquency or aggressive behavior. Despite the lack of evidence to support the marijuana/crime thesis, the NCMDA noted that the

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"perceptions of 1937 were perpetuated"^® when the U.S. Congress included marijuana in provisions of the Boggs Acts of 1951 and 1956, which greatly increased penalties for narcotic offenses.

The NCMDA (1972:132) thus quoted Senator

Price M. Daniel, Chairman of the Senate subcommittee which considered the 1956 Act: Marihuana is a drug which starts most addicts in the use of drugs. Marihuana, in itself a dangerous drug, can lead to some of the worst crimes committed by those who are addicted to the habit. Evidently, its use leads to the heroin habit and then to the final destruction of the persons addicted. With the passage of the 1956 Boggs Act, however, marijuana arrests on the federal level did not greatly increase.

It was not until the 1960s, when marijuana use

become more popular in the U.S., that federal marijuana arrests rose.

From 1965-1970, arrest statistics gathered by

the Commission (1972:133-134) revealed that federal marijuana arrests increased six-fold: from about 500 to in excess of 3000.

State marijuana arrests increased even more

dramatically, from nearly 19,000 in 1965 to nearly 190,000 in 1970. Although the 1970 Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act lessened criminal marijuana penalties on the ®°The NCMDA report utilizes the word "perpetrated," not "perpetuated," in the quoted sentence in question. Due to the context of the sentence, I am assuming that the report contains a typographical error, and have therefore chosen to use the word "perpetuated" in place of "perpetrated" for the following sentence: "The perceptions of 1937 were perpetuated in the comments of Senator Price M. Daniel, Chairman of the Senate subcommittee considering the 1956 Act...."

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federal level, from 1970-1973, marijuana arrests still continued to rise at a significant rate.

It was not until

after the publication of the 1972 NCMDA report that the majority of states followed suit and lessened criminal marijuana penalties.^’ The NCMDA found, after administering opinion surveys to a variety of citizens and criminal justice officials in regards to the enforcement of marijuana laws, that the consensus of public and criminal justice system opinion was that the punishment being meted out for marijuana-related crimes was excessive.

The report concluded (1972:157);

In sum, the existing system is not supported by the consensus of public opinion that once existed. There is a consensus that punitive measures are generally inappropriate. There is also a predominant opinion that the legal system should not abandon formal control. Moving from the foundation that the criminalization of marijuana is excessive, the Commission next wrestled with the question of a "social control policy for marihuana. In so doing, it identified four social control options for marijuana use (1972:161):

^’Marijuana arrests virtually doubled in the U.S. from 1970, when nearly 200,000 marijuana arrests took place nationwide, to 1973. Despite the lessening of penalties for marijuana possession that took place across the U.S. following the publication of the NCMDA report, marijuana arrests have remained constant for the past twenty years, at approximately 400,000 annually. ^^Although the Commission used the term "social control," it did not define it. Social control, which has been discussed in earlier chapters, refers to the regulation of human behavior in or by a social group.

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I. II. III. IV.

Approval of Use. Elimination of Use. Discouragement of Use. Neutrality Toward Use.

Using the following rationale, the Commission then rejected option one. Approval of Use, and option two. Elimination of Use (1972:162-164): (I)

official approval would inevitably encourage some people to use the drug who would not otherwise do so.

(II) the eliminationist policy..., if taken seriously, would require a great increase in manpower and resources in order to eliminate the use of a drug which simply does not warrant that kind of attention. The question then before the Commission was whether to urge the adoption of an official policy of neutrality or discouragement.

In answering this question (1972:165), the

Commission drew a historic parallel between contemporary marijuana policy with the repeal of alcohol prohibition in 1933:” There are many today who feel that if the social impact of alcohol use had then been more fully understood, a policy of discouragement rather than neutrality would have been adopted to minimize the negative aspects of alcohol use. Misunderstanding also played an important part when the national government adopted an eliminationist marihuana policy in 1937. The policy­ makers knew very little about the effects or social impact of the drug; many of their hypotheses were speculative and, in large measure, incorrect.

” Alcohol prohibition was initiated by the U.S. Congress in 1919 through the passage of the Volstead Act, which upon ratification by the states became the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It went into effect in 1920, and was repealed by Congress in 1933 through the enactment of the Twenty First Amendment.

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"Nevertheless," the Commission continued, "the argument that misinformation in 1937 automatically compels complete reversal of the action taken at that time is neither reasonable or logical."

Apparently fearing anarchy, chaos

and social unrest if a neutrality policy were to be adopted, the Commission instead opted for a policy of discouragement (1972:164-166): a sudden abandonment of an official policy of elimination in favor of one of neutrality toward marihuana would have a profound reverberating impact on social attitudes far beyond the one issue of marihuana use. We believe that society must have time to consider its image of the future. We believe that adoption of a discouragement policy toward marihuana at this time would facilitate such a reappraisal while official neutrality... would impede it. Thus, the Commission put forth its first recommendation (1972:168): For these reasons, we recommend to the public and its policy-makers a social control policy seeking to discourage marihuana use, while concentrating primarily on the prevention of heavy and very heavy use. To implement its marijuana discouragement policy, the Commission considered three legal policies, "each with a wide range of alternatives" (1972, 173-190): (1) Total Prohibition, (2) Regulation, and (3) Partial Prohibition.

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Total Prohibition Total Prohibition is similar in philosophy to the marijuana use Elimination Policy option.

The NCMDA rejected

Total Prohibition as a legal policy option, for it was viewed as an impossible means of implementing the Commission's social control model of choice, the Discouragement Policy. The three arguments put forth by the Commission against Total Prohibition were (1972:175-184): (1)

Application of the Criminal Law to Private Possession Is Philosophically Inappropriate: it stigmatizes marijuana users as criminals;

(2)

Application of the Criminal Law Is Constitutionally Suspect: the possibilities of invasion of personal privacy and selective enforcement of the law would continue;

(3)

Total Prohibition Is Functionally Inappropriate: the symbolic status of marihuana smoking as an anti-establishment act would be perpetuated.

The Commission concluded that (1972:183-184): the [marijuana] possession offense is of little functional benefit to the discouragement policy and carries heavy social costs.... the better method is persuasion rather than prosecution.

Regulation Another word for regulation is legalization.

"The

distinguishing feature of this technique is that it institutionalizes the availability of the drug [b]y establishing a legitimate channel of supply and distribution" (1972:184).

The NCMDA unanimously found the

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regulation policy alternative to be unacceptable, "no matter how tightly it might restrict consumption," citing the following four reasons (1972:184-188): (1)

Adoption of a Regulatory Scheme At This Time Would Inevitably Signify Approval of Use;

(2)

Adoption of a Regulatory Scheme Might Generate a Significant Public Health Problem;

(3)

Adoption of a Regulatory Scheme Would Exacerbate Social Conflict and Frustrate a Deemphasis Policy;

(4)

Lack of Knowledge About Cannabis Regulatory Models.

The Commission ended its discussion of marijuana regulation marijuana by speculating that " [f]uture policyplanners might well come to a different conclusion" on the basis of five "ifs" (1972:187): (1)

if further study of existing schemes suggests a feasible model;

(2)

if responsible use of the drug does indeed take root in our society;

(3)

if continuing scientific and medical research uncovers no long-term ill effects;

(4)

if potency control appears feasible; and

(5)

if the passage of time and the adoption of a rational social policy sufficiently desymbolizes marihuana so that availability is not equated in the public mind with approval.

Partial Prohibition Partial Prohibition is decriminalization.

This legal

policy option keeps criminal penalties in place for marijuana sales but removes them for personal use and

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nonprofit distribution of small amounts of the drug.

In

choosing the Partial Prohibition model as the means of implementing its Discouragement Policy, the NCMDA stated (19721188-189): The total prohibition scheme was rejected primarily because no sufficiently compelling social reason, predicated on existing knowledge, justifies intrusion by the criminal justice system into the private lives of individuals who use marihuana. ...we have also rejected the regulatory or legalization scheme because it would institutionalize availability of a drug which has uncertain long-term effects and which may be of transient social interest. The NCMDA then listed seven reasons to support its policy choice.

Paraphrased here, they are (1972:189);

1. Symbolic societal discouragement of marijuana use. 2. Scientific pursuit of knowledge about marijuana. 3. Encouragement of a multidimensional approach to reducing the irresponsible use of marijuana. 4. Removing criminal stigmatization of marijuana use. 5. Freeing law enforcement to pursue more serious crime. 6. Relieving the courts of the burden of processing a large volume of marijuana possession cases. 7. Maximizing the flexibility of future public policy choices regarding marijuana use. Thus, among the most significant recommendations of the Commission's 1972 report were the following:” (1)

Possession of marihuana for personal use would no longer be an offense, but marihuana possessed in public would remain contraband subject to summary seizure and forfeiture.

” The NCMDA's recommendation regarding marijuana is included in Chapter 7.

the medical

use

of

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(2)

Casual distribution of small amounts of marihuana for no remuneration, or insignificant remuneration not involving profit would no longer be an offense.

Although the NCMDA recommended that a second Commission be appointed to review the marijuana situation four years after its 1973 report was published, the recommendation was not implemented.

Instead, that responsibility was assumed

by a committee of the National Research Council, which is the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).”

As we shall see, the NAS Committee's report not

only fell on deaf ears, but was virtually buried.

According

to one of the report's authors” , after the initial impact generated by publicity about the report, it "dropped like a stone into the ocean and the ripples disappeared and it hasn't been heard from since."

