THE PUNITIVE APPROACH to narcotics use and dependence reached its zenith in the 1950s. After the relative quiet of the war years, there was reportedly an increase in opiate use in the late 1940s, and the public began to be concerned with the spread of narcotic addiction, particularly among young persons. In these days when public panic was aroused by "scares" of many kinds, the call for harsher penalties against drug users and sellers was soothing. Mari-huana, too, was caught in the turbulence of this era. Although earlier assumptions about the drug were no longer commonplace, congressional furor was aroused by the new assertion, rejected by Commissioner Anslinger in 1937, that the use of marihuana inevitably led to the use of harder drugs. This new rationale for marihuana prohibition was to provide the basis for a continual escalation of penalties for marihuana use throughout the decade.

The new legislation came in two waves. In 1951 Congress passed the Boggs Act,' which increased penalties for all drug violators. For the first time in federal criminal legislation, marihuana and *the "narcotic" drugs were lumped together, since the act provided uniform penalties for the Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act2 and the Marihuana Tax Act.3 The states followed the federal lead. Then, in 1956 Congress passed the Narcotic Control Act, escalating the penalties still further. Once again the states responded in kind.

The Problem in 1951: Increased Narcotic Use

The assistant to the United States attorney general commented on the earliest draft of the new narcotic legislation: "We have been concerned to note the increase of narcotic violations in the New Orleans area and in certain other localities."4 The hearings before the subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee and the floor debate leave no doubt that the Boggs Act was motivated by a perceived increase in narcotic use in the period 1948 to 1951. Testimony and evidence from a wide variety of sources indicated an abrupt and substantial increase in use and probably dependence, especially among teenagers, between 1947 and 1951. Senator Kefauver stated at the 26 June 1951 session of the hearings: "Illegal drug use has reached epidemic proportions according to information secured by this committee from different parts of the country. One of the most alarming aspects is the reported increase in addiction among the younger generation, some of school age."5 And the New York Times reported Commissioner Anslinger's obser-vation that "the present wave of juvenile addiction struck us with hurricane force in 1948 and 1949, and in a short time had the two Federal hospitals bursting at the seams." Young people under twenty-one suddenly comprised a substantial part of the addict population. One witness, a fifty-seven-year-old addict who had started smoking opium around 1912, stated at the hearings that he had never seen significant use of drugs by young people until recently. He theorized that marihuana was probably the cause of the wave of youthful addiction.7

Congressman Boggs, speaking during the congressional debate on his bill, enunciated a concern that was reflected in many other quarters. After noting that there had been a 24 percent increase in arrests for narcotic violations between 1949 and 1950 and a 70 percent increase between 1948 and 1950, Congressman Boggs stated: "The most shocking part about these figures is the fact that there has been an alarming increase in drug addiction among younger persons. In the first six months of 1946, the average age of addicted persons committed . . . at Lexington, Kentucky, was 37-1/2 years. Only three patients were under the age of 21. During the first six months of 1950, only four years later, the average had dropped to 26.7 years and 766 patients were under the age of 21.. . ."

After remarking that "we need only to recall what we have read in the papers in the past week to realize that more and more younger people are falling into the clutches of unscrupulous dope peddlers . . .,"8 Boggs inserted in the record eleven newspaper and magazine articles dated between 2 May and 16 July .1951.9 The Washington Evening Star on 16 July, the day of the debate, car-ried a story on the results of a mayor's committee report on drug addiction in New York City. According to the newspaper: "Between 45,000, and 90,000 persons in New York City are using illicit dope.... Based on the city's population of 7,835,099, that would be one out of every 87 or one out of 174 persons." The paper indicated that the report showed an increase in addiction among teenagers, and it called for more severe penalties for dope sellers and for wholesale revisions of federal and state penal statutes relating to sale.

An article in the 25 June 1951 issue of Time magazine related New York City School Superintendent William Jansen's statement that one out of every 200 high school students in the city was a user of habit-forming drugs. The article went on to describe "the alarming increase in dope consumption" in other major cities and the ease with which school children obtained narcotics. Another article in the Washington Evening Star on 12 June 1951 contained statements by a member of the staff of the attorney general of New York to the effect that between 5,000 and 15,000 of New York City's 300,000 high school students were drug addicts. To supplement these figures the articles included the testimony' of witnesses describing their own acts of prostitution and thievery, the loss of educational opportunities, the death of addicts from "hot shots," the horrors of withdrawal, and a wide variety of other aspects of opiate dependence.

The Solution: Harsher Penalties

The congressional hearings, investigations, and debates also reveal the official and public consensus as to the solution to the epidemic —harsher penalties. It was repeatedly argued that the federal judici-ary had abetted the increase in opiate use by assessing insufficient terms of imprisonment to narcotics offenders. For example, Con-gressman Harrison of Virginia, after noting that narcotics law violations had been increasing only in those jurisdictions where federal judges had failed to impose adequate sentences on recidivists, stated: "Where the judiciary is abusing its discretion, it is the duty of the lawmaking body to limit the discretion in order that the public may be protected."1° Perhaps Commissioner Anslinger best described the prevailing climate when he observed in a state-ment later quoted on the floor of the House: "Short sentences do not deter. In districts where we get good sentences the traffic does not flourish. .. . There should be a minimum sentence for the second offense. The commercialized transactions, the peddler, the smuggler, those who traffic in narcotics, on the second offense if there were a minimum sentence of five years without probation or parole, I think it would just about dry up the traffic."11

Congressman Boggs had embodied such a remedy in a bill intro-duced in 1950 to increase penalties for all drug offenses, providing mandatory minimum sentences for all offenders. The bill did not reach a vote in 1950, but in the following year the Senate's Kefauver Committee (Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce) adopted this approach as one of its own recommendations.12 When Boggs reintroduced his bill in the House, he affirmed its principal purpose: "to remove the power of suspension of sentence and probation in the cases of second and subsequent offenders against the narcotics and marihuana laws, and to provide minimum sentences.. . ."13.

