Harry Anslinger, The Man Part III

	HARRY ANSLINGER A PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE OF THE MAN

PART III
THE DEMONIC BEING WHO WOULD BE SAINT
(A Documented Source For Active duty Reporters)

[Bennito Mussolini and Harry Anslinger looked a lot alike, But there was a big difference]
[ When Bennito Mussolini died, his evil died with him ; When Harry Anslinger died, his evil lived on ]

HARRY ANSLINGER’S APOLOGISTS
(IN THEIR OWN WORDS)
While doing research on this subject, I ran across a “semi-guest editorial” in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette ^[5] written by one Charles Lutz, who at least in my opinion is one of the most articulate of Anslinger apologists I’ve heard yet. And I mean this as a compliment. This guy is real good at writing propaganda. Were it not for the fact that I been studying the subject for years, I do believe even I would have fallen for his sob story about what a great man Harry Anslinger truly was, etc. Which is why I feel that addressing the very talking points (fictional or otherwise) that he made might actually be the best way to address not just his fictional fables but probably other apologist arguments as well.
[Due to copyright laws, I’m forced to make do with para-quotes, but nothing is taken out of context.]

1. That Harry Anslinger was actually opposed to the creation of the ‘Marihuana Laws’, but as Commissioner of Narcotics was FORCED to take action because of what was going on all around him.

Yeah, Right, and we’re supposed to swallow that one up hook line and sinker? Alright, let’s look at one of Anslinger’s closest associates (James Munch) had to say about the matter during a “High Times” magazine interview:

(Referencing the Victor Licata incident) “. . We had to do something to get Congress stirred up to pass the legislation. That was Harry’s show, not mine. He handled all the legal phases. I had nothing to do with that. . . . “It was one of the early cases, and it was sensational, and the story was that the people were dead. That’s the important thing. Never mind why they were dead, but they were dead. So that lent Harry a chance to get on the stump and say. “Look, see what happened? See? . . ”

Now does that sound like Ansligner was being pushed or was the pusher? And should anyone require more evidence as to the fallacy of this argument, examine Anslinger’s own words (as per his Assassin of Youth” article: ^[7]

Not long ago the body of a young girl lay crushed on the sidewalk after a plunge from a Chicago apartment window. Everyone called it suicide, but actually it was murder. The killer was a narcotic known to America as marijuana. . .
Last year a young marijuana addict was hanged in Baltimore for criminal assault on a ten-year old girl.
In Chicago, two marijuana-smoking boys murdered a policeman.
In Florida, police found a youth – staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an ax he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He had no recollection of having committed this multiple crime. Ordinarily a sane, rather quiet young man, he had become crazed from smoking marijuana.
In Los Angeles a boy of 17 killed a policeman who had been his great friend.

STOP – Do these sound like the words of a victim being pushed against his will do or are they the words of a victimizer spreading out his web of lies?

2. That “Research at the Time (the 1930’s) was Scant and Contradictory” . . .” So it was easy to Believe the Worst” . . . “Marijuana therefore, Quickly became Associated in the public mind with Violent Crimes.”

To the first point, TOTALLY NOT TRUE, there was NO poverty of information dealing with the subject of Medical Cannabis at the time. Starting in the 1830’s and right on up until the early 1930’s, medical Journals were full of articles dealing with Cannabis. Granted, some articles were negative, but by and large, most were very positive.

CANNABIS	MEDICAL CANNABIS, A WEALTH OF INFORMATION While some claim that there was a poverty of information dealing with Cannabis at the time, the evidence clearly shows the opposite . . . [more] . . .

[NO RETURN LINK PROVIDED]
And as the late Dr. Tod Mikuriya so well put it; “At first (era 1850’s) physicians had problems with exact doses but by the early 20th century they had it down to a “T”. “So many milligrams of medical Cannabis per kilo-gram of body weight, etc”. Our own museum has documented thousands of Cannabis medicines that were sold legally in drugstores throughout the nation. ^[8] Yet Anslinger’s apologists would have us believe that ALL doctors had just forgotten to notice one small (itty-bitty) little thing. That being that all their patients were running around grabbing axes, jumping out of fifth story windows, . . yeah, right.

