History Highlight: Harry J Anslinger Part 3- The Reds, The Dragons, and the FBN

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 dragged the United States into a war it had been desperate to avoid. Roosevelt used the horrific event to declare war on the Nazis and their allies, the Japanese. Anslinger saw the American public focus their attention on the war and the military buildup of the nation. The war effort meant rations for the public and increased funds for the military. No to be outmaneuvered by the war, Anslinger took the war as an opportunity to re-brand the efforts of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. His speeches began to speak of the evils of the Japanese and their opium smuggling. He characterized opium smuggling as another extension of the war and his agents as unsung soldiers. The result of the Japanese smuggling was, in his own words, equivalent to "multiple Pearl Harbors".

Anslinger and the media, a complex relationship.

However, the war would eventually come to an end, China (seen as an ally during the war) became a communist state, and Japan evolved into our new ally. Without missing a beat, Anslinger rewrites the narrative of the war on drugs to accommodate these changing alliances. His new message forgave and forgot about the Japanese role in opium smuggling and turned its ire toward the alleged center for opium production, China. The Red Scare would also influence the language Anslinger used as drugs became synonymous with a communist plot to overthrow the United States. With the panic over communism spreading across the nation, Anslinger offered himself and his agency as defenders of American morality, democracy, and sobriety. Throughout the rest of the Cold War, Anslinger would continue to tie the FBN's mission to foreign policy and national security. His tenure as commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics would last over 30 years and end in 1962 when he retired. The agency he had built up in strength and influence would only continue until 1968. Without its tenacious and ambitious commissioner, the FBN floundered and would be merged with the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control (a branch within the Food and Drug Administration) to become the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Again, this new agency would lack permanency without Anslinger guidance and in 1973, under the orders of President Nixon, be merged once more to form the modern Drug Enforcement Agency. Nixon would enhance the power and authority of the DEA in his efforts to fight the re-imagined war on drugs. His policies (and those of subsequent presidents) would be the initiatives that Americans are familiar with today.

History Highlight: Harry J. Anslinger Part 2- Making a Bureau and Reefer Madness

By the early 1930's Anslinger now had control over his own bureau dedicated to the enforcement of the Harrison Act. However, this law was restricting in his view and only tackled a fraction of the narcotic problem in America. To give his agency permanency and broader jurisdiction, Anslinger began a nationwide publicity campaign to get the public and Congress on his side. The first move he made was towards horse racing. In the world of horse racing, it was common and not unheard of to use performance enhancing drugs to win races. Anslinger brought the trend to national attention and called for regulation and enforcement. The agency to be charged with this task, his Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Congress agreed and gave him the power to send agents to race tracks across the country to test horses and arrest drug peddlers.

However, Ansligner was not content to keep the Bureau testing horses for the rest of its existence. By early 1932, he found a cause in the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act. It would strengthen the allegedly weak language of the Harrison Act of 1914 and ensure stiffer penalties and fees against violators. Anslinger, with the help of his friend Randolph Hearst and the Hearst publishing chain, publicly advocated and encouraged its passage across the United States. At the beginning, only 9 states would pass the act. Frustrated, Anslinger began an even stronger media campaign alleging the effects of these narcotics to cause "reefer madness" and "sex craze." This image of drug use would be propagated by many family and children interest groups and even be picked up by Hollywood in a series of low budget, exploitation films that capitalized on the scandalous image of a narcotic user and its alleged consequences.

These films, in addition to propaganda films produced by the U.S government, helped create an era of misinformation about narcotics in the United States. Rumors and myths replaced any actual facts regarding the actual affects about drugs. This is most seen in an incident between Anslinger and New York Mayor La Guardia. Published in 1944, the La Guardia Committee Report described the work of medical researchers into the effects of marijuana and other narcotics on humans and their recommendation for how the government should proceed in its regulation and classification. The report, the first of its kind in the United States, surprisingly found marijuana to be relatively harmless in reasonable doses and to have less damaging long lasting effects than alcohol and opiates. More importantly, it argued against the government narrative of marijuana being addictive and crime inducing. As expected, Anslinger's first response is immediate condemnation of the report as un-scientific and a fraud. He would then make it impossible for researchers to conduct any more inquiries into the side effects of marijuana, or other narcotics, without his permission. This requirement ensured that Anslinger would have control over what results were being found. With the La Guardia Report behind him, he would continue to move forward in pushing his agency's agenda and manipulating public fears to his advantage. However, with the tragic attack on Pearl Harbor, Anslinger found a new way to bring drug enforcement to the public eye.

To be continued!

History Highlight: The Napoleonic Bee

Emperor Napoleon, unintentional design icon.

This history highlight inspiration comes from attending one lecture of a history of design class when I was in high school. Interior Design is definitely not my forte, but the history was definitely something I could dig into. That class was dedicated to French design and there I heard a fascinating history about how the revolution changed French design.

The French Revolution had its beginning in 1889 and ended in 1899. However, despite the resolution of the revolution, France would continue to see rampant violence across the nation. Napoleon Bonaparte rose up the political ladder through his service during the Revolution and eventually made his way (very violent and manipulative way) to becoming Emperor of France. One of his many actions while Emperor was to change many of the symbols of France including the long standing Fleur-de-lis, a stylized lily. A common symbol in European royalty, it was especially beloved by the French Royal family. Its resemblance to the symbolism of the Catholic Holy Trinity made it commonly used by the French elite, up to the French flag. However, the Fluer-de-lis would not remain on the flag for much longer.