To support the contention that mandatory minimum sentences were necessary and that judicial discretion in the matter must be limited, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics had conducted a penalty survey in 1950.14 The bureau concluded from this survey that the average sentence for a narcotics violator in 1950 was 23.1 months in jail, slightly less than the average length of sentence for a nar-cotics violator in a similar study conducted by the bureau in 1935. To the fact that average length of sentence had not changed much since 1935, the bureau contrasted the increase in the number of narcotics violators from 1947 to 1951 and also the increase in narcotics recidivism since 1935. From the study the bureau also demonstrated that the average length of sentence for narcotics violators was markedly less than for violators of the Federal White Slave Act and the Federal Counterfeiting Act. This comparison was particularly important in the quest for harsher penalties since it was generally assumed that heavy penalties had deterred kid-napping, white slave trading, and counterfeiting. Commissioner Anslinger, for example, wrote an Oregon state senator in 1951: "You no doubt know that Senator Dirksen has introduced a bill in the U.S. Congress which could provide the death penalty for ped-dling narcotics to minors. This has our complete endorsement. If all the states would pass similar legislation, this action together with the passage of the Dirksen bill would eliminate narcotics peddling to youths just as the Lindbergh Law practically eliminated kidnapping. "15

Indeed, the bureau and several representatives in Congress toyed for some time with the idea of imposing death penalties for certain types of narcotics violations. In particular, Commissioner Anslinger and the bureau continued throughout the early fifties to support the "Dirksen bill" in Congress. In addition, Congressman Clemente of New York introduced a bill that would have assessed the death penalty for any violation of the Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act.16 Only somewhat more reticent, Congressman Edwin Arthur Hall of New York would have slapped dope peddlers with minimum sentences of 100 years.17

By comparison, the Boggs bill smacks of leniency. The consensus was indeed overwhelming that harsh sentences, mandatory in some cases, would strangle the drug traffic. This no-nonsense approach also appealed to the general public. One Californian wrote the commissioner: "As a citizen and veteran (of both World Wars) I strongly support your request for legislation to impose life sentences on narcotics peddlers. In fact, I would go further and urge nothing less than death sentences for these vicious enemies of society."18 Several of the most influential newspapers, particularly in the Washington area, also joined the public call for harsher penalties. The Washington Post on 12 August 1951 urged: "The other, com-plementary approach is to deal ruthlessly with the peddlers .of narcotics. These are criminals of the ugliest and most dangerous type. In localities where they have been given severe sentences, there has been a notable drop alike in the availability of drugs and in addiction."19 To the same effect is a 5 October 1951 editorial in the Washington Evening Star entitled "Make It Hot for Them Here Too."26 The bulletin of the St. Louis Medical Society added: "It is high time that the law makers reexamine relative values. If spies, saboteurs, and other traitors to our country can be given life sentences, then those who would sabotage the children upon whom the nation's future depends should be given life sentences."21

The new hysteria over narcotic drugs emerged at the same time as a similar concern with the international menace of communism. On one level the two phenomena were parallel, reflecting the col-lective psychology of the period—fear—and the consensus response —fortification. A spy was behind every tree and a narcotics peddler right behind him; the threat from without was matched by that from within. When issues are so easily defined, uncomplicated remedies leap to the fore. For the communist menace, military strength and a willingness to use it; for the drug menace, harsh penalties and a compulsion to assess them. This was no time for subtlety.

These two phenomena were also related on another level. The two sinister characters behind the tree were perceived to be one and the same. In an article headlined "Dope's Flow Said to Have Red Backing," the Los Angeles Times quoted the chief of that city's Police Department: "Communists in Europe and Asia are directing, in part, the flow of narcotics into the United States."22 Political cartoons and commentaries quite often attributed in-creased drug traffic to the efforts of Chinese Communism to dominate and demoralize American youth.

The FBN no longer had to carry the burden of raising the public ire against the drug evil, but Commissioner Anslinger himself fre-quently illustrated the difficulty of enforcing the narcotic laws by asserting that often, after the bureau had rounded up a group of violators in a major drug ring, the first ones prosecuted were released from jail before the last ones were tried.23 Naturally, the bureau once again enlisted Anslinger's army in the lobbying effort for passage of the Boggs Act. The FBN files clearly reflect the assistance of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Gener-al Federation of Women's Clubs, and the National Congress of Parents and Teachers.

Although there was no debate among the various participants in the legislative process about the need for harsher penalties, some voices were sporadically raised against the idea of mandatory minimum sentences. Deprivation of judicial discretion during the sentencing process was a significant departure from basic precepts of Anglo-American jurisprudence. Thus, during the drafting process before the second Boggs bill was introduced, a representative of the legislative section of the Treasury Department objected to a pro-vision in the previous bill which would have imposed mandatory minimum sentences on all offenders, including first offenders. He argued that such a provision was unwise as a matter of policy and would serve only to arouse judicial hostility to the bill.24 This provision was ultimately eliminated in the Kefauver recommen-dations and in the parallel Boggs bill.