In the following pages, we

will resurrect the National Academy of Sciences report by reviewing its seemingly long forgotten contents.

” Thc National Academy of Science's report by its National Research Council's Committee on Substance Abuse and Habitual Behavior will hereafter be cited as "NAS." ” july 19, 1993 personal communication with Dean Gerstein, who was the report's Study Director.

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The Report of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences; 1978-1982 In 1978, the Committee on Substance Abuse and Habitual Behavior of the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council commenced a study of marijuana policy with the support and at the request of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The National Academy of Sciences Committee "took as a framework for its task" the NCMDA's recommendation that a follow-up commission be established (NAS, 1982:xi). The findings of the Committee were published in a 1982 monograph entitled An Analysis of Marijuana Policy, which begins where the report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, Marihuana; A Signal of Misunderstandina. left off. Specifically, the Committee addressed the policy option alternatives presented by the NCMDA: Total Prohibition (prohibition of use and supply), Partial Prohibition (prohibition of supply) and Regulation (legalization).

In

commenting on the dominance of the total prohibition model in U.S. marijuana policy, the Committee noted that " [i]t is important to recognize that to allow the inertia developed by existing policies to prevent change is itself a choice." In the report's preface, the Committee stressed that policy-making is part and parcel of a political process which involves "value-governed" choices (1982:xii).

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Although fifteen of the eighteen Committee members were considered to be "hard," as opposed to "social" scientists,” An Analysis of Marijuana Policy ultimately came to be criticized for being political, and not scientific, in nature. Such sentiment was typified by a Louisiana newspaper editorial encaptioned "Risky Departure From Science" fBaton Rouge State-Times. July 10, 1982): Suppose for a moment that someone in your immediate family required brain surgery. Would you go to an architect, to an engineer, to an attorney, or to a neurosurgeon? Of course it's a silly question, but it points up a fundamental error in a recommendation made recently by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences.... the fact that the report was issued by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences begs the question: what discipline of science - biology, chemistry, physics, medicine - was used to reach the conclusions in the report? Of course there is none. The recommendations are political in nature, and ... for a committee of scientists to go beyond the investigation and analysis of scientific data, yet issue a report under the NAS banner, risks the reputation of the [NAS]. The claims that the report was unscientific permitted its critics to reject its two scientific premises:

(1) a

policy of partial prohibition of marijuana does not lead to increased use of the substance, and (2) scientific evidence does not support generally held negative beliefs about

®^The three "social scientists" included as committee members were sociologist Howard Becker, economist Thomas Schelling and law professor John Kaplan. Additional committee members were pharmacologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, a geneticist and an epidemiologist. Kaplan, in a 1982 letter to the editor of Science magazine, was of the opinion that psychologists are not social scientists, a point that may be disputed by medical doctors.

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marijuana use.

The second point was bolstered by findings

of a 1982 National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine report. Marijuana and Health, the summary of which was attached as an appendix to An Analysis of Marijuana Policy.

The Committee thus stated (1982:4):

Over the past 40 years, marijuana has been accused of causing an array of antisocial effects, including: in the 1930s, provoking crime and violence; in the early 1950s, leading to heroin addiction; and in the late 1960s, making people passive, lowering motivation and productivity, and destroying the American work ethic in young people. Although beliefs in these effects persist among many people, they have not been substantiated by scientific evidence. The first scientific premise of the report: that a policy of Partial Prohibition does not lead to increased marijuana use, was formulated on the basis of reviewing available data of states which had decriminalized marijuana since the NCMDA report was published.

The NAS Committee

found (NAS, 1982:13): Reports from California, Oregon and Maine indicate no appreciable increase in use following decriminalization of use, at least in the short term. Like the NCMDA, the NAS Committee concluded that while marijuana is not a harmless drug, it could not support a national marijuana policy of Total Prohibition (which it renamed as "Complete Prohibition"), a policy which it found to be harmful to both the individual and society at large.

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The Committee found that aside from the economic costs of considerable law enforcement-related expenditures, the social costs of maintaining a Complete Prohibition policy included (NAS, 1982:18-21): (1) the corruption of public officials (2) illegal marijuana market-related violence, and (3) a likelihood that through the illegal drug market, marijuana users gain access to illicit drugs which are more harmful than cannabis. The Committee thus concluded (NAS, 1982:29): the present federal policy of complete prohibition falls far short of its goal — preventing use.... It can no longer be argued that use would be much more widespread and the problematic effects greater today if the policy of complete prohibition did not exist: The existing evidence on policies of partial prohibition indicates that partial prohibition has been as effective in controlling consumption as complete prohibition and has entailed considerably smaller, social, legal and economic costs. On balance, therefore, we believe that a policy of partial prohibition is clearly preferable to a policy of complete prohibition of supply and use. Thus, the question before the Committee (1982:24) was whether to support a policy of Partial Prohibition or that of Regulation.

"In pragmatic terms," the Committee stated:

the issue is whether more harm would be done, overall, by retaining the partly effective, costly prohibition of supply or by moving to a system of legalized regulated sales— wherein presumably more people would use more marijuana, but some of the costs imposed by prohibition of supply would be removed. Under a Regulation policy, marijuana possession, cultivation, manufacture, importation, distribution and sales would no longer necessarily be illegal.

Instead, as

with regulatory alcohol policies adopted by U.S. states upon

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the 1933 repeal of alcohol prohibition, individual states would regulate the market as they saw fit.

In today’s

United States, statewide alcohol control policies vary from some state to state.

Some "dry" states have retained

alcohol prohibition, some utilize monopoly control through state stores, and others utilize licensed private stores for retail purposes. Under a regulatory marijuana policy, states and localities would regulate "taxes, retail sales, hours of availability [and] age limits," while national marijuana controls would be placed on "importation, potency, packaging, labeling [and] advertising."

In addition,

controls on marijuana use could be placed within federal jurisdictions, such as national parks, and among such systems as air transportation, which are regulated by the federal government (NAS, 1982:24-25). Potential advantages and disadvantages of adopting a Regulation policy, according to the NAS Committee, would include (NAS, 1982:17): the disappearance of most illegal market activity, the savings in economic and social costs of law enforcement directed against illegal supply systems, better controls over the quality and safety of the product, and, possibly, increased credibility for warnings about risks. The major disadvantages are a consequence of increased marijuana use— increases in harm to physical health and to individual development and behavior. Ultimately, whether a policy of Partial Prohibition or Regulation were to be in place in the United States, the Committee concluded that marijuana use could be better

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discouraged and controlled through a system of informal social controls (mechanisms such as public, family and community education) rather than through formal methods of social control (e.g. law enforcement and the courts). In light of available contemporary marijuana use data (to be discussed further in Chapter 7), what the NAS Committee stated more than a decade ago in regards to a RégulaLion policy may perhaps ring even truer today (NAS, 1982:27): Because in the past two decades informal norms for controlling marijuana use have spread in the United States under conditions of greatly increased availability of marijuana, there is reason to believe that widespread uncontrolled use would not occur under regulation. Indeed regulation might facilitate patterns of controlled use by diminishing the "forbidden fruit" aspect of the drug and perhaps increasing the likelihood that an adolescent would be introduced to the drug through families and friends, who practice moderate use, rather than through their heaviest-using, most drug-involved peers. Like the LaGuardia Report forty years earlier. An Analysis of Marijuana Pollev received a rash of negative publicity not so much because of its contents, but because of how critics of the report interpreted those contents. The President of the National Academy of Sciences, Frank Press, began the barrage of media coverage by releasing a June 21, 1982 cover letter to the report which disputed its findings:

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My own view is that the data available to the Committee were insufficient to justify on scientific or analytical grounds changes in current policies dealing with the use of marijuana. In this respect I eim concerned that the Committee may have gone beyond its charge in stating a judgment so value-laden, that it should have been left to the political process. Thereafter, the controversial story of the National Academy of Sciences' director refuting an NAS report was covered by the likes of Time magazine, the New York Times. the Washington Post and the CBS Evening News.

William

Pollin, then the director of NIDA, stated that it "would be a terrible mistake and a public health tragedy" for the government to do "anything that suggests a greater societal acceptance of the use of marijuana, particularly by young people" fNew York Times. July 8, 1982). According to one of the report's author's. Dean Gerstein (see note 56), Pollin criticized the report for "sending the wrong message," and the then-NIDA director "viewed it as an endorsement of decriminalization, which went a couple of steps beyond what it says." In the midst of high school marijuana use declining at the time, Pollin voiced the concern that a change in marijuana policies would "undercut that achievement."

As

can be seen in the accompanying Table 9, self-reported marijuana use by U.S. high school seniors did decline during President Reagan's first term.

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180 TABLE 9

MARIJUANA USE BY U.S. HIGHS SCHOOL SENIORS (SELF-REPORTED): 1975-1984 Use

CategqrY T S T Ê T l T â l â S O M S l M M Within 30 Days:

27% 32% 35% 37% 37% 34% 32% 29% 27% 25%

Within 12 Months:

40% 45% 48% 50% 51% 49% 46% 44% 42% 40%

Ever Used:

47% 53% 56% 59% 60% 60% 60% 59% 57% 55%

Source:

Smoking. Drinking and Illicit Drug Use Among American Secondary School Students. College Students, and Young Adults. 1975-1991. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Drug Abuse (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992)

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As a prelude to the marijuana control policies which would emanate from the White House in the next ten years. Science magazine reported on July 16, 1982 (228-229): In recent years, the increasing use of marijuana among younger people has resulted in sharp demands from parents, in many cases well organized, for tighter controls. The Reagan Administration is regarded as likely to react negatively to any recommendations for what would be regarded as more permissive policies on marijuana. It is fitting that a review of the NAS report and its aftermath constitute this chapter's final steps down the evolving road of Reefer Madness.

