The following is an excerpt from Johann Hari's new book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (Bloomsbury, 2015).
The Unbelievable Story of How America's War on Drugs Started
This is an article currently posted at AlterNet. It is long. A fine read on a Sunday morning. Fair use will allow little more than a snippet so this diary is merely an reference for that longer, proper article.
It's important, I'd say. Because so often I would suggest that it no longer matters WHY the war on drugs started. It's so huge and so old, answering the question is somewhat meaningless insofar as fixing the current manifestation, which is far more intense than it was when it all began back in the 20's and 30's a time dark with racism and scientific ignorance. The main question TODAY is 'why is marijuana STILL illegal and why is the war on drugs STILL at war?" Those questions won't really get answered in this.
Hari's writing is detailed such that it does illuminate the motivations of what he determines to be 'the Mount Rushmore of Drug Prohibition": Harry J. Anslinger, a man named Arnold Rothstein, and the famous singer, Billie Holiday.
Across the Orange Universe.
When Harry and Arnold and Billie were born, drugs were freely available throughout the world. You could go to any American pharmacy and buy products made from the same ingredients as heroin and cocaine. The most popular cough mixtures in the United States contained opiates, a new soft drink called Coca-Cola was made from the same plant as snortable cocaine, and over in Britain, the classiest department stores sold heroin tins for society women.
This story is long, detailed and far more convoluted than fair use will allow and really, you need to go and read the whole thing. There is no way I know to do justice to the piece without reading the whole thing. It's not a news report: it's the fruit of research and paragraphs are packed with information.
I will excerpt 3 more paragraphs, which will seem disjointed (stop giggling, this is serious) to whet your appetite and give you the info-munchies.
Again, Harry J Anslinger is just one of the worst people ever, outside of murderous tyrant or maybe Vlad the Impaler. He is the example of a fucked-up man with a shit-ton of power, a badge, and a gun.
But he wanted more and more and more power. He reportedly never focused on cannabis, only coke and heroin. But so few people did coke and heroin, he needed something more to fight to empower his office, which was starting to suffer from law enforcement resources being focused on alcohol prohibition .
Harry started noting the heinous stories from the papers (Hari does not mention Randolph Hearst but this would have been the work of Hearst, most likely. Lying yellow journalism at is worst)
Harry had long dismissed cannabis as a nuisance that would only distract him from the drugs he really wanted to fight. He insisted it was not addictive, and stated “there is probably no more absurd fallacy” than the claim that it caused violent crime.
But almost overnight, he began to argue the opposite position. Why? He believed the two most-feared groups in the United States—Mexican immigrants and African Americans—were taking the drug much more than white people, and he presented the House Committee on Appropriations with a nightmarish vision of where this could lead. He had been told, he said, of “colored students at the University of Minn[esota] partying with female students (white) and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy.” This was the first hint of much more to come.
He wrote to thirty scientific experts asking a series of questions about marijuana. Twenty-nine of them wrote back saying it would be wrong to ban it, and that it was being widely misrepresented in the press. Anslinger decided to ignore them and quoted instead the one expert who believed it was a great evil that had to be eradicated.
So Anslinger created the racist underpinning for the war on cannabis and other drugs, and he developed the task of finding a scientific prostitute to turn tricks in front of a congressional committee so that LIES carry the Law.
Go read the whole thing. There is a very interesting snippet of how Billie Holiday sang a song about the Lynching Trees of the South and how that just chaffed Anslinger's hide to no end. She - a black woman - SANG against lynching and sought to establish 'sympathy with stories of racial persecution', which, of course, is bad, if you are a crazed, psychopathic racist asshole with far more power than you every should have had.
We still have Harry Anslinger's today: the republican party is rife with them. Their racism is enjoying a heyday, they continue to howl and whine like utter morons about the People relegalizing marijuana as the Federal Government REFUSES to address the overwhelming facts about the cannabis plant, preferring to continue - to this day - to traffic in the utter horseshit that Harry Anslinger has foist upon this nation.
Harry Anslinger ruined millions and millions and millions of lives with his bullshit and our modern leaders refuse to budge even when they have to know their whole war on drugs is utter horseshit.
Which brings me back to what I said at first: knowing all this about the beginning of the war on drugs doesn't really help with the task of fixing the vast amount of damage caused by asshole drug warriors. (ALL drug warriors are assholes. It's inescapable.)
The real question is WHY is it STILL illegal.
And the answer to that is fairly simple: Republicans.
Republicans love the war on drugs. Nixon rejuvenated Anslinger's bullshit. He arranged a "Blue-ribbon" panel to issue recommendations (The Shafer Commission Report) which famously recommended decriminalization and a return to regulating the plant. This was the WRONG ANSWER and Nixon trashed the report and built the DEA. The DEA is Richard Nixon's Middle Finger to America from the grave.
Democrats are, of course, always nigh-on useless, but they never developed the droolingly-stupid mentality that the GOP has gleefully created. Sure there were terrible Dems who helped the GOP wreck these millions of lives: Tip O'Neil comes to mind. Thanks, dude, for nothing.
But, seriously, it is the Republicans that own this shit. Nixon stepped it up but over the next several years in the 1970's various American states voted to decriminalize anyway.
Then came Reagan and the War on Drugs was again infused with hundreds of billions of dollars, more racism, and more stupid.
Clinton, arguably the best republican president ever, did exactly nothing and during his 8 years in office 5 million people were arrested for marijuana. During Clinton's term, though, California passed the Medical Marijuana Law, opening the door a bit to the wider reform efforts we see the PEOPLE doing today. Clinton's response was to appoint Barry McCaffery, a notorious war criminal, liar, to be his drug czar and to attack the People of California as they implemented this law.
Then came The Chimp that Smirked and his asshole buddy, John Walters, there veritable reincarnation of Harry Anslinger. A major-league asshole who supported shooting down planes in Peru and strafing religious families just in case they were smuggling drugs.
Clinton, The Smirking Bush, Gore, Obama - all these people have smoked pot: NONE of them have lifted a finger to do anything about fixing this travesty.
Obama may be taking some very secretive steps to do I don't know what, really, but we don't hold our breath on him actually doing much to talk about. He initially laughed off suggestions to fix the problem.
Obama does seem to have signed a ceasefire in this stupid war. He is - finally - getting the DEA to back off a little teensy bit, but those assholes are in real danger if marijuana is relegalized. There just aren't enough real drug users to justify the gigantic and wasteful budget of Nixon's Middle Finger. They must work against the People so as to save their cushy, well-paying jobs.
In closing, I will observe that the war on drugs has mostly succeeded in preventing every last non-drug use of marijuana. I have some concentrate and some leaf: I have a nice pan of brownies to munch on today as marijuana prohibition FAILS to prevent people from getting 'illegal mara-ju-wanna' but nobody can plant hemp or use hemp for anything. Marijuana prohibition has successfully prevented a staple crop from existing and competing with other industries with which it would compete. Everybody knows you can make 10000 things from cannabis but since it is illegal, all we can do is get high.
Let us hope for a swift end to The Stupid.
Go read the article.
Thank you.
Doc.
Edited to correct my mistake with his name: Johann. Apologies and thanks for folks pointing it out.
Also: Visit the Chasing the Scream website.