As for the marijuana becoming associated with violent crimes, well there is some truth to that, but the issue here is who exactly was responsible for creating those false rumors about violent crimes in the first place?

3. “That During this period Defense Attorneys began using Marijuana intoxication as a mitigating factor (claiming temporary insanity) in violent-crime cases.” Thus (by implication) forcing Anslinger hand into action.

Humm! It would appear that even the most skilled liars have to tell the truth every now and then. One assumes it’s just a simple matter of mathematical statistics . . . write enough words down, and no matter how hard you try, you simply have to write down the truth every now and then, etc. But whatever, let’s look what is being said in more detail. First of all, the use of the “Temporary Insanity” legal defense is probably as old as time. I’ll never personally forget when S.F. Mayor George Mosconi fell to an assassin’s bullet, and guess what, the assassin got away with it in court by claiming that he was mentally “Temporarily Incapacitated” because he had eaten to many Hostess Twinkies. The “Twinkie Defense” it would come to be called. . . .

	WHAT WAS THE MARIJUANA "LEGAL DEFENSE ” See the facts for yourself . . . [more] . . .

So there was some truth of its involvement, but as Harry Anslinger himself stated:

“There is probably no more absurd fallacy extant (meaning still existing) than the notion that murders are committed and robberies and holdups carried out by men stimulated by narcotic drugs to make (them) incapable of fear. This may occasionally happen, but the immediate effect of a narcotic drug is usually to soothe the abnormal impulses, and the ultimate effect is to create a state of idleness and dependency.” -- PennState U., Anslinger collection Box 8, File 4. (Peddling of Narcotic Drugs” by H. Anslinger) ^[8]

So this situation of-and-by-itself begs a question: If Anslinger saw through the legal nonsense right from the start AND as the Marihuana legal defense was indeed being used as widely as noted, then WHY didn’t he attack it’s use? Why instead did he do the illogical thing and go after Marihuana instead of the legal system that was allowing such a phony-baloney defense tactic to exist in the first place?

The answer: Whatever else, the use of the Marihuana Legal Defense, DID NOT cause Anslinger (against his will, kicking and screaming as some would have us believe) to go after Medical Cannabis. That simply is not what happened.

4. That Harry Anslinger played little if any role in the Reefer Madness Campaign. Why he even had no role in the making of the movie Reefer Madness.

Some of his apologists (by implication) are claiming that Anslinger had little if any role in the actually Reefer Madness Hysteria Campaign. A claim that (no matter how they try to phrase it) is ludicrous right from the get-go. But instead of me saying so, let’s look at the words of Harry Anslinger himself on this subject ^[10] and please ask yourself, are these the words of a victim or a victimizer?

“Origins of hemp weed are ancient. Rites that go back thousands of years, in temples long vanished, may well have evolved around the effects of some variant of the hemp weed. Worshipers of the Hindu god Siva were said to use Cannabis indica. In the eleventh century A.D., the Mohammedan sect called the Assassins, used hashish in so-called religious observances. They made homicide a high ritualistic art. Their name itself is today a synonym for murder.

Marijuana effects on the average user are described in a brochure we published in the Bureau for the information of lay groups. "The toxic effect produced by the active narcotic principle of Cannabis sativa, hemp, or marijuana," the report states, "appear to be exclusively to the higher nerve centers. The drug produces first an exhalation with a feeling of well being, a happy, jovial mood, usually; an increased feeling of physical strength and power, and a general euphoria is experienced. Accompanying this exaltation is a stimulation of the imagination followed by a more or less delirious state characterized by vivid kaleidoscopic visions, sometimes of a pleasing sensual kind, but occasionally of a gruesome nature. Accompanying this delirious state is a remarkable loss in spatial and time relations; persons and things in the environment look small; time is indeterminable; seconds seem like minutes and hours like days.

