The great villain in the story [marijuana] legalizers tell about prohibition is Harry Anslinger. Anslinger served as the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics — the predecessor of the modern Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) — from 1930 to 1962. Anslinger once wrote that:
“Addicts may often develop delirious rage during which they are temporarily and violently insane … this insanity may take the form of a desire for self-destruction or a persecution complex to be satisfied only by the commission of some heinous crime.” [Marijuana, Assassin of Youth, The American Magazine, July 1937, citation added.]
The marijuana lobby views Anslinger as a racist anticannabis fanatic who exaggerated the drug’s dangers to convince Congress to prohibit it.
They’re partly right.
Anslinger was openly racist, and marijuana’s association with immigrants from Mexico undoubtedly fueled the drive for prohibition.
Yet Mexico itself criminalized marijuana seventeen years before the United States, in 1920, after Mexican lawmakers became convinced the drug caused mental illness and violence. Were those lawmakers motivated by anti-Hispanic prejudice too? Advocates for legalization have been too busy mocking Anslinger to wonder if he might be right.
Because the “delirious rage” he describes sounds a lot like psychosis. And the “heinous crime” he mentions is happening far more often than anyone understands.