At the time of the debate on the bill, the only significant opposition came from Congressman Cellar. He thought that the mandatory minimum sentence provision, now only for second and subsequent offenders, would be unjust to addicts. But the majority opinion was clearly that mandatory minimum sentences were neces-sary to insure the punishment of peddlers.25 In response to Cellar's contention that young addicts would be subjected to long prison terms because of the loss of judicial discretion in sentencing, Con-gressman Jenkins stated: "The enforcing officers will always have sympathy for the unfortunate consumer, especially if he is harmless. These enforcing officers are going to protect the little boys and girls. They are not going to drag the high school boys and _girls before the criminal courts until they know that they are collabo-rating with the peddlers."26

Boggs presented a more reasonable justification for mandatory minimums: "[I] t is not the intention of the legislation to affect a teenager or any such person who has possession of narcotics. But the gentleman also knows that if we try to make a distinction between possession and peddling that we immediately open the law to all types of abuses."27

This was no time for subtle distinctions. The policy makers wanted to hit squarely with a big stick. The Boggs Act passed both houses with overwhelming majorities on 2 November 1951 and provided uniform penalties for violations of the Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act and the Marihuana Tax Act:

The relatively low fines reflected a congressional belief that monetary penalties were an insignificant deterrent.29 Under the central provision of the act, the ameliorative judicial devices of probation, suspension, and parole were no longer available for persons con-victed for a second or subsequent offense.

It is plain that the Boggs Act was directed in large part at the federal judiciary. Although the bench had not mounted any con-certed lobbying effort during the legislative process, it is not surprising that the judges were indignant after passage of the act. The director of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, James V. Bennett, who had unsuccessfully opposed the act during the hearings and debates, now tried to arouse the judges at the judicial conference of the Fifth Circuit in 1954.29 Arguing that the act impaired the sepa-ration of powers doctrine upon which the nation's entire political system is based, Bennett suggested that the federal bench establish regional committees to reexamine the Boggs Act and to make recommendations. Bennett's incessant claim that "the Boggs Bill was passed due to hysteria"3° irritated both Commissioner Anslinger and Congressman Boggs. For this reason FBN agents were detailed to follow him from conference to conference to make reports on what he said and to whom.31

The Fifth Judicial Circuit appointed the committee Bennett suggested, and on 27 May 1954 the district and circuit judges of the United States Fifth Circuit unanimously recommended the amendment of the federal narcotics law to remove provisions for mandatory minimum sentences."

This and similar actions by the federal bench were met with immediate counterattacks by Commissioner Anslinger and Con-gressman Boggs. Shortly after the announcement of the Fifth Circuit decision, Commissioner Anslinger wrote: "It is surprising indeed that this recommendation by these judges should be adopted in New Orleans where shocking narcotic traffic was remedied, for the most part, by the application of the Boggs Act and similar heavy penalties under state legislation." This was released together with Congressman Boggs' own statement against the judges: "I cannot imagine a more shortsighted recommendation." He con-tinued: "Anyone who has studied the narcotics trade and has seen the pitiful effect in countless homes throughout this nation from youths to the very old must recognize that this is one of the most vicious things in our country.33

The judiciary was whistling in the dark. Opposition to the removal of their traditional discretion in sentencing ran counter to a strong public preference for harsh penalties for drug violators. For example, one man wrote to Drew Pearson: "A judge who gives a suspended sentence or an insufficient sentence to a narcotic dealer, I would say should be automatically deprived of his judge-ship and himself imprisoned."34

Marihuana and the Boggs Act

Public and congressional attention was focused on opiate use, not on marihuana. Although there is some evidence that marihuana use had increased concurrently with the use of opiates during the late forties,33 nothing was made of this in the press. Nonetheless, right from the beginning of the drafting process, all federal drug statutes were to be covered by the new uniform penalties. The Marihuana Tax Act was part of the federal matrix; so it went in. Of course, under the 1937 "findings" no distinction would have been justified.

The persistence of the old myths, despite the evolving consensus within the scientific community, is cogently illustrated by a com-ment delivered from the bench by a New Jersey trial judge as he sentenced a marihuana seller to seven years in the penitentiarrin March 1951:

Marihuana has been called the spawn of the devil. Marihuana destroys all sense of moral responsibility, and for that reason marihuana addicts commit crimes with no sense of regret, shame or responsibility. Marihuana has no therapeutic value whatever. It has been responsible for the commission of crimes of violence, of murder, and of rape. Those are major tributaries that flow from the use of marihuana. It has no value of any kind. It is a fungus growth that comes right from the bowels of Hell. Each cigarette is a stick of dynamite. Half a dozen of them smoked—no girl is safe walking the streets with a man under the influence of this devilish drug. Young girls raped, people murdered—that is the story of the highway of marihuana. A Marihuana peddler, or a man that peddles any drugs, should be punished, and the only way to punish him is to send him to the penitentiary for a long term.36

There had now been two decades of such visceral indictments. But 1 95 I marked the long-postponed entry of science into mari-huana's legal history. The policy makers were finally acquainted with the consensus that had developed within the American scien-tific community since the mid-thirties. In a paper filed as an exhibit to the hearings37 on the Boggs Act, Dr. Harris Isbell, director of research at the Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Ken-tucky, exploded the traditional rationale. He stated that marihuana was not physically addictive, although he paid lip service to the psychological dependence hypothesis.38 Acknowledging the possi-bility of "temporary psychosis" in "predisposed individuals," Isbell otherwise disputed the crime and insanity thesis. Before the Kefauver committee in the Senate he testified that:

[M] arihuana smokers generally are mildly intoxicated, giggle, laugh, bother no one, and have a good time. They do not stagger or fall, and ordinarily will not attempt to harm anyone.
it has not been proved that smoking marihuana leads to crimes of violence or to crimes of a sexual nature. Smoking marihuana has no unpleasant after-effects, no dependence is developed on the drug, and the practice can easily be stopped at any time. In fact, it is probably easier to stop smoking marihuana cigarettes than tobacco cigarettes.