Unlike the National

Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, but similar to the Indian Hemp Commission Report, the Panama Canal Zone Military Investigations, and the LaGuardia Committee Report, the recommendations contained with An Analysis of Marijuana Policy were not heeded by state and federal policymakers in the United States. "Prohibition creates crime: it does not solve crime," writes Aldrich (1990:544), who further notes that philosophical differences about drug prohibition were spelled out nearly 2500 years ago by Euripides, the Greek tragedian: In the fundamental drug myth of Western civilization fThe Baccchael, ... a never-ending struggle between prohibition and tolerance [is portrayed]. Pentheus, the tyrant of Thebes, tries to imprison Dionysus, the god of wine. For this hubris, Pentheus is torn apart by his own mother -emblematic of the tearing asunder of society. Those who side with Pentheus wish to control human behavior by clapping drug users in jail; those who side with Dionysus recognize the basic human desire to alter consciousness with drugs[.]

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This chapter has examined two alternatives to the criminalization of marijuana: its decriminalization and its legalization.

This chapter has attempted to demonstrate

how these two policy options, which are often confused and inappropriately interchanged with one another, differ. The next chapter will examine an additional policy option which is an alternative to cannabis criminalization in the United States: the medicalization of marijuana.

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CHAPTER 7 REEFER MADNESS REBORN Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.... In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) September 6, 1988 The phenomenon of Reefer Madness is not merely a historic artifact which we can date -like a fossil- in the context of human history.

Rather, it is an ongoing,

evolving force: an organism that is thriving in the present day.

The concluding chapter of this manuscript focuses on

two contemporary aspects of Reefer Madness in the United States of America: (1) marijuana's prohibition as a medicine, and (2) the anti-marijuana media campaign of the Partnership for a Drug Free America.

Marijuana As a Medicine In ancient times (as has been discussed in Chapter 1), the medical use of cannabis was widespread. In modern times, cannabis was first introduced into Western medicine in 1839 by W.B. O'Shaughnessy, a British physician serving in India who used it in treating rabies, rheumatism, epilepsy and 183

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tetanus.

O'Shaughnessy found tincture of hemp (a mixture of

cannzLbis and alcohol which is taken orally) to be an effective analgesic and muscle relaxant, and he referred to it as "an anticonvulsive remedy of the greatest value" (Grinspoon and Bakalar, 1993:4). In 1850, cannabis was recognized as a medicine in The United States Pharmacopoeia, a "highly selective" registry of the country's most widely accepted drugs (Brecher, 1972; 405).

In "its heyday" in the West, from 1840 to 1900,

cannabis was recommended for a variety of illnesses and ailments, and more than one hundred papers were published in the Western medical literature concerning its usefulness as a therapeutic agent (Grinspoon and Bakalar, 1993:4). Cannabis was used, according to the Disoensarv of the United States of America published in 1918, "to relieve pain, to encourage sleep, and to soothe restlessness" (Mikuriya, 1973:343).

As an analgesic, it was used to treat

migraine and other pains of neuralgic origin, and its sedative properties were utilized in cases of hysteria and mental depression.

Cannabis remained listed in the U.S.

Pharmacopoeia until 1941, where, in the aftermath of the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act, it was removed (Bakalar and Grinspoon, 1993:8).

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The Marihuana Tax Act Revisited

In 1937, when the Marihuana Tax Act was passed in the U.S., the stated intent of the law was not to prohibit the use of the drug for medicinal purposes.

It is clear from

reading U.S. Treasury Department statements, however, that the Treasury Department questioned the utility of marijuana as a medicine.

R.R. Spencer, the Senior Surgeon of the U.S.

Treasury Department's Public Health Service, stated in December, 1936 (6) The therapeutic use of cannabis indica by physicians is today very limited. It has been used for the relief of nueralgic pain, to encourage sleep and to soothe restlessness. It is often used in corn remedies, but medical authorities do not believe it has any anaesthetic affect when applied to the skin. Its use in medicine is fast disappearing and probably can be dispensed with altogether. In summarizing "the effect of the marihuana bill upon legitimate industry," Clinton Hester, Assistant General Counsel of the Treasury Department, inserted the following

®®The source cited is a U.S. Treasury Department, United States Public Health Service, Office of Public Health Education revised reprint of an article entitled "Marijuana," which originally was published in The Health Officer. Vol. 1, pp. 299-305 (December 1936). The revised reprint itself is not dated, but from the following paragraph, it appears to have been published in 1938: "As has been stated in this article, the use of marijuana as a medicine is extremely limited and it is interesting and encouraging to note that the Bureau of Narcotics has already observed a tendency among pharmaceutical firms to withdraw from the market certain products containing this drug. The early months of 1938 have witnessed an increased and more widespread interest in bringing the marijuana problem -with the serious implications of this traffic among school children- to the attention of the public."

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statement into the legislative record of H.R. 6385 (U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Ways and Means, 1937:47):

Marihuana for medicinal use.— All persons who produce, manufacture, import, or deal in marihuana or its byproducts for medical use, as well as practitioners, would be compelled by the bill to pay occupational taxes. All transfers to manufacturing chemists, druggists, and practitioners would be subject to the transfer tax and order form requirement but, such persons all being entitled to registry, the transfer tax would amount only to $1 per ounce. The final dispensation by a practitioner to a patient in the course of his professional practice or by druggists to the patients of such practitioners in pursuance of a written prescription would, however, be exempted from the transfer tax and order form provisions. Incidentally, it appears that the marihuana drug is not indispensable by the medical profession (emphasis added). Hester's testimony before the House Committee on Ways and Means was followed by Dr. James Munch (1937:47-52), who was affiliated with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.” Munch testified that: in 1910 and in 1920, the [U.S.] Pharmacopoeia accepted cannabis as one drug for use in human medicine[.] ...In 1930 we found... that the International Committee on Standardization of Drugs of the League of Nations had not admitted cannabis because it is not used throughout the world. Thus, stated Munch: at this time the product which may be used is used without being standardized. But the use of it is definitely decreasing, as is shown by production 5’The reader may recall that it was Dr. James Munch who explained to us in Chapter 3 one reason why the FBN was opposed to jazz music (Sloman, 1979:145-146): "the chief effect [of marijuana] as far as they [the FBN] were concerned, is that it lengthens the sense of time.... That's what made jazz musicians. The idea that they could jazz things up, liven then up, you see."

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statistics and surveys of prescription ingredients___ It is disappearing; that is, its use in human medicine is decreasing.“ Munch was then asked a series of questions by a member of the House committee: Q:

Is it [marijuana] a harmful drug?

A:

Any drug that produces the degeneration of the brain is harmful. Yes; it is.

Q:

In some cases does it not bring about extreme inertia?

A:

Yes; it does.

Q:

And it other cases it causes violent irritability?

A:

Yes, sir.

Q:

And those results lead to a disintegration of personality, do they not?

A:

Yes, sir.

Q:

That is really the net result of the use of that drug, no matter what other effects there may be; its continued use means the disintegration of the personality of the person who uses it?

A:

Yes; that is true.

The only witness to testify before Congress in opposition to the Marihuana Tax Act was Dr. William Woodward of the American Medical Association (AMA).

His first

statement before the House Ways and Means Committee (1937:90-91) was: Cannabis

"There is nothing in the medicinal use of

that has any relation to Cannabis addiction."

“ Munch stated later in his testimony (U.S. House of Representatives, 1937:52) that "In 1932 and 1933 an ingredient survey was made, a study of the components of 122,000 prescriptions. It was found that cannabis was prescribed only four or five times per 10,000."

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188

Dr. Woodward stated that marijuana's "medicinal use has greatly decreased," in part because of the "variations in the potency of the drug as coming from particular plants," and then went on to comment: To say however, as has been proposed here, that the use of the drug should be prevented by a prohibitive tax, loses sight of the fact that future investigation may show that there are substantial medicinal uses for cannabis. Dr. Woodward cited three specific areas where cannabis proved useful as a medicine (1937:91): (1) for the preparation of corn cures; (2) as a sedative; and (3) as an anti-spasmodic. Citing Indian hemp's "remarkable properties in revealing the subconscious," Dr. Woodward additionally stated that cannabis "can be used for psychological, psychoanalytical, and psychotherapeutic research." Dr. Woodward testified that physicians would not object seriously to the payment of a tax of a dollar a year, but that they would "object to paying fees that they have to pay and the execution of forms and special records" (1937:107). When asked, he voiced his opinion that federal anti­ marijuana legislation was unnecessary (1937:115).

From that

point onward, his testimony was continually cut off by members of the House Ways and Means Committee (1937:115118).

Chairman Robert Doughton of North Carolina, the

sponsor of the Marihuana Tax Act, then chastised the AMA representative (1937:116):

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189

If you want to advise us on legislation, you ought to come here with some constructive proposals, rather than criticism, rather than trying to throw obstacles in the way of something that the Federal Government is trying to do. Dr. Woodward responded: We cannot understand yet, Mr. Chairman, why this bill should have been prepared in secret for 2 years without any intimation, even to the profession, that it was being prepared. When hearings on H.R. 6906 were held before a subcommittee of the Committee on Finance of the U.S. Senate two months later, the Treasury Department's Assistant General Counsel, Clinton Hester, ignored Dr. Woodward's House testimony but incorporated that of Dr. Munch into his own (U.S. Senate, 1937:5): The drug is used only to a negligible extent by the medical profession. In fact, last year only 4 out of every 10,000 prescriptions contained marihuana. The drug is prescribed as a sedative, but it is used very rarely by the medical profession because the effect of the drug is so variable that a physician cannot tell how his patient will react to the drug and because there are so many better substitutes.*’ Dr. Woodward's foreseen objections by the medical community proved to be prophetic.

