Marijuana

Although most states had local laws prohibiting marijuana use and possession, it wasn’t until 1937 that the federal government passed the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act. Interestingly, the congressional hearings on marijuana prohibition lasted all of two hours (in direct contract to most congressional hearings on new laws which last for days and days). There were exactly three bodies of testimonies testifying at these hearings. The first was Commissioner Harry Anslinger, the newly named commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (who happened to be appointed by his uncle-in-law, Andrew Mellon, who was the Secretary of the United States Treasury). Commissioner Anslinger testified on the government’s behalf. Not surprisingly he was working from a text which he had not written himself but which had been written for him by a New Orleans District Attorney. Reading directly from this text Commissioner Anslinger told the Congressmen at the hearings, "Marihuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death." That was the Commissioner’s brilliantly insightful government testimony to support the marijuana prohibition.FN9 The second body of testimony to testify at this congressional hearing were industrial spokesmen. The first of these spokesmen was, believe it or not, a man representing the rope industry. This industry representative testified that it was cheaper to import from the Far East the hemp needed to make ropes and therefore the United States no longer needed to grow any more hemp to make rope. (Interestingly, five years later, in 1942, the United States was cut off from its sources of hemp in the Far East and, since we needed a lot of hemp to outfit our ships with rope for World War II, the Federal Government went into the business of growing hemp on gigantic farms throughout the Midwest and the South.FN10) The paint and varnish spokesmen didn’t seem to care either which way. The only industrial spokesperson who objected