Notice the crown that is on the industrious, non-royal, and non-elitist bee.

With Emperor Napoleon in control and his seemingly rejection of royalty (while at the same time claiming his own royal status) meant that Napoleon would find a problem with the common and popular usage of the lily design. The flag would be replaced with the now well known tricolor. However, the fluer-de-lis would suffer another great blow. Napoleon found the design too royal and elitist for his national symbol. Instead, Napoleon offered the bee as the symbol of the nation. But why the bee? In terms of national symbols this is one of the less weird proposed national symbols of history. For example, in the United States Benjamin Franklin offered the turkey as a potential symbol. So the bee is not that strange. Napoleon chose the bee because of its behavior. Bees are industrious, hard working, and community oriented. The Emperor found these traits to be similar to those of the French people or at least something they should idealize. The bee also had meaning throughout France as a sign of immortality and resurrection, which appealed to Napoleon. As one of the major industries of France was textiles, this change in royal symbol made a large impact. Fabric makers would not produce fabrics and textiles with the newly minted Napoleonic bee making it instantly recognizable across Europe as the symbol of French Empire (which would eventually become a republic again, but that's for another day).

History Highlight: Practical Temperance

When I first entered graduate school I was required to take a seminar on nineteenth century American history. My academic interest has almost always been the twentieth century so I struggled to find a topic within the confines of the nineteenth that still worked with my drug and crime interest. With guidance from my professor I decided to do some newspaper research and do a keyword search for drug and drug use. The results were not what I expected. In the last pages of several newspapers (from a variety of states) I found references to rehabilitation services and centers that claimed to ascribe to "practical temperance".

The Cogswell Temperance Fountain
in Washington D.C. 

Temperance is the idea that to be a good and moral person one must abstain from alcohol. A cause that has historically had religious support, it was present in America since the days of the Puritans. However, in the nineteenth century temperance evolved from an idea into a movement. Progressive reformers of this era were alarmed by increased immigration and the affects they were having on society. They began to reform education, health services, and the justice system. The temperance branch of these reformers were interested in persuading Americans away from alcoholic beverages and towards more wholesome beverages. Their first attempts at this including providing Americans with the temperance fountains (otherwise known as the drinking fountain). The concept of these now common objects was to provide free water to Americans in the hope that it would keep them out of the saloons. They were generally funded by temperance groups and located in urban centers. However, these tactics were proving unpopular and unpersuasive.

Temperance activist would then begin a political oriented campaign to elect temperance activists into public offices and use that platform to enact their policies as law. These efforts included the creation of the Prohibition Party and eventually passing the 18th amendment and the Volstead Act. From many modern perspectives, it would appear that American during this last quarter of the nineteenth century was supportive of these policies and ideas. Historians write about temperance with little regard for their opposition. This is where practical temperance comes into the story.

The Keeley Institute and their cure claimed to use science to develop a safe
and effective method of curing alcoholism and drug abuse. Their facilities
required regular exercise, bathing, abstaining from cigarettes. However,
alcohol use was freely permitted on it premises.  

Practical temperance is the idea that alcohol is a beverage with the potential for harm and benefit, that scientific understanding of alcohol can help with the treating of alcohol abuse, and that alcohol should not be made illegal. The proponents of these ideas where mostly doctors and scientists but there was support from politicians and ordinary Americans. Doctors used the tenants of practical temperance to help patients who suffered from alcohol abuse and established clinics and over the counter cures. I even discovered an international chain of rehabilitation centers, the Keeley Institute,  that provided in clinic services and out patient services. These chains and their employees espoused that alcoholism, and drug addictions, should be treated as physical conditions by trained doctors. In fact, many patients and doctors bemoaned the temperance movement for its adherence to a religious view of alcoholism and the failed attempts by priests and pastors to heal alcoholism with spirituality and prayer. In their point of view, temperance was harming those they wanted to help. By denying the ability of science to help alcoholism sufferers and rejecting the idea of alcohol as having medical benefits in certain cases, temperance activists were condemning people to suffer.

Keeley's Golden Cure was available over the
counter making it accessible to patients across
socio-economic divides. 

Temperance activists were aware of these growing resentment against their policies and waged a propaganda war against the practical temperance men (and women). In a song written by the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the lyrics warn the audience of the alleged ties of these practical temperance men to judges, lawyers, and the alcohol industry, "He’ll vote for a prohibitory statute, then vote for a judge that’s a whiskey galoot and for an attorney that won’t prosecute, this ‘practical’ temperance man". Temperance activists painted their counterparts as corrupt and deceptive. Their aim was not to help the public but to enslave it even further to the affects of alcohol, so they claimed. Why did they find these practical temperance men so dangerous? Mostly because they spoke against the abolition of alcohol. These practical temperance men stood against temperance because of their belief that alcoholism in it of itself is not evil. Rather the abuse of it was was did harm. Furthermore, they believed that alcohol had plenty of beneficial uses that were worth maintaining its legal status.

These practical temperance men have been ignored from history. The time period is now exclusively dominated by the temperance movement. However, they represent a early form of the medical and public health approach to drug policy that would reappear by the mid twentieth century. Their ideas about how to deal with substance abuse are beneficial to historians and criminologists because of the changing ideas of current drug policy we are seeing today. My goal is to bring them back into the historical discourse because of their progressive innovation in a time where reform was repressive.