In predisposed individuals, marihuana may precipitate temporary psychosis and is, therefore, not an innocuous practice with them.39

Despite this testimony, the legislators approved greatly increased penalties for marihuana users. The reason was simple. Since Congress was seeking to excise heroin use from the social organism, marihuana, no longer important in itself, was assigned a new role:

Mr. BOGGS. From just what little I saw in that demonstration, I have forgotten the figure Dr. Isbell gave, but my recollection is that only a small percentage of those marihuana cases was anything more than a temporary degree of exhilaration. .

Mr. ANSLINGER. The danger is this: Over 50 percent of those young addicts started on marihuana smoking. They started there and graduated to heroin; they took the needle when the thrill of marihuana was gone.4°

Many others—doctors, crime prevention experts, and police and narcotic bureau officials—testified to support the link between marihuana use and ultimate heroin addiction» Congressman Boggs himself summed up this novel danger of marihuana in one of the few statements which even mentioned marihuana in the House floor debate: "Our younger people usually start on the road which leads to drug addiction by smoking marihuana. They then graduate into narcotic drugs—cocaine, morphine, and heroin. When these younger persons become addicted to the drugs, heroin, for example, which costs from $8 to $15 per day, they very often must embark on careers of crime . . . and prostitution . . . in order to buy the supply which they need."42

In the Senate, Chairman Kefauver noted that marihuana use was increasing among the nation's youth as it poured across the Mexi-can border, beginning the process of addiction: "The path to addiction ran practically the same throughout the testimony from young addicts. In their own vernacular . . . they say they go from sneaky Peter to pot to horse to banging. In ordinary language, this describes the popular sequence—drinking wine, smoking 'reefers' or marihuana cigarettes (sometimes starting at the age of 13 or 14), then sniffing or 'snorting' heroin, finally injecting it directly ,into the vein."43

Specifically rejected by Commissioner Anslinger in 1937, the stepping-stone rationale became, in 1951, the cornerstone of official marihuana doctrine. Earlier contentions to the same effect by law enforcement authorities, international experts, and the WCTU had been either unnoticed or ignored." Its sudden acceptance as of-ficial dogma had an interesting consequence.

Marihuana had been medically defined as a narcotic drug in the twenties; from this fact its statutory nexus with the opiates had been drawn. However, despite its comparison to the opiates, canna-bis still retained its own distinct, although equally menacing, identity. Once the myths had been dispelled, the substantial pharmacological disparity between marihuana and the opiates be-came clear; indeed, the new rationale was premised on marihuana's being something of a "weak sister" in the family of abusable drugs. Yet this differentiation did not trigger a public policy review be-cause of a paradoxical twist.

Under the stepping-stone rationale, marihuana no longer had its own identity. Because its primary ill effect was now thought to be a role in opiate addiction, marihuana became inextricably bound to the opiates from a political and legal standpoint as well. It is not surprising, then, that the causal link, once drawn, has persisted for two decades, earning the official imprimatur of President Nixon in 1971. The passage of the Boggs Act marked a significant shift in the rationale for marihuana's illegal status and that status became more entrenched by its causal association with the opiates.

The Sky's the Limit

Even while the Boggs Act was still pending in Congress, the Narcotics Bureau encouraged the states to modify their existing narcotic and marihuana legislation to enact "penalties similar to those provided in the Boggs Bill [which] would be of material assistance in the fight against the narcotic traffic."45 Seventeen states and the territory of Alaska responded by passing "little Boggs Acts" by 1953 and eleven other states increased their penal-ties by 1956. Two of the latter group, Ohio and Louisiana, enacted penalty provisions that were substantially more severe than those paAed previously in any jurisdiction. The Ohio law, approved 16 June 1955, provided a twenty- to forty-year sentence for the sale of narcotic drugs. The Louisiana measure, adopted the fol-lowing year, provided severe prison sentences without parole, probation, or suspension for the illegal sale, possession, or administration of a narcotic drug. The sentences ranged from a five-year minimum to a ninety-nine-year maximum.46

Whether because use had decreased or because the propagandists had accomplished their mission, public agitation about the narcotics problem reduced considerably after the Boggs Act was passed.