"Those who are accustomed to habitual use of the drug are said eventually to develop a delirious rage after its administration during which they are temporarily, at least, irresponsible and prone to commit violent crimes. The prolonged use of this narcotic is said to produce mental deterioration."

One of the great difficulties with Cannabis is its unpredictability. Physicians who have made hundreds of tests with Cannabis report that there is no way to predict what effect it can have on the individual, both under controlled and non-controlled conditions. One man has no reaction at all; the next may go berserk and try to stab somebody or harm himself. The medical profession after many such experiments was forced to drop the narcotic as a possible analgesic because of this unpredictable quality.

Much of the most irrational juvenile violence, and killing that has written a new chapter of shame and tragedy is traceable directly to this hemp intoxication. A gang of boys tear the clothes from two school girls and rape the screaming girls, one boy after the other. A sixteen-year-old kills his entire family of five in Florida, a man in Minnesota puts a bullet through the head of a stranger on the road; in Colorado a husband tries to shoot his wife, kills her grandmother instead and then kills himself. Every one of these crimes had been proceeded by the smoking of one or more marijuana "reefers."

As the marijuana situation grew worse, I knew action had to be taken to get proper control legislation passed. By 1937, under my direction, the Bureau launched two important steps: First, a legislative plan to seek from Congress a new law that would place marijuana and its distribution directly under federal control. Second, on radio and at major forums, such as that presented annually by the New York Herald Tribune, I told the story of this evil weed of the fields and river beds and roadsides. I wrote articles for magazines; our agents gave hundreds of lectures to parents, educators, social and civic leaders. In network broadcasts I reported on the growing list of crimes, including murder and rape. I described the nature of marijuana and its close kinship to hashish. I continued to hammer at the facts.

I believe we did a thorough job, for the public was alerted, and the laws to protect them were passed, both nationally and at the state level. We also brought under control the wild growing marijuana in this country. Working with local authorities, we cleaned up hundreds of acres of marijuana weed and uprooted plants sprouting along the roadsides.

(REFERENCING THE LA GUARDIA REPORT)
This report declared, in effect, that those who had been denouncing marijuana as dangerous, including myself and experts in the Bureau, were not only in error, but were spreading baseless fears about the effects of smoking Cannabis. I say the report was a government printed invitation to youth and adults-above all to teenagers---to go ahead and smoke an the reefers they felt like. . . . The report further claimed that there was "no apparent" connection between "the weed" and crimes of violence, that smoking it did not produce aggressiveness or belligerence as a rule, that it could be used for a number of years without causing serious mental or physical harm and that while it might be habit forming it could be given up abruptly without causing distress; in other words, it did not produce the bodily dependence found in heroin, cocaine, morphine and other drugs. . . .

Doctors and other authorities who studied the effects of this drug, however, tore the report apart for its inaccuracies and misleading conclusions. The Journal of the American Medical Association joined the Bureau in condemning it as unscientific.

“There can be no doubt of the damage done by the report. Syndicate lawyers and spokesmen leaped upon its giddy sociology and medical mumbo-jumbo, cited it in court cases, tried to spread the idea that the report had brought marijuana back into the folds of good society with a full pardon and a slap on the back from the medical profession. The lies continued to spread. They cropped up on panel discussions, in public addresses by seemingly informed individuals. They helped once again, in a new and profitable direction, to bewilder the public and make it unsure of its own judgments. This carefully nurtured public doubt was to pay off with extra millions in the pockets of the hoods.”

I myself have spotted so many lies that it will (given the subject matter at hand) be impossible to go through them all. Thus, I will leave it up to the reader to accept what Mr. Anslinger wrote down as either being the truth or what I perceive it to be, a bunch of so many lies. But regardless, the point being made is that Anslinger doesn’t at all sound (at least to me) as a man who was either being pushed into doing anything, nor a man who “played little if any role in the Reefer Madness Campaign.”