After the Marihuana Tax

Act became law, burdensome paperwork requirements and FBN "anti-diversion" regulations served to effectively

*’Besides the two reasons mentioned: the development of new and better drugs and the variability of available preparations of cannabis, two additional factors contributed to the declining rate at which cannabis was prescribed. They were: (3) that cannabis is "very insoluble in water and thus not amenable to injectable preparations," and (4) when taken orally, cannabis "has an unusually long (1- to 2- hour) latency to onset of action" (Ray and Ksir, 1987:312).

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190

discourage physicians from prescribing cannabis (Bakalar and Grinspoon, 1993:8).

Once removed from the United States

Pharmacopoeia and National Formularv. cannabis became a medical dinosaur.

Marijuana's legal status as a medicine

remain unchanged until 1970, when it was prohibited for medical use through Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Prevention and Control Act of 1970, which is also known as the 1970 Controlled Substances Act.*^

The Prohibition on Medical Marijuana The 1970 Controlled Substances Act classified cannabis as a Schedule I drug, one with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.“ In 1972, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) filed a petition with the U.S. Department of Justice's Drug Enforcement Administration (DBA) to enable cannabis to be used in the U.S.A. for *^Over the years. Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 has been referred to as the Controlled Substances Act. Trebach (1982:300) clarifies the confusion that has led "some observers to believe that two laws, rather than one, are involved." *%nder the U.S. Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, which also decreased criminal penalties for marijuana nationwide, all controlled substances (drugs) were categorized within one of five categories, called schedules. A Schedule I drug, such as heroin, is considered to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use. A Schedule II drug, such as morphine, has a high potential for abuse and accepted medical value. Schedule III, IV and V drugs are available for medicinal purposes under successively less restrictive conditions than Schedule II drugs, with Schedule V being the least restrictive.

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191

medicinal purposes.

Citing marijuana's "accepted medical

uses in treatment" and claiming that the drug "is safe for use under medical supervision," the petition requested that cannabis' drug control status be changed from a Schedule I drug, which is prohibited for medical use in the United States, to a Schedule II drug, which can be used for medicinal purposes. In 1980, after years of delay, the case, then-entitled NORML V. PEA.** was remanded by the United States Court of Appeals to the Drug Enforcement Administration for further proceedings.

Years later, in 1987, the actual

administrative hearings, before DEA's Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young, finally commenced. In 1988, Judge Young recommended to the DEA Administrator that cannabis be transferred from Schedule I to Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act.

Among

Judge Young's "Findings of Fact" and "Conclusion and Recommended Decision" were (Young, 1988:56-68); 1.

First, the record on marijuana encompasses 5,000 years of human experience.

2.

Second, marijuana is now used daily by enormous numbers of people throughout the world [including] from twenty million to fifty million Americans.

**In more recent years, the case has been entitled Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics fACTI v. DEA. The three petitioners in the case: ACT, NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) and the Drug Policy Foundation, were later joined in their legal challenge by the Physicians Association for AIDS Care and the Lymphoma Foundation of America.

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192

3.

Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects... [but] marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality.

4.

By contrast aspirin, a commonly used, over-thecounter medicine, causes hundreds of deaths each year.

5.

In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating ten raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death.

6.

Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substance known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be used within a supervised routine of medical care.

7.

There are those who, in all sincerety [sic], argue that the transfer of marijuana to Schedule II will "send a signal" that marijuana is "OK" generally for recreational use. This argument is specious.

8.

The fear of sending such a signal cannot be permitted to override the legitimate need, amply demonstrated in this record, of countless suffers [sic] for the relief marijuana can provide when prescribed by a physician in a legitimate case.

9.

The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record.

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193

10.

The administrative law judge recommends that the [DEA] Administrator conclude that the marijuana plant considered as a whole has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, that there is no lack of accepted safety for use of it under medical supervision and that it may lawfully be transferred from Schedule I to Schedule II. The judge recommends that the Administrator transfer marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II.

On December 29, 1988, John Lawn, then the DEA Administrator, rejected Judge Young's recommendation, contending that medicalizing marijuana would "send the wrong signal" to the citizens of the United States.

In doing so,

the DEA Administrator characterized claims of marijuana's medical usefulness as a "dangerous and cruel hoax."

"The

judge seems to hang his hat on what he calls a respectable minority of physicians," asserted DEA Administrator Lawn. Ignoring a 1991 Harvard University study which found that nearly half of 1035 cancer specialists who responded to a survey reported that they would prescribe marijuana to their patients if it were legal to do so. Lawn asked: "What percent [of physicians] are you talking about? one percent?

One quarter of one percent?"

One half of

(Grinspoon and

Bakalar, 1993:17) The DEA Administrator's decision was appealed, and in 1991, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ordered the DEA to reexamine its standards used to prohibit the medical

*®Within months of this decision, the then-DEA Administrator, John Lawn, resigned from the DEA to become Vice President and chief of operations for the New York Yankees major league baseball team.

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194

use of marijuana.

Despite the court's suggestion that the

standards were "illogical," it did not challenge the DEA's contention that marijuana lacks therapeutic value" (Grinspoon and Bakalar, 1993:17). In 1992, DEA's new administrator, Robert Bonner, formulated an official policy which simply incorporated the position previously articulated by former DEA Administrator Lawn.

That 1992 policy was then appealed by the plaintiffs

in the case.

On February 18, 1994, the DEA's decision was

upheld by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals.** Despite the positions of the DEA and the U.S. Court of Appeals, as depicted in Table 10, patients and doctors alike attest that cannabis has proven to be an effective, or at least a promising, therapeutic agent for a variety of maladies and ailments.

**Judge James L. Buckley, who wrote the opinion for the court, was joined by Chief Judge Abner J. Mikva and Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg. Somewhat ironically, Ginsburg's earlier nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court had been upended when it was revealed that he had smoked marijuana in the past.

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195 TA B LE

10

CURRENT AND POTENTIAL USES OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA Disease

Use

AIDS

Appetite Stimulant Builds Up Immune System

Asthma

Relieves Bronchial Spasms and Reverses Bronchial Constriction; as a Bronchodilator Allows a Freer Air Flow In and Out of Lungs

Cancer

Reduces Severe Nausea and Vomiting Caused By Chemotherapy Treatments

Chronic Pain

Analgesic and Sedative, in Ointment, Oral THC and Smoked Form, with Fewer Physical Side Effects than other Commonly Used Analgesics

Depression and Mood Disorders

Anti-Depressant Without the Side Effects Associated with Conventional Chemical Treatments

Dystonias

Improves Abnormal Movements and Postures that Result from Prolonged Spasms or Muscle Contractions Often Produced by Anti-Psychotic Neuroleptic Drugs

Epilepsy

Anti-Convulsant Properties Prevent Epileptic Seizures

Glaucoma

Relieves Intraocular Pressure Within the Eye, thus Preventing Blindness

Hyperemesis Gravidaram

Relieves Chronic Nausea and Vomiting with this Greatly Heightened Form of Morning Sickness; Intravenous Feeding or Standard Antiemetic Drugs are Considered to be a Greater Risk to the Fetus than is Cannabis

Infections

Anti-Bacterial Effects On Micro-Organisms, Including Strains of Staphylococcus, that Resist Penicillin and Other Antibiotics

Insomnia

Hypnotic Effects Produced by Cannabinol Induce Sleep

Kidney Failure

Controls Spasms of Severe Nausea and Hiccoughs Caused by Renal Failure

Labor Pain

Pain Relief

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196

TABLE 10 (CONTINUED) PRESENT DAY AND POTENTIAL USES OF CANNABIS AS A MEDICINE Disease

Use

Menstrual Cramps

Pain Relief

Migraine

Prevents and Alleviates Symptoms of Intractable Headaches

Multiple Sclerosis

Muscle Relaxer Prevents Muscle Spasms and Restores Motor Coordination; Minimizes Side Effects, Including Weight Gain, Mood Swings, Drowsiness and Lethargy, of Conventional Treatments

Muscular Dystrophy

Muscle Relaxer Prevents Muscle Spasms and Restores Motor Coordination

Paraplegia & Quadriplegia

Pain Relief and Suppresses Muscle Jerks and Tremors Caused by Weakness or Paralysis of Muscles in the Lower Body

Pruritis

Relieves Severe Itching and Enables Related Patches of Inflamed Skin to Heal

Tumors

Animal Studies Suggest that Some Cannabinoids Have Tumor-Reducing Properties

Sources:

Grinspoon (1971), Grinspoon and Bakalar (1993), Mikuriya (1973), and Randall (1990, 1991a, 1991b)

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197

Marijuana's status as a "forbidden medicine" (Grinspoon and Bakalar, 1993), one which is used illegally by patients suffering from the effects of AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and other diseases, continues to the present day.

Despite its

current prohibition for medical use, on an extremely limited basis, a few patients across the country receive marijuana from the federal government through an experimental research program administered by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

That program, built around the concept of

an Investigative New Drug (IND), was begun in the late 1970s because of pressure exerted upon the federal government by the states.

