International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 134

A Brief Genealogy of Cannabis Policy in the United States
within the Treasury Department, where inefficiency and corruption prevailed: its
agents had become regular users of the narcotics that they were supposed to eradicate,
and so, there was a collusion between agents and dealers, bad management,
cover-ups, and falsification during investigations. Before 1929, the Narcotics Division
worked in coordination with the Prohibition Unit, but following the financial
crisis of that year, the two units became separated. 27
Anslinger also had to face the economic context of the Great Depression.
As a result, even if his ambitions were genuinely inspired by his prohibitionist
convictions, at the time, he did not have the means to implement the policy that
he dreamed of, which perhaps could have eradicated cannabis. The United States
is made up of states that are independent but not sovereign; they aim to uphold,
in accordance with self-government, the nation’s common defense and the safeguarding
of the general interest. 28 Anslinger therefore attempted to convince states
to control trafficking at a local level via economic means through the Uniform
State Narcotic Drug Act. The states that signed up to this initiative were New York,
New Jersey, Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. 29
The 39 remaining states interpreted the initiative as federal interference.
This act promoted by Anslinger was therefore a failure, since its implementation
required all states to commit to it. However, his position allowed him to
see how cannabis was already commonly used by artists, and especially by jazz
musicians; celebrities such as Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway openly praised
the plant, 30 singing about how smoking marijuana made playing music and how it
sounded wonderful.
In response, the nascent movie industry in Hollywood produced films cautioning
parents about the perceived risk of cannabis consumption—for example,
the short High on the Range in 1929 and the feature Reefer Madness, which was
produced in 1936 by Louis J. Gasnier. 31 The latter film devotes its first eight minutes
to written and oral statements expressly aimed at parents to convince them to
check up on their children and stop them experimenting with this plant, so that
they would not become crazed criminals. In these two films, the protagonists become
crazy, violent, and murderous after they have smoked.
Anslinger therefore patiently deployed a genuine propaganda campaign via
the media: movies, radio, and the press were supplied with material and put to use
in propagating the assertion that cannabis was even more dangerous than opium
in order to make voters pressure local legislators into ensuring that the Uniform
State Narcotic Drug Act was adopted.
27 https://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/federal_bureau_of_narcotics.
28 https://www.usa.gov/history .
29 Grass, directed by Ron Mann, Canada, 1999, documentary film.
30 https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/louis-armstrong-and-cannabis.
31 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhQlcMHhF3w.
129