Meanwhile, however, the continuing debate about the appropri-ate public policy toward narcotic addiction surfaced again, and during the four years following the Boggs Act, a number of professional groups and individual experts began to call for a re-examination of the entire legislative approach. The American Bar Association created a special committee on narcotics in 1954; the following year the American Medical Association recommended that Congress fully review the Harrison Act and the FBN's enforce-ment policy. The perennial issue of heroin maintenance received considerable discussion in an atmosphere much calmer than that which prevailed in 1951.47

As a result of this activity, the Senate passed a resolution on 18 March 1955 authorizing the Senate Judiciary Committee "to conduct a full and complete study of the narcotics problem in the United States, including ways and means of improving the Federal Criminal Code and other laws and enforcement procedures dealing with possession, sale, and transportation of narcotics, marihuana and similar drugs."48 During the next eighteen months this sub-committee, chaired by Senator Price Daniel of Texas, conducted numerous hearings all over the country. In January and April 1956 the Daniel Subcommittee issued two brief reports, on trafficking and treatment, both of which proposed to tighten rather than alter the existing system.°

The Daniel Report was more of the same. It proposed that penalties for drug offenses be increased again, that further dis-cussion of proposed opiate clinics be halted, and that all drug addicts be removed from society so they could no longer spread "this contagious problem." In the House, Congressman Boggs was now chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Narcotics; in close cooperation with Anslinger, his subcommittee developed a similar series of recommendations.

Without significant debate or public interest, except among the groups which the FBN had always counted on for support, Con-gress subsequently passed the Narcotic Control Act of 1956.

Perhaps more than any of its predecessors, the Narcotic Control Act was a child of the FBN. Together with Senator Daniel and Congressman Boggs, Anslinger was able to resist the growing pres-sure for reevaluation. Almost every provision in the new act was designed to supplement the tools at the bureau's disposal to detect, arrest, and incarcerate drug users. This legislation thus represents the high-water mark of the punitive approach to drug use begun on the federal level during the 1920s. The penalties for drug of-fenses were now escalated for the final time on the theory that the end of the nonmedical use of narcotics could thereby be assured.

Interestingly, the efficacy of still higher penalties was not uniformly accepted within the FBN; the deputy commissioner suggested that more severe penalties might press grand juries not to indict and the petit juries not to convict in drug cases. Anslinger rejected this view. He felt strongly that more severe penalties were imperative if society was to be rid of its present peddlers and if new entrants into the narcotics business were to be deterred.5°

There was little dissent in the Congress from the proposition that harsher penalties were the means to eliminate the illicit use and sale of all drugs.51 In the Boggs Subcommittee hearings, in fact, it was felt that harsher penalties were the only way to deal with the narcotic law violations.52 The subcommittee felt that educational programs on the evils of narcotics should not be insti-tuted in the schools for fear of exciting the curiosity of young people.53

In addition to facilitating enforcement of narcotics laws through a number of ancillary provisions, the Narcotics Control Act es-tablished the following penalties:

Probation, suspension of sentence, and parole were made unavaila-ble to all except first offenders in the possession category.54

Even though a few of the act's provisions dealt specifically with marihuana, the legislators paid even less attention to marihuana than they had in 1951. The established precedent of classifying marihuana with the opiates and cocaine resulted in a further in-crease in marihuana penalties and a proliferation of marihuana offenses. Few legislators recognized that marihuana was in any way different from the physically addictive opiates.55 The stepping-stone hypothesis had cemented that link.

During the Daniel Committee Hearings, Anslinger emphasized the new rationale, but gladly agreed when his questioners revivedthe old assumptions about marihuana:

Senator DANIEL. Now, do I understand it from you that, while we are discussing marijuana, the real danger there is that the use of marijuana leads many people eventually to the use of heroin, and the drugs that do cause them complete addiction; is that true?

Mr. ANSLINGER. That is the great problem and our great con-cern about the use of marijuana, that eventually if used over a rong period, it does lead to heroin addiction.. . .

Senator DANIEL. As I understand it from having read your book, an habitual user of marijuana or even a user to a small extent presents a problem to the community, and is a bad thing. Marijuana can cause a person to commit crimes and do many heinous things; is that not correct?

Mr. ANSLINGER. That is correct. It is a dangerous drug, and is so regarded all over the world. . . .

After noting that cannabis had no therapeutic advantages and that it "might cause insanity," Anslinger found himself disputing the crime thesis:

Senator WELKER. Mr. Commissioner, my concluding question with respect to marijuana: Is it or is it not a fact that the mari-juana user has been responsible for many of our most sadistic, terrible crimes in this Nation, such as sex slayings, sadistic slayings, and matter of that kind?

Mr. ANSLINGER. There have been instances of that, Senator. We have had some rather tragic occurrences by users of marijuana. It does not follow that all crimes can be traced to marijuana. There have been many brutal crimes traced to marijuana. But I would not say that it is the controlling factor in the commission of crimes.

Senator WELKER. I will grant you that it is not the controlling factor, but is it a fact that your investigation shows that many of the most sadistic, terrible crimes, solved or unsolved, we can trace directly to the marijuana user?

Mr. ANSLINGER. You are correct in many cases, Senator Welker.

Senator WELKER. In other words, it builds up a false sort of feeling on the part of the user and he has no inhibitions against doing anything; am I correct?