Yet it appears that his apologists seem to have the same level of morals that Anslinger himself had when it comes to the truth, or as Joseph Goebbels, (Hitler’s propaganda minister) once said, “Tell a lie often enough and people will believe.” And so they will no doubt keep repeating this same line until everyone believes it to be truth, after all would our government lie to us, etc. And oh yes, on the ha-ha side, as he supposedly played little or no role in the campaign, his apologists like Charles Lutz (et al) are now also claiming that Anslinger played no role in creating the movies such as Reefer Madness. In his own words:

“There is no evidence that Anslinger was involved with the movie “Reefer Madness.” To the contrary, the writers and producers of the 2001 Off Broadway musical by the same name researched the 1936 movie upon which they based their show and believe it to have been financed by an unidentified church group. Anslinger’s agency is misidentified in the movie, too — highly unlikely had the media-savvy commissioner been involved.”

Again, implying that Anslinger had little if anything to do with the Reefer Madness Hysteria, and nothing to do with the movie. --- When in fact he was involved ‘up-to-his-neck’ in it.

	WAS HARRY ANSLINGER INVOLVED IN THE MAKING OF THE FILE “REEFER MADNESS” YES, all the evidence seem to estabhied this as a fact . . . [more] . . .

[NO RETURN LINK PROVIDED]

AND of course there are and will be other talking points made by Anslinger’s modern day apologists, all of which will (at best) be half truths, and at worst some out and out Anslinger’s (aka Lies). A situation, which of and by itself brings up a series of psychological questions, not just about Anslinger, but about his modern day defenders as well. Almost all of them revolving around the word; -- WHY. [See next section]

IN SUMMARY
THE STRANGE FRUITS OF HARRY ANSLINGER

“Everything faded into mist.
The past was erased,
The erasure was forgotten,
The lie became truth.”
--- George Orwell – 1984
At the start of the Second World War, ‘Wild Bill Donovan’ (head of the OSS at the time) ordered a team of psychiatrists to put together a psychological profile of Adolph Hitler, the idea being to second-guess Hitler by knowing how he thought. A matter that brings up an interesting question, what if that same team had done a psychological profile of Harry Anslinger, what would their results have said?

From what we’ve been able to ascertain so far, Harry Anslinger (Drug Czar, 1930–to-1963) was a liar, but not a pathological one, using lies very selectively. A racist-pig, but at the same time a pragmatic one, who (like Hitler who hired Jews to round up other Jews) even went so far as to hire black agents to help round up other blacks, etc. One who seems to have had few scruples in practicing selected forms of censorship, and no scruples at all in targeting those who openly opposed his policies. Even going so far as to plant false reports of drug use (leading to police harassment) as well as . . . other ugly things. In other words he could be thought of as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or more simply as a very, very wicked man.

	THE STRANGE FRUITS OF ANSLINGE'S WORKS About those trees that bear such a strange fruit . . . [more] . . .

However, on the positive side, he was not motivated by wealth and as such was never caught in any of the numerous corruption scandals that caught so many other ‘Bureau of Prohibition’ agents at the time. We also know that he was (by all accounts) a somewhat charismatic individual who could charm most people he talked with into accepting his viewpoints. Viewpoints which given today’s racial and social/moral standards appear to us as being bigoted and wrong, if not out and out evil.

That in effect would be the summary of any such psychological report or profile done on the personage of Harry Anslinger. I for one can find no other alternatives.

So why then are so many others now defending him? Why are groups of modern-day historical revisionists, (or apologists if you will), who would have us believe that history has totally misunderstood the man. That today Harry Anslinger is in-effect, a victim of slander. That his enemies (groups of unwashed hippies they would also have us presume) are for their own nefarious/political reasons spreading lies to deliberately demonize what otherwise should be thought of as a great man. --- In effect they would even have the Holy Father in Rome give Anslinger Sainthood status. WHY?