HHS' "Compassionate Relief Program" In 1972, The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse stated (1972: 222): Historical references have been noted throughout the literature referring to the use of cannabis products as therapeutically useful agents. Of particular significance... would be investigations into the treatment of glaucoma, migraine, alcoholism and terminal cancer. The NIMH-FDA Psychotomimetic Advisory Committee's authorization of studies designed to explore therapeutic uses of marihuana is commended. The NCMDA thus recommended: Increased Support of Studies which evaluate the efficacy of marihuana in the treatment of physical impairments and disease is recommended. In 1976, a patient became the first person to receive medicinal marijuana from the federal government.

Through

the medicinal use of marijuana, that patient, Robert

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198

Randall, who was diagnosed with glaucoma in 1972 told that he had a maximum of five years of remaining sight, has retained his vision to the present day.

Randall describes

the scenario which led him to become the first individual Treatment, or compassionate Use, IND recipient (Grinspoon and Bakalar, 1993:46-52): [S]omeone gave me a couple of joints. Sweet weed!... So simple!... You smoke pot, your eye strain goes away.— So, I accept that an illegal, medically prohibited weed may help me not go blind.... [In 1975] I phoned around the federal bureaucracy. Needless to say, I was startled when at least three bureaucrats point-blank told me, "Oh, we know marihuana helps glaucoma. We have lots of data..." They knew, but did not want anyone else to know.... In May 1976, I petitioned federal drug agencies for immediate access to government supplies of marihuana.... In November 1976, the bureaucrats cracked. They delivered a tin of three hundred pre-rolled marihuana cigarettes to my new doctor.... My first year of smoking was not tranquil. In fact, it turned into a running battle. I'd speak out. The bureaucrats would try to clamp down. Very unpleasant. Increasing news coverage unhinged the bureaucrats. Other patients were expecting help. [In] 1978, the feds... cut off my legal line of supply. I countered by suing. Twenty-four hours after the suit was filed, we arrived at an out-of-court settlement which is still in effect. This settlement assures me of medically appropriate (non-research) access to marihuana to meet my legitimate therapeutic needs. Table 11 shows us that from 1978-1991, thirty five states in the United States passed laws that allow marijuana to be used for treatment purposes.

More than two thirds of

these state laws (twenty four, or sixty nine percent) were passed while President Carter was in office, twenty six percent (nine) were passed during the Reagan presidency, and six percent (two) were passed while President Bush occupied the White House.

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199 TABLE 1 1

STATES WITH LAWS THAT PERMIT MARIJUANA'S MEDICAL USE

State

Date Sianed Into Law

Alabama

July, 1979

Alaska

"early 1980s"

Arizona

April, 1980

Arkansas

April, 1981

California

July, 1979

Colorado

June, 1979

Connecticut

July, 1981

Florida

June, 1978

Georgia

February, 1980

Illinois

September, 1978

Iowa

June, 1979

Louisiana

May, 1978 (amended; July, 1991)

Maine

August, 1979

Massachusetts

December, 1991

Michigan

October, 1979

Minnesota

April, 1980

Montana

April, 1979

Nevada

June, 1979

New Hampshire

April, 1981

New Jersey

March, 1981

New Mexico

February, 1978

New York

June, 1980

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200 TABLE 11 (CONTINUED) STATES WITH LAWS THAT PERMIT MARIJUANA'S MEDICAL USE

State

Date Sianed Into Law

North Carolina

June 1979

Ohio

March, 1980

Oklêihoma

March, 1981

Oregon

June, 1979

Rhode Island

May, 1980

South Carolina

February, 1980

Tennessee

April, 1981

Texas

June, 1979

Vermont

April, 1981

Virginia

March, 1979

Washington

March, 1979

West Virginia

March, 1979

Wisconsin

April, 1982

(Source: Randall and O'Leary, 1993)

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201 Despite state laws which permit marijuana's use as a medicine, the federal classification of cannabis as a Schedule I drug has severely limited marijuana's use for medicinal purposes in those states.

For marijuana to be

legally used as a medicine in those states, one of two scenarios would have to take place:

(1) the federal

government would authorize states to dispense marijuana as a medicine in conjunction with establishing formal IND research programs, or (2) the state legislature would have to pass a law which allows the cultivation of a small amount of marijuana for medical purposes.*^ If marijuana is an effective drug which doctors recommend to ameliorate the effects of diseases such as cancer and AIDS, how could it possibly be a prohibited medicine in the United States? politics.

Quite simply, the answer is

Just as the demise of the marijuana

decriminalization movement in the U.S. can be traced to a lack of federal leadership (DiChiara and Galliher, 1994), the same case can be made to explain why cannabis cannot be prescribed for patients who would benefit from its medicinal use.

As has been illustrated by the 1992 case of Maine,

moreover, this lack of leadership is absent not only on the federal level, but also on the state level.

Any of the

*^In 1992, the legislature in Maine passed such a marijuana cultivation bill, but it was subsequently vetoed by the governor, and the legislature thereafter failed to override the veto (Randall and O'Leary, 1993:54).

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202 thirty five states which have medicinal cannabis laws on the books could pass a law which would permit the cultivation of small amounts of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

We can

assume that such laws have yet to be proposed in state legislatures, however, because of the fear of "sending the wrong message."

Political leadership on the state and

federal levels would at least create the opportunity for public dialogue on the issue of medical marijuana. The federal IND program, created in the late 1970s at the behest of a number of the states listed in Table 11, is ironically also referred to as the "Compassionate Relief Program."

Administered by the Department of Health and

Human Services, the program was begun during the presidency of Jimmy Carter and was abruptly discontinued by the Bush administration in March, 1992.

The experimental program

was designed to provide medicinal marijuana to patients suffering from a variety of diseases, including cancer and glaucoma. Like the doctors who attempted to prescribe marijuana in the late 1930s and early 1940s, physicians who applied to the federal government for INDS during the late 1970s through the early 1990s experienced a similar "regulatory nightmare" (Grinspoon and Bakalar, 1993:18).

Saddled with

burdensome bureaucratic paperwork and frustrated by forms and requirements, physicians were discouraged from applying for INDS to the federal government.

As a result, few

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203

patients were granted "Compassionate INDS."

Nationwide,

from 1976-1989, only fourteen patients were admitted to the program and thereby able to legally smoke medicinal marijuana. In 1991, the medical marijuana issue was brought to the public's attention after the news media reported the story of Kenneth and Barbra Jenks.

Kenneth, a hemophiliac, had

contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion and thereafter transmitted the disease to his wife.

"Both were suffering

from nausea, vomiting, and appetite loss caused by AIDS or AZT [an anti-AIDS medication]; their doctor feared that Barbra Jenks would die of starvation before the disease killed her."

The couple learned about marijuana's use as an

illicit medicine through an AIDS support group, and they began to smoke it.

"They felt better, regained lost weight

and were able to stay out of the hospital; Kenneth Jenks even kept his full-time job" (Grinspoon and Bakalar, 1993:21-22). In 1990, the Jenks' were arrested and convicted of the felony charge of cultivating marijuana.

On appeal, their

conviction, on the basis of their medical necessity defense,*® was overturned.

Thereafter, the Jenks' formed

*®In 1976, the rarely-used "medical necessity" defense was successfully employed in a District of Columbia Superior Court to acquit Robert Randall of cultivating marijuana (Grinspoon and Bakalar:49-52). Despite Randall's claim that his case marked the "first successful articulation of the 'medical necessity' defense in the history of English Common Law," Trebach (1987:314) cites its successful use in New Hampshire at the turn of the century.

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204

the Marijuana-AIDS Research Service, a project of the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics, an organization founded by Robert Randall.

The MARS Project helped more than four

hundred AIDS sufferers submit valid applications for a "Compassionate IND." In June of 1991, in the midst of the anti-drug climate which emanated from the Bush White House, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would phase out its "Compassionate Relief Program." Utilizing the exact argument that Judge Young had declared to be specious three years earlier, the chief of the Public Health Service, James Mason, stated why the decision had been made to cut off the legal access of marijuana to sick people (Isikoff, 1991): If it's perceived that the Public Health Service is going around giving marijuana to folks, there would be a perception that this stuff can't be so bad. It gives a bad signal. I don't mind doing that if there's no other way of helping these people.... But there's not a shred of evidence that smoking marijuana assists a person with AIDS. The program was not terminated until March 1992, a few months after the CBS television program "60 Minutes" reported on the Jenks' and MARS.

With the closing of the

program, the hundreds of pending IND applications were simply filed away, and the twenty eight patients whose postMAR5 applications had been approved will not receive legal medicinal marijuana.

As of March 1992, twelve patients

would continue to receive medical marijuana through the

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205

"Compassionate IND Program," but with the death of Barbra Jenks that month, the number of nationwide IND patients dropped to eleven.

When Kenneth Jenks succumbed to AIDS in

July 1992, the number of patients in the program fell to ten.

Reefer Madness Revisited When DEA Administrator Lawn rejected DEA Administrative Law Judge Young's recommendation to reclassify cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule II in December 1988, George Bush had recently been elected president.

Unlike when President

Carter was in office a decade earlier, marijuana, as reflected in public opinion polls and through its portrayal by the media, was no longer seen as a relatively benign drug.

Clearly, whatever momentum that had existed in the

1970s to lessen criminal penalties against marijuana had dissipated by 1990.** Table 12 reports on Gallup Poll responses to the question: "What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?"

While in January 1985, only two

**The following two tables have been devised from the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, published by the U.S. Department of Justice. It is interesting to note that while the 1987 Sourcebook lists "MARIHUANA Decriminalization" in its index and in Table 1.79 (1988:112-115 and 610), such information is absent in the 1988 Sourcebook (1989) and in subsequent years.