Mr. ANSLINGER. He is completely irresponsible.56

Only once during the floor debates on the House and Senate versions of the bill was the subject of marihuana as a separate substance even raised. Senator Daniel advised his colleagues what marihuana was exclusively in terms of the stepping-stone concept: " [Marihuana] is a drug which starts most addicts in the use of drugs. Marihuana, in itself a dangerous drug, can lead to some of the worst crimes committed by those who are addicted to the habit. Evidently, its use leads to the heroin habit and then to the final destruction of the persons addicted."57 -

One provision of the act reveals a curious lapse of memory between 1937 and 1956 regarding the origins of marihuana. Con-gress finally got around to amending the Import and Export Act, creating a new offense of smuggling marihuana, and mere possession was made sufficient evidence to convict the possessor of knowingly receiving or concealing imported marihuana. This presumption was based on two suppositions—that marihuana traffic depended upon importation from Mexico and that possessors were likely to be aware of that fact. Even in 1956 such findings were dubious.58 Commissioner Anslinger estimated that 90 percent of all marihuana in the country had been smuggled from Mexico, since 90 percent of all federal seizures were of Mexican marihuana.59 But this sta-tistic was grossly misleading. The FBN had practically abandoned the responsibility for marihuana control to increasingly effective state narcotics squads and to the customs agents.66 It was only natural that federal figures, taken alone, would suggest a high percentage of importation. Furthermore, the commissioner's con-clusion was inconsistent with an essential premise of the Tax Act 61 and with other materials presented to the Congress,62 all of which emphasize the large degree of domestic cultivation of marihuana.

As to the possessor's knowledge of the drug's source, the under-lying assumption was that there was an organized trade pattern and that each user knew where his drug came from. But marihuana was then no more than a casual adjunct in the lives of unemployed or menially employed members of racial minorities in city centers.63 Such a class of people, especially the young and black minorities, could hardly be assumed to know the original source of the drug. The presumption, which was ultimately declared irrational by the United States Supreme Court, might have been valid if applied to recently immigrated Mexicans," but certainly to no one else.

Never widely used or known, marihuana had now been fully integrated into the narcotics legislation of every state in the Union and of the national government. Possession of the drug, even for one's own use, was a felony everywhere, and the user was subject to long periods of incarceration as punishment for his indulgence.