WHY? I personally have come to the conclusion that (psychologically speaking) those who follow Anslinger know that they themselves are evil and are simply trying to avoid some prison time themselves. I mean let’s face it, it’s possible for a young rookie cop full of police academy “hep, hep” talk to go out thinking she’s doing the right thing by arresting some black guy for marijuana. But after a couple of years (at most) there is not one person with a logical mind that cannot begin to start putting two and two together and begin to realize that something is plain wrong. So wrong that it might even qualify as a Nuremberg tribunal crime. And as they concisely know that what they are doing/did is wrong, it appears to me that their real interest is not in defending a demonic being like Anslinger. But instead, in simply throwing a wet towel into the whole argument; all in the hopes of keeping laws in place just long enough so they can collect their pensions and not go to jail themselves. And with each passing retirement paycheck they collect, no doubt they’re having a good laugh at our expense. To quote the words of another:

“Mr. Lutz's statement that there is no "redeeming quality" in using marijuana is merely the opinion of someone with an extreme conflict of interest. Mr. Lutz's salary and that of his friends and colleagues in the DEA and law enforcement in general are completely dependent on funds allocated to them for the express purpose of marijuana interdiction. Legalizing marijuana will lead to large budget cuts and hopefully layoffs in these organizations. Establishing for the historical record that marijuana prohibition was a moral, political, economic, and medical disaster makes Mr. Lutz's and his idols' life’s work seem pointless and counterproductive. But that is exactly what it has been. It is time for Mr. Lutz and his cronies to face the music. They have been acting against the public interest and with full knowledge that marijuana is at worst a harmless substance as indicated in the 1972 Shafer report ordered and then suppressed by Nixon. It is time for the Charles Lutzs of the world to fade into the sunset. Rather then penning worthless propaganda for public consumption, people like Lutz should be thankful they're not facing prosecution themselves for the immense human suffering their wrong-headed persecution of marijuana users and growers has caused. --- Jonathan Taylor, PhD California State University, Fullerton

To which I say, “AMEN”, but if you read Mr. Taylor’s words carefully, you’ll also see the logic, the reason why the WAR ON BLACKS exists today. We have a lot of scared narc’s out there that realize they might be up on war-crime trials themselves one day. Thus their need to re-write history, for them it’s a must, not a maybe. And as for everyone around them who gets hurt, well so what?

============
FOOTNOTES:
[1]- As per the book, “Federal Drug Control” by Erlen and Spillane p131
[2]- As per the website – (“Prøhbtd” Content x Culture) “Harry Anslinger: The Godfather of Cannabis Prohibition” by David Jenison
[A1]- Quoting the Wikipedia, but at least this one quote looks well documented. www.
[4]- “The real myths about marijuana” Harry Anslinger is being demonized by legalization zealots by Charles H. Lutz, a federal narcotics agent for 32 years, has done extensive research on Harry J. Anslinger -- https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2014/03/20/lt-div-class-libPageBodyLinebreak-style-webkit-user-select-none-gt-Real-myths-lt-br-gt-about-marijuana-lt-br-gt-lt-div-gt/stories/201403200057 – Here (due to copyright law, his words are para-quoted but not taken out of context.
[5]- Ibid
[6]- High Times – Nov. 1978 p42 – “Interview: Dr. James Munch by Larry Sloman
[7]- Marijuana ;Assassin of Youth by Harry Anslinger & Courtney Ryley cooper (The American magazine- July 1937)
[8]- www.AntiqueCannabisBook.com – our sister museum website.
[9]- Anslinger as per his article “Peddling of Narcotic Drugs” (PennState U ;Anslinger collection Box 8, File 4) or
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2410&context=jclcpage
[10]- The Murderers - By Harry J. Anslinger and Will Oursler ; Chapter 3 - Hemp Around Their Necks

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ANSLINGER'S PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE

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