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206

percent of the respondents cited "drugs" or "drug abuse, the answer rose to twenty seven percent by May 1989, and a mere six months later, in November 1989, to thirty eight percent.

In the same period of time, from 1985 to 1989, the

answers in two other categories: "crime," and "the economy (general)" remained relatively stable. Table 12 reveals that as concern about drugs rose, the three categories of "high cost of living," "unemployment," and "the federal budget deficit" collectively declined as the most important problem facing the nation (from forty nine percent in 1985 to twelve percent in November 1989). In 1989, undoubtedly influenced by the break up of the Soviet Union and the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, the category of "fear of war," was cited by only one percent of the U.S. public as the country's most important problem, whereas twenty seven percent of those polled cited it in 1985. Table 12 shows us that as the decade of the 1980s came to a close, the public's fear of Communism had been replaced by the fear of drugs.

Concerns about the economy,

meanwhile, had been swept under the proverbial rug.

Drugs" and "Drug Abuse" were first listed as responses to the Gallup Poll's "Attitude Toward the Most Important problem Facing the Country" in 1985.

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207 TA B LE 1 2

PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM FACING THE UNITED STATES: 1985-1989 1/85

7/86

4/87

9/88

5/89

11/89

Crime

4%

3%

3%

2%

6%

3%

Drugs

2%

8%

11%

11%

27%

38%

Economy (general)

6%

7%

10%

12%

8%

7%

Fear of War

27%

22%

23%

5%

2%

1%

Federal Budget Deficit

18%

13%

11%

12%

7%

7%

High Cost of Living

11%

4%

5%

2%

3%

2%

Unemployment

20%

23%

13%

9%

6%

3%

Cateaorv

Source:

Various issues of The Gallup Report, as cited in Table 2.1 of the 1991 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics (1992: U.S. Department of Justice, p. 172).

Table 13 reveals that in 1992, a presidential election year, the problem of drugs took a back seat in the vehicle of public opinion to the related issues of the economy and unemployment.

Whereas only twelve percent of the public had

cited the categories of "high cost of living," "unemployment," and "the federal budget deficit" as the most important problem facing the U.S. at the end of 1989, by March 1992, that figure had risen to thirty nine percent, with twenty five percent of those respondents citing "unemployment" as the country's most pressing problem.

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208

The category of "the economy (general)" jumped from seven percent (1989) to forty two percent (1992), replacing "drugs," which fell from thirty eight percent to eight percent in the same time period, as the most important problem perceived by the U.S. public.

Meanwhile, the

category "fear of war" was removed as a response by the 1992 Gallup Poll.

TABLE 13 PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM FACING THE UNITED STATES: 1985-1992 1/85 7/86 4/87 9/88 5/89 11/89 7/90 3/91 3/92

Cateaorv Crime

4%

3%

3%

2%

6%

3%

1%

2%

5%

Drugs

2%

8%

11%

11%

27%

38%

18%

11%

8%

Economy (general)

6%

7%

10%

12%

8%

7%

7%

24%

42%

Fear of War

27%

22%

23%

5%

2%

1%

1%

2%

NA

Federal Budget Deficit

18%

13%

11%

12%

7%

7%

21%

8%

8%

High Cost of Living

11%

4%

5%

2%

3%

2%

1%

2%

6%

Unemployment

20%

23%

13%

9%

6%

3%

3%

8%

25%

Source:

Various issues of The Gallup Report, as cited in Table 2.1 of the 1991 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics (1992: U.S. Department of Justice, p. 172).

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209

The Partnership for a Drug Free America Most significant in the shaping of U.S. public opinion about drugs during the Reagan/Bush years and beyond has been the Partnership for a Drug Free America.

A non-profit

corporation established in 1986, the Partnership routinely receives free advertising space and air time in and on radio stations, television networks, newspapers and magazines across the country.

The self-described^’ mission of the

Partnership, whose board of directors includes executives of the major print and electronic media in the U.S., is to use; the power of advertising [in] unselling illegal drugs, "de-normalizing" their use by making them unattractive, unpopular and unacceptable as a way of life in our society. And the program, as conceived, is working, by building individual and social intolerance to any use of any illegal drugs by anyone at any time. The premise of the Partnership for a Drug Free America, which aired its first television advertisement in 1987, is simple; "As advertising increases [illicit] drug use declines" (Colford, 1989a:118).

The Partnership's

advertisement campaign, in which marijuana has been portrayed as a modern day "assassin of youth," "killer weed," and "stepping-stone" to harder drugs, is reminiscent of that of yesteryear by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The origin of the Partnership for a Drug Free America can be traced to the anti-drug "parents' movement" mentioned

^’This quote is taken from an undated fact sheet which was provided to the author by the Media Advertising Partnership for a Drug Free America, Inc. in July 1989.

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210 by Science magazine in its 1982 article concerning the National Academy of Science's An Analysis of Marijuana report.

The "parents' movement" is embodied by two

organizations: the Parents' Resource Institute for Drug Education (PRIDE) and the National Federation of Parents for Drug Free Youth.

Its autobiographical history is chronicled

in two 1977 and 1983 NIDA-funded books by Marsha Manatt: Parents. Peers and Pot, and Parents. Peers and Pot II . Armed with "the latest scientific research" which disputed portrayals of "marijuana as less harmful than alcohol and tobacco," the parents' movement emerged in the late 1970s in Atlanta, Georgia, President Carter's own backyard, to wage a cultural war against "subcultural values" (Manatt, 1983:1-3) Feeling reinforced by credible medical information, the parent group decided to base a strict antidrug position in their families on a health hazard argument, according to which the parents have the right and responsibility to protect their children's health. The growth of the parents' movement can be traced from a lowly-attended 1978 conference entitled "The Family Versus the Drug Culture" to the fifth national PRIDE conference in 1982, which was attended by "more than 1,000 parents and teens from 40 states and four foreign countries" (Manatt, 1983:24): ^In The Great Drug W a r . Trebach, who characterized Manatt's first book as "the Bible of the parents' movement," vividly chronicles the cultural war on drugs waged by the parents' movement and their allies. See particularly the chapter entitled "The First Lady's Cirusade for Drug-Free Youth" (1987:117-146).

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211 Atlanta parents were proud of their role in initiating the statewide parent movement for drug-free youth. But the hard-working mothers and fathers were even prouder that thousands of other parents in every State in the Union had heeded the call to action. By 1985, as the parents* movement gathered strength, it came to be championed by Nancy Reagan, who popularized the "Just Say No To Drugs" slogan and adopted the "war on drugs" campaign as her own.

"If youngsters say no to pot and

hashish," Marsha Manatt told the assembled 1985 PRIDE convention, "they say no to the whole culture" (Trebach, 1987:118-120).

Actor William Shatner (better known for his

television portrayal of Star Trek's Captain Kirk) declared, in his role as the official PRIDE spokesperson, that: We have just begun the fight! ...I want you to know that I will fight with you all the way! ...Responsible drug use is an attack on the health of the youth of the country by the illegal drug industry.... We are no longer willing to let the illegal drug industry provide information to our children. The parents' movement expanded the war's ideological battlefield by claiming that in addition to marijuana still being a "killer weed" (Trebach, 1987:67-68), it was now also a devious "drop-out drug" (Himmelstein, 1983:121-136) which caused an "amotivational syndrome."

The parents "sensed"

(Manatt, 1983:3) that the: biochemical process might explain the puzzling personality and behavioral changes in their children. The lethargy, irritability, loss of motivation and drive, and in some of the boys, the deficient pubertal development.... If the Atlanta family group was not to remain a lonely island in the tide of the drug culture, then parents who hoped to raise drug-free children needed more support from the media and the government.

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212 In 1989, President Bush, in his first nationally televised address to the nation, launched his anti-drug strategy.

In the speech, the President publicly commended

the Partnership for a Drug Free America.

Later that year,

at a special briefing. Bush lavished praise on one hundred and fifty media and corporate leaders gathered at the White House (Colford, 1989b): By applying your marketing experience and advertising talent to unsell drug use and users, your ads are managing to induce a nationwide ideological allergy to illegal drugs. When James Burke, the former chair of Johnson and Johnson, was named chairman of the Partnership for a Drug Free America in 1989, Fortune magazine (October 9, 1989:189) asked:

"Who would be better equipped to fight the war on

drugs than the former CEO [Chief Executive Officer] of a major U.S. pharmaceutical company?"

Between 1988 and 1991,

corporate funders of the Partnership, whose identities are usually kept secret, included the following pharmaceutical companies and their beneficiaries (Cotts, 1992:302): the J. Seward Johnson, Sr., Charitable Trusts ($1,100,000); Du Pont ($150,000); the Proctor and Gamble Fund (($120,000); the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation ($110,000); Johnson and Johnson ($110,000); SmithKline Beecham ($100,000); the Merck Foundation ($75,000); and Hoffman-LaRoche ($50,000). For the same years, said and similar companies donated at least fifty four percent of the $5.8 million that the Partnership garnered from its major contributors.

Because

this fifty four percent figure does not include donations

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213

under $90,000, it is a conservative estimate of the overall financial clout of the pharmaceutical drug industry's influence on the Partnership for a Drug Free America. From 1988 to 1991, the Partnership additionally received an unknown total amount of donations from a different licit drug industry, "the tobacco and alcohol kings," including (Cotts, 1992:300-302): $150,000 each from Phillip Morris, Anheuser-Busch and RJ Reynolds, plus $100,000 from American Brands (Jim Beam, Lucky Strike). In 1991, the Partnership, which received $800 million of donated media time and space for a three year period (Levine, 1991:116), disseminated approximately $1 million worth of free advertising per day in and on the nation's electronic and print media.