Notes

1.    Act of 2 Nov. 1951, ch. 666, 65 Stat. 767. Between 1937 and 1951 the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act was amended to change the definition of cannabis from the flowering or fruiting tops of just the female plant to include the corresponding parts of the male plant. See 1943 Handbook, pp. 172-73.
2.    21 U.S.C. § 174 (1964).
3.    26 U.S.C.§§ 4741-76 (1964).
4.    Peyton Ford to Congressman Hale Boggs, 14 Apr. 1950. File: 1245 Legislation.
5.    U.S., Congress, Senate, Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, Hearings, 82d Cong., 1st sess., 1951, pt. 14, exhibit 1, pp. 131, 240-41, 266 (hereafter cited as Kefauver Committee Hearings).
6.    Ibid., pt. 14, p. 235. See also New York Times, 19 June 1951, p. 25, col. 1.
7.    Kefauver Committee Hearings, pt. 14, p. 382.
8.    97 Congressional Record (1951), pp. 8197-98.
9.    Ibid., pp. 8198-8204.
10.    Ibid., p. 8211.
11.    Ibid., p. 8198 (as quoted by Congressman Boggs). See also Kefauver Com-mittee Hearings, pt. 14, pp. 430-31 (testimony of Commissioner Anslinger).
12.    97 Congressional Record (1951), p. 8198.
13.    Ibid., p. 8196.
14.    Memorandum from Peyton Ford, assistant to attorney general, to Anslinger, 17 July 1950.
15.    Anslinger to Jack Lynch, 21 Aug. 1951. File: 1245 Legislation.
16.    "H.R. 8355-Bill Introduced by Representative Boggs to provide minimum penalties for violation of Narcotic Laws," memorandum from Hugh Spaulding to Hansen and Carlock, Treasury Department, 29 Sept. 1950. File: 1245 Legislation.
17.    97 Congressional Record (1951), p. 8209.
18.    Alex Bradford to Anslinger, 26 June 1951. File: 1245 Legislation.
19.    Washington Post, 12 Aug. 1951, p. 4B, col. 1.
20.    Evening Star (Washington), 5 Oct. 1951, p. A-10, col. 1.
21.    St. Louis Medical Society Bulletin, March 1951. File: 1245 Legislation
22.    Los Angeles Times, 25 May 1951. File: 1245 Legislation.
23.    "Raps Present Law on Dope Traffic Fight," Los Angeles Daily News, 18 June 1951.
24.    Spaulding to John K. Garlock, assistant general counsel, 24 Sept. 1950; Anslinger to Carlock, 23 Oct. 1951.
25.    Congressman Keating questioned the constitutionality of the provision (97 Congressional Record [1951], p. 8206). Apparently Keating accepted Congressman Harrison's statement that the language had been in the statutory predecessors for years and had been passed on by the Supreme Court (ibid., p. 8211).
26.    97 Congressional Record (1951), p. 8207.
27.    Ibid., p. 8206.
28.    Ibid., p. 8197.
29.    P. A. Williams, district supervisor, to Anslinger, 2 June 1953. File: 1245 Legis-lation
30.    Thomas E. McGuire, federal narcotic agent, to Williams, 28 May 1953 (sic). File: 1245 Legislation.
31.    Ibid.
32. New Orleans Statesman, 28 May 1954; New Orleans Times-Picayune, 28 May 1954.
33. New Orleans Times-Picayune, 12 June 1954.
34.    Robert J. Caldwell to Pearson, 27 Aug. 1951. File: 1245 Legislation.
35.    The FBN reports tend to reflect an increase in seizures and arrests after World War II. For statistics on marihuana enforcement by state and municipal authorities from 1936 to 1941, see Bureau of Narcotics, U.S., Treasury Department, Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1935), p. 63 (hereafter cited as Traffic in Opium); ibid. (1936), p. 57; ibid. (1937), p. 81; ibid. (1938), p. 80; ibid. (1940), p. 73; ibid. (1941), p. 38. For statistics on the amount of marihuana seized by federal agents from 1939-45, see Traffic in Opium (1939), p. 78; ibid. (1940), p. 72; ibid. (1941), p. 37; ibid. (1942), p. 49; ibid. (1943), p. 42; ibid. (1944), p. 34; ibid. (1945), p. 23. For figures on the amounts seized and the number of federal marihuana arrests during the period 1946-51, see Traffic in Opium (1946), pp. 23, 27; ibid. (1947), pp. 28, 29; ibid. (1948), pp. 23, 28; ibid. (1949), pp. 22, 26; ibid. (1950), pp. 29, 33; ibid. (1951), pp. 25, 29.
For a full and persuasive discussion of the flaws in these drug statistics from 1937 until the mid-1940s due to a confusion over what parts of the marihuana plant were to be weighed in determining how much of the drug had been seized, see Mandel, "Problems with Official Drug Statistics," Stanford Law Review, 21 (1969), 998-99.
36.    Statement of Judge Alex N. MacLeod, Passaic County, N.J. File: 1245 Legis-lation.,
37. U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Narcotics, Hearings on H.R. 3490, 82d Cong., 1st sess., 1951, p. 147 (hereafter cited as Boggs Act Hearings).
38.    Ibid., pp. 147-48. Dr. Isbell's paper stated: "Any definition [of addiction] which makes (physical) dependence an essential feature will also not include intoxications with such substances as cocaine, marijuana, and amphetamine, because (physical) dependence on these'substances is no more marked than is dependence on tobacco and coffee, and yet, in some ways, intoxication with cocaine or marijuana is more harmful than is ad-diction to morphine. Furthermore, definitions which exclude cocaine and marijuana from the list of addicting drugs would cause endless confusion because, in common parlance and legally, both drugs are regarded as addicting."
39.    Kefauver Committee Hearings, pt. 14, p. 119.
40. Boggs Act Hearings, p. 206.
41. Kefauver Committee Hearings, pt. 14, pp. 133, 449; Boggs Act Hearings, pp. 62, 105.
42.    97 Congressional Record (1951), pp. 8197-98.
The linkage between marihuana and heroin was also supported by some of the testimony by addicts themselves. Of twenty-seven addicts interviewed in part 14 of the Kefauver Committee Hearings, fifteen testified that they had started their drug use with marihuana. The association is even stronger because most of the twelve who had not used marihuana were medically based addicts because of illness or were older addicts who had begun using drugs before marihuana was readily available. See Kefauver Com-mittee Hearings, pt. 14, pp. 11, 29, 54, 62, 71, 84, 93, 99, 104, 108, 153, 157, 160, 162, 167, 171, 182, 189, 194, 203, 211, 216, 220, 367, 380, 432, 436. Five of the addict witnesses indicated that marihuana did in fact lead to the use of the harder drugs, but only one gave definite reasons why he thought this transition inevitably took place. One male addict, after stating that the average age of marihuana smokers was fourteen or fifteen, stated: "You would very seldom find a person smoking marihuana who does just that, he keeps on, and he gets to the point where he does not have the same drive or feeling that he first had, and it is like a stepping stone, he graduates to heroin." Kefauver Committee Hearings, pt. 14, pp. 199-200.
Of course the testimony is consistent with other theses as well. In particular, the addict histories clearly indicate that curiosity and peer-group pressure were the primary factors in the initiation of opiate use (ibid., pp. 12, 32, 94, 108, 254). Moreover, Con-gressman Boggs introduced some mystery into his statements during the House debates by stating: "A study in February of 1950 of 602 case reports indicates that 53 percent ... started their addiction to drugs by reason of association with other addicts, and 7 percent of them started on marihuana" (97 Congressional Record [1951], p. 8197). This study is cited on the same page with Congressman Boggs' statement that our young people usually start on the road to drug addiction by smoking marihuana.
43.    Kefauver Committee Hearings, pt. 14, p. 440.