According to Forbes, its

advertising clout was five times greater than Coca-Cola, and ranked second only to McDonald's. Cotts (1992:302) poses the question: "if the Partnership's mission is to stop kids from experimenting [with drugs] in the first place, why not go after cigarettes and beer?"

The answer, we are informed, is that the

Partnership "is living off free advertising product and space, and the media and ad agencies live off alcohol and tobacco advertising."

It would therefore be "suicidal" for

the Partnership to take on the likes of the Marlboro Man, or to swim upstream against the tide of Coors beer.

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214

Thus, the Partnership overlooks "the dangers of tobacco, alcohol and pills."

Cotts additionally points out

that: statistics show that 40% of tenth graders report drinking within the past month and getting very drunk within the past year [and]... smoking has not dropped among young people for a decade. Nineteen percent of high school seniors are daily tobacco smokers, and hundreds of thousands of them... will die of lung cancer one day. Support for Cotts* contention that a symbiotic relationship exists between the Partnership for a Drug Free America and the legal drug industries in the United States is further evidenced by the following two tables.

Tables 14

and 15 reflect federally-published National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) data regarding the use of drugs by high school and college youths in the United States.

We will

first examine high school use patterns (Table 14) before turning to college data (Table 15). Table 14 reveals monthly, yearly and lifetime use of marijuana, cigarettes and alcohol by U.S. high school seniors from 1979-1991.

The table shows the same basic

trend: alcohol is the most popular drug, followed by cigarettes and then marijuana.

On all three measured levels

of usage patterns: monthly, yearly and lifetime, marijuana is the drug with the most significant decrease in use.

Of

the three drugs, the lowest decrease in use alternated between the substances of cigarettes and alcohol.

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215 TA BLE 1 4

SELF-REPORTED MONTHLY, YEARLY AND LIFETIME USE OF MARIJUANA, CIGARETTES AND ALCOHOL BY U.S. HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS: 1979-1991

Drug 84

85

86

87

88

82

20

21

MJ: 25% 26% 23% 21% 18% 17% 14% 14% 40% 41% 39% 36% 33% 30% 27% 24% 55% 54% 51% 50% 47% 43% 41% 37%

CIGS: 29% 30% 30% 29% 29% 29% 29% 28% (Yr.)

N/A 70% 69% 68% 67% 66% 66% 64% 63%

ALCO: 67% 66% 65% 66% 64% 60% 57% 54% 86% 86% 85% 86% 85% 83% 81% 78% 93% 92% 91% 92% 92% 91% 90% 88%

Source: Smoking,.Drinking and illicit Drug Use Among American Secondary School Students. College Students, and Young Adults. 1975-1991. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Drug Abuse (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992)

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216

Based upon the information contained in Table 14, the "tobacco and alcohol kings" who have donated generously to the Partnership For a Drug Free America can be satisfied with the knowledge that today's youth are well on their way to becoming legal consumers within tomorrow's tobacco and alcohol marketplaces. Since alcohol and cigarettes are legal for adults, the alcohol and tobacco industries must undoubtedly consider adolescents to be potential market shares of the future. Adolescents may illicitly use alcohol and tobacco, but their value as consumers will not be realized until they reach legal age to purchase these substances.

Thus, trends that

reflect rates at which high school youth indulge in alcohol and cigarettes may be indicators of their adult usage of these commodities.

It is a reasonable hypothesis that the

alcohol and tobacco industries view high school cigarette and alcohol use as part of a continuum in which these substances are consumed in adulthood. Table 14 depicts 1979-1991 monthly use trends by U.S. High School Seniors for alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana. For the thirteen year period, reported monthly marijuana use was cut in half, from thirty four percent (1979 and 1980) to seventeen percent (1990 and 1991).

The same years saw

monthly alcohol use fall from a high of seventy two percent to a low of fifty four percent, and cigarette use decline less, from thirty four percent to twenty eight percent.

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217

On the basis of examining the median (or middle range) figures for the monthly rates at which U.S. high school seniors use marijuana, cigarettes and alcohol (Table 14), we can see that from 1979-1991, sixty six percent of the high schoolers in this survey used alcohol within the past thirty days, twenty nine percent used cigarettes in the past thirty days, and twenty five percent used marijuana in the past thirty days.

The lowest marijuana use figure deviates

eleven percent from the median, the lowest alcohol use figure deviates twelve percent from the median, and the lowest cigarette use figure deviates only one percent from the median. Table 14 also reveals that from 1979-1991, the great majority of U.S. High School Seniors report having used alcohol during the past year, with a median of eighty six percent.

While annual alcohol use has slowly declined over

the years, from highs of eighty eight percent in 1979 and 1980 to a low of seventy eight percent in 1991, monthly use among U.S. high school seniors has remained stable. The annual NIDA High School Survey, which is conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, does not address annual cigarette use.

According

to a NIDA spokesperson,^ this is because:

^Personal telephone conversation with Ms. Mona Brown of NIDA on August 5, 1993. Ms. Brown inquired of Dr. Patrick M. O'Malley at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research before providing me the comments quoted herein.

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218 They [the researchers] can't ask everything they would've liked to ask but more importantly, they thought that current usage or past thirty days' was a better measure of cigarette smoking for teenagers[.] Although annual cigarette use patterns for U.S. High School Seniors are unavailable through NIDA research, reported annual marijuana use patterns for U.S. High School Seniors are available.

In examining said data, we find that

annual marijuana use for high schoolers in this survey for the thirteen year period averaged forty percent.

Over the

years, annual marijuana use for this population was more than cut in half, ranging from a high of fifty one percent in 1979, to a low of twenty four percent in 1991. In examining the median for alcohol and marijuana annual use patterns in Table 14, we find that the lowest percentage for alcohol deviates from the median at eight percent, while the lowest annual marijuana use figure deviates from the median at a higher rate of sixteen percent. Table 14 further depicts lifetime use trends among U.S. high school seniors for alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana from 1979-1991.

Lifetime use trends all were lowest in 1991

and highest in 1979, with the most dramatic change being evident in marijuana use patterns.

Alcohol use was

virtually stable and cigarette use declined slightly for the thirteen year period. The highest percentage of high school students who "ever used" alcohol remained at ninety three percent for six

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219

years, from 1979-1984, while its low was eighty eight percent (1991).

The highest "ever used" category for

cigarettes was seventy four percent in 1979, and its low, in 1991, was sixty three percent.

The highest percentage of

high school students who "ever used" marijuana remained at sixty percent for three years: 1979-1981, and it descended annually until its low, thirty seven percent, in 1991. Table 14 tells us that lifetime alcohol and cigarette use for U.S. high school seniors, much like annual use patterns for the same population, reflect a stable trend. An examination of lifetime use patterns for the three substances reveals that the medians for alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana were, respectively, ninety two percent, seventy percent and fifty four percent.

The lowest

percentages of lifetime use of the three substances deviate from the median at four percent for alcohol, six percent for cigarettes, and seventeen percent for marijuana. Based upon a review of high school drug use patterns as depicted in Tables 14, investing in the Partnership does not appear to have cut into the alcohol and tobacco industries' potential profit margins from the next generation of smokers and drinkers.

In fact, if the "alcohol and tobacco kings"

were to speculate about their markets on the basis of smoking and drinking patterns of U.S. college students (Tables 15), then investing in the Partnership must appear to be a wise investment.

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220 TABLE 1 5

SELF-REPORTED MONTHLY, YEARLY AND LIFETIME USE OF MARIJUANA, CIGARETTES AND ALCOHOL BY U.S. COLLEGE STUDENTS; 1980-1991 Drug Used

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

82

90

91

MARIJUANA; (Mo.)

34% 33% 27% 26% 23% 24% 22% 20% 17% 16% 14% 14%

(Yr.)

51% 51% 45% 45% 41% 42% 41% 37% 35% 34% 29% 27%

(Lf.)

65% 63% 61% 63% 59% 61% 58% 56% 54% 51% 49% 46%

CIGARETTES: (Mo.)

26% 26% 24% 25% 22% 22% 22% 24% 23% 21% 22% 23%

(Yr.)

36% 38% 34% 36% 33% 35% 35% 38% 37% 34% 36% 36%

(Lf.)

N/A

ALCOHOL: (Mo.)

82% 82% 83% 80% 79% 80% 80% 79% 77% 76% 75% 75%

(Yr.)

91% 93% 92% 92% 90% 92% 92% 91% 90% 90% 89% 88%

(Lf.)

94% 95% 95% 95% 94% 95% 95% 94% 95% 94% 94% 94%

Source; Smoking. Drinking and Illicit Drug.Use Among American Secondary School Students. College Students, and Young Adults. 1975-1991. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Drug Abuse (Washington, D.C.; U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992)

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221 Table 15 reveals monthly use trends of alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana by U.S. college students surveyed by NIDA.

For the twelve year period from 1980-1991,

reported monthly marijuana use was more than cut in half, from thirty four percent (1980) to fourteen percent (1990 and 1991).

While monthly alcohol use declined from a high

of eighty three percent (1982) to a low of seventy five percent (1990 and 1991), monthly cigarette use among college students declined less, from a high of twenty six percent (1980 and 1981) to a low of twenty one percent (1989). On the basis of examining the median (or middle range) figures for the monthly rates at which U.S. college students use alcohol, cigarettes and tobacco, we can see that the lowest marijuana use figure deviates eight and a half percent from the median, the lowest alcohol use figure deviates four and a half percent from the median, and the lowest cigarette use figure deviates only two percent from the median. Table 15 tells us that from 1980-1991, the great majority of U.S. college students reported that they had used alcohol during the past year, with a median of ninety one percent.

While annual alcohol use has slowly declined

over the years, from highs of ninety three percent (1981) to a low of eighty eight percent in 1991, monthly use among U.S. college students has remained consistently high.

As

well, annual cigarette use among those college students

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222 surveyed also remained stable, from a high of thirty eight percent (1981 and 1987) to a low of thirty three percent (1984). As with the previous high school and college data examined, reported annual marijuana use among college students has dropped off considerably over the past years, from a high of fifty one percent (1980 and 1981) to a low of twenty seven percent (1991). In examining the median for alcohol, cigarette and marijuana annual use patterns in Table 15, we find that the lowest percentage of use for both alcohol and cigarettes deviates from the median at only three percent.

The lowest

use figure for marijuana, meanwhile, deviates from the median at fourteen percent. Table 15 reflects that for more than the past decade, a median of ninety four and a half percent of college freshmen have consistently reported using alcohol.

The table further

tells us that from 1980-1991, lifetime marijuana use among college students has remained stable, with a median of fifty three percent.

(Lifetime cigarette use by college students,

as with the annual cigarette use category among high schoolers, is not ascertained by

NIDA's researchers at the

Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.)

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223

Table 15 reveals that lifetime alcohol use trends among U.S. college students were highest, at ninety five percent, in 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986 and 1988.

The lowest

lifetime alcohol use figure for the population surveyed was ninety three percent, in 1990. As with NIDA's high school data, lifetime marijuana use trends among college students surveyed annually declined from 1980-1991, with a high of sixty five percent (1980) to a low of forty six percent (1991). When we examine lifetime alcohol and marijuana use patterns of college students we can see a definite trend. The lowest percentage for lifetime alcohol use deviates from the median at a mere one half of one percent, while that of marijuana is thirteen percent.

In other words, from 1979-

1991, lifetime alcohol use among U.S. college students remained constant and consistent, at ninety five percent, while lifetime marijuana use declined at a considerable rate.

While NIDA did not ascertain lifetime cigarette use

by college students, we can assume, on the basis of annual use patterns, that lifetime cigarette use by college students has also remained constant and consistent.

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224

Reefer Madness Reborn In the best known advertisement of the Partnership for a Drug Free America, the viewer is shown an uncracked egg and is told:

"This is your brain."

The egg is then cracked

and dropped into a hot frying pan as the print and television audiences are told: drugs."

"This is your brain on

The last frame of the ad asks the viewer/reader:

"Any questions?" In 1990, according to Forbes. ninety two percent of U.S. teenagers stated that they had seen the fried egg commercial.

Ironically, according to published reports in

Adweek and Advertising Aoe. a generation of young U.S. citizens are refusing to eat fried eggs out of fear that their parents are "trying to do bad things to their brains." Clearly, parallels can be drawn between the 1930s, when marijuana was portrayed as a violence-inducing, insanityproducing "assassin of youth," and the present day anti­ marijuana media campaign of the Partnership For A Drug Free America.

Today, opponents of marijuana decriminalization

and marijuana legalization argue that drugs are the enemy of a civilized society, and that we must not tolerate drug use. Marijuana, they claim, is a "stepping stone" whereby youths are led down the path of drug abuse. The final chapter of this dissertation has shown the absurdity of U.S. marijuana policy in denying potential

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225

relief to patients who suffer from ailments related to the diseases of cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, and arthritis, among others.

This chapter has thus demonstrated

on two fronts: the medical marijuana issue and the media campaign of the Partnership for a Drug Free America, that Reefer Madness is alive and well in the 1930s.

Conclusion Today, Drugs the Enemy tend to be viewed not as inert objects that people may or may not take, but as objects with actual life qualities of their own.

In the true

sociological sense, illicit drugs have become reified: people do not take drugs, but drugs take people. Yet the only drugs included in the category "Drugs the Enemy" are illicit substances.

Not included as the Enemy

are equally harmful but legal drugs that have been: manufactured by factories on Main Street,

(1)

(2) financed by

institutions on Wall Street, and (3) packaged for consumption by public relation firms on Madison Avenue. A future question that may be before us is whether Wall Street and Madison Avenue can manipulate Main Street to produce, package and consume a new legal commodity: marijuana. are:

Questions we must ask ourselves in this regard

(1) Do we want the same forces that control the illicit

drug market ("organized crime") to control the licit marijuana market?

(2) Do we want the same forces that

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226 control the licit alcohol and tobacco markets (Mr. Busch, Mr. Coors, R.J. Reynolds and the like) to control the licit marijuana market?

(3) Do we want to permit licit marijuana

to be advertised as are alcohol and cigarettes? In tracing cannabis' evolution over thousands of years of human history, "The Sociology of Reefer Madness" has followed the origin of Reefer Madness to the present day. From the 1930s onward, we have specifically examined marijuana's alleged link to insanity and violence and as a "stepping stone" (or "gateway") and "drop-out drug." In examining the social roots of marijuana's criminalization in the United States of America, this dissertation has provided its readers with a more comprehensive explanation of the Marihuana Tax Act than heretofore has been available.

It has developed a new

theory, the Social Control Hypothesis, which explains why the Marihuana Tax Act became law, and it examines the Act's passage and subsequent enforcement in a social context, that of popular culture and historical studies of marijuana use. In applying the Social Control Hypothesis to reeferrelated jazz music and anti-marijuana motion pictures of the 1930s, "The Sociology of Reefer Madness" is unique.

By

comparing contemporary drug use data in the United States and Holland (the Netherlands), where cannabis use has been decriminalized, this study empirically tests and refutes the "stepping stone hypothesis."

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227

In these pages, the distinction has been drawn between the often confused, and inappropriately interchanged concepts of marijuana's decriminalization and its legalization.

Moreover, in this study we have examined a

further policy option alternative to marijuana's criminalization, its medicalization. "The Sociology of Reefer Madness" has been written to provide a window through which its readers can view a fleeting image barely discernable to the naked eye: an apparition which lives in both the present and the past. That apparition, embodied in the ghost of Harry Anslinger, smiles at us from beyond.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Abel, Ernest L. 1982. A Marihuana Dictionary. Conn.: Greenwood Press.

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Beale, Paul, ed. 1989. Partridge's Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. New York: MacMillan. Becker, Howard S. 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe. Boffey, Philip M. July 8, 1982. "Sponsors Criticize A Marijuana Study," New York Times. A12. Bonnie, Richard J. and Charles H. Hhitebread. 1974. The Marihuana Conviction: A History of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Chapman, Robert L., ed. 1986. New Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Harper and Row. Cloyd, Jerald W. 1982. Drugs and Information Control: the Role of Men and Manipulation in the Control of Drug Trafficking. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Cohen, Miriam. 1985. The Encyclopedia of Psvchoactive Drugs; Marijuana. Its Effect on Mind and Bodv. New York: Chelsea House. Cohen, Peter. 1991. Licit and Illicit Drug Use in Amsterdam. Amsterdam: Instituut voor Sociale Gecrgrafie, Universtiteit van Amsterdam. Cohen, Stanley. 1985.Visions of Social Control. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Colford, Steven W. November 6, 1989. "'Extraordinary': Bush Praises Anti-Drug Effort," Advertising Age 60:1,69. ------ . September 11, 1989. "Bush Call Too Much For Media?" Advertising Age 60:1,118. Cotts, Cynthia. March 9, 1992. "Hard Sell in the Drug War," The Nation 254:300-302. Daniels, Roger and Harry H. L. Kitano. 1970. American Racism: Exploration of the Nature of Prejudice. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. de Gamez, Tana, ed. 1973. Simon and Schuster's International Dictionary: English/Spanish. Spanish/English. New York: Simon and Schuster. Demott, Benjamin. 1962. "The Great Narcotics Muddle." Harper's Magazine. March:46-54.

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DiChiarra, Albert and John F. Galliher. 1994. "Dissonance and Contradictions in the Origins of Marihuana Decriminalization." Law and Society Review 28(1): 41-77. Dickson, Donald T. 1968. "Bureaucracy and Morality: An Organizational Perspective On A Moral Crusade." Social Problems 16:143-156. Eisner, Michael C. 1994. "The Sociology of Reefer Madness: The Criminalization of Marijuana in the United States," in Drug Use in America: Social. Cultural and Political Perspectives: 269-279, Peter Venturelli, ed. Boston: Jones and Bartlett. ------ 1993. "A Transnational Comparison of Drug Control Policies in the U.S., England, and the Netherlands," in Altered States of Mind: Critical Observations of the Drug W a r : 207-228, Peter B. Kraska, ed. New York: Garland Publishing. Engelsman, Eddy L. 1990. "The Pragmatic Strategies of the Dutch Drug Czar" in Drug Prohibition and the Conscience of Nations: 49-55, Arnold Trebach and Kevin Zeese, eds. Washington, D.C.: Drug Policy Foundation. ------ 1988. "Responding to Drug Problems; Dutch Policy and Practise." Unpublished paper. Flanagan, Timothy J. and Kathleen Maguire, eds. 1992. 1991 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. — 1989. 1988 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. ------ 1988. 1987 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Fossier, A.E. 1931. "The Marihuana Menace." Medical and Surgical Journal 84:247-252.

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