44. J. Mandel, "Who Says Marihuana Use Leads to Heroin Addiction?" Journal of Secondary Education, 43 (1968), 211-17.
45.    Traffic in Opium (1950), p. 6. Anslinger to Senator William Knowland, 4 June 1951. File: Penalties no. 1.
46.    In 1951 seven states (Alabama, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia) and Alaska, passed penalty provisions similar to those in the Boggs Act (Traffic in Opium [1951], p. 8). In addition, nine other states (Con-necticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin) amended their drug laws to provide more severe penalties, but not the same as in the Boggs Act (ibid. [1951], pp. 8-9). In 1952 four more states (Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, and Virginia) enacted the Boggs penalties (ibid.[1952] , p. 6). Six more states (Delaware, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming) followed suit in 1953 (ibid. [1953], p. 9).
The Ohio law, approved 16 June 1955, provided for imprisonment of anyone found guilty of illegally selling narcotic drugs for a period of not less than twenty not more than forty years (ibid. [1955], p. 7). The Louisiana measure, adopted the following year, provided severe prison sentences without parole, probation, or suspension for the illegal sale, possession or administration of a narcotic drug. Sentences ranged from a five-year minimum to a ninety-nine-year maximum (ibid. [1956], p. 28).
47. See generally R. King, The Drug Hang-Up: America's Fifty-Year Folly (New York: Norton, 1972).
48.    U.S., Congress, Joint Resolution, 84th Cong., 1st sess., 18 Mar. 1955.
49. U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Im-provements in the Federal Criminal Code, Hearings on Illicit Narcotics Traffic, 84th Cong., 1st sess., 1955, p. 57 (hereafter cited as Daniel Committee Hearings); see H. J. Anslinger and W. C. Oursler, The Murderers (New York: Farrar, 1961).
50.    Orrin S. Good to Anslinger, 31 July 1954. File: Penalties no. 1.
51.    G. W. Cunningham to M. Akeson, 7 Apr. 1953. Anslinger to George E. Dilley, 13 Sept. 1954. File: Penalties no. 1.
52. Congressman Boggs, father of the Boggs Act and Chairman of the Subcom-mittee on Narcotics of the House Ways and Means Committee, stated that "[e] ffective steps to eliminate the unlawful drug traffic requires ... the imposition of severe punish-ment by the courts" (102 Congressional Record [1956], p. 10689). The subcommittee, which had set out to determine the effect of the Boggs Act on narcotics traffic, began its recommendations with calls for further increases in the penalties for narcotics law violations. Both the House Ways and Means Committee report and the subcommittee report are filled with statements to the effect that harsher penalties are the most effective weapons in the war against illicit narcotics. The Ways and Means Committee conclusion was succinct: "Experience with the Boggs law ... has clearly demonstrated the efficacy of severe punishment in reducing the illicit commerce in drugs" (U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News [19561, pp. 3291, 3309, 3305, 3281-303, 3286). Finally,
Senator Daniel, speaking for the Senate subcommittee investigating the drug situation in the United States, found "it absolutely necessary for the Congress of the United States to strengthen the hands of our law enforcement officers and provide higher penalties if we are to stop the narcotics traffic in this country" (102 Congressional Record [1956], p. 9014). His subcommittee also recommended the kind of across-the-board increases in penalties that the act eventually contained.
53.    U.S. Code Cong. and Ad. News (1956), p. 3305.
54.    Ch. 629, 70 Stat. 570 (codified at 26 U.S.C. § 7607 [1964] ); ch. 629, 70 Stat. 573 (codified at 18 U.S.C. § 1404 [19641); ch. 629, 70 Stat. 574 (codified at 18 U.S.0 § 1406 [19641); ch. 629, 70 Stat. 574 (codified at 18 U.S.C. § 1407 [1964] ); ch 629, 70 Stat. 575 (codified at 18 U.S.C. § § 1182 [a] [5], [23] [19641).
55. The House Subcommittee on Narcotics, which produced what became the essentials of the Narcotic Control Act of 1956, revealed its knowledge of the distinction between marihuana and narcotics solely by a footnote to the major heading "Narcotics" which stated in fine print that the term narcotics included marihuana (see U.S. Code Cong. and Ad. News [19561, p. 3294).
56.    Daniel Committee Hearings, pp. 58-59.
57.    102 Congressional Record (1956), p. 9015.
58.    In holding unconstitutional the presumption of knowledge that marihuana was smuggled, the Supreme Court in Leary v. United States, 395 U.S. 6 (1969), relied on the change in use patterns from 1959 to 1967. We think the presumption was unconsti-tutional when passed in 1956, both as to importation and knowledge.
59.    Daniel Committee Hearings, p. 18.
60. The decline in the number of FBN arrests and seizures is directly related to the it'icrease in local and state enforcement personnel. This thesis is supported by data from California where statewide arrests soared while federal arrests remained stable (Bureau of Criminal Statistics, California Department of Justice, Crime in California [19561). See also A. Lindesmith, The Addict and the Law (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1965), p. 238. One commentator has suggested that except for the years immedi-ately after the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act, when the bureau wanted to concentrate on its rrewly acquired enforcement field, the FBN arrest data show clearly its emphasis on the opiates and cocaine (Mandel, "Problems with Official Drug Statistics," Stanford Lau) Review, 21 [19691, 1019-20).
61.    Cf. House, Hearings on H.R. 6385, pp. 13-14 (testimony of Clinton Hester, office of the general counsel of the Treasury Department) with State v. Bonoa, 172 La. 955, 136 So. 15 (1931). It should be asked whether the information at congressional disposal changed so drastically between 1937 and 1956 as to justify the statutory pre-sumption enacted at that time (21 U.S.C. § 176[a] [19641), providing that possession of marihuana was presumptive evidence of knowing concealment of illegally imported marihuana.
62.    Written materials inserted into the record of the Senate hearings included the testimony of an experienced federal Customs official that high quality marihuana was being grown near the Texas cities of Laredo and Brownsville (Daniel Committee Hearings, pp. 3488-89). In addition, the attorney general of Ohio noted that marihuana "may grow unnoticed along roadsides and vacant lots in many parts of the country" ( ibid., p. 4814). Also, a bulletin issued by the Philadelphia Police Academy recited that "[p] lenty of marijuana is found growing in this city" (ibid., p. 599).
63. Blum, "Mind Altering Drugs and Dangerous Behavior," in the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Task Force Report: Narcotics and Drug Abuse (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1967), pp. 21, 24; Bouquet, "Canna-bis," U.N. Bulletin on Narcotics, 3 (Jan. 1951), 22, 32-33.
64.    Cf. Chein, "The Status of Sociological and Social Psychological Knowledge
Concerning Narcotics," in Narcotic Drug Addiction Problems, ed. R. Livingston (Washing-ton, D.C.: GPO, 1963), p. 155. Mr. Chein reports a shift in drug use from 1930-60 from old to young and a continued increase in the percentage of drug users who are black or Spanish-speaking.