A story of politics and racism

For decades, cannabis users have struggled with criminalization and stigma. However, not all of us know about Harry Aslinger, the war on drugs, and how his politics and racism are at the root of global anti-drug politics.

Harry Aslinger was a US government official who served under one of the most repressive regimes in American history, at the time of J. Edgar Hoover. Under his leadership, he founded the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), the predecessor of the Drug Enforcement Agency, to advocate harsh penalties for drug use.

Photo by: Penn State Special Collection

His legacy, pioneering America’s war on drugs, has had lasting and damaging effects that span continents. Today we learn more about his crusade against cannabis and how today’s drug laws around the world are based on his erroneous and hateful rhetoric.

Harry Aslinger’s War on Drugs was about power and politics

By the time Aslinger was appointed head of the FBN in 1930, he had already witnessed Prohibition and how shabby enforcement and its unpopularity with citizens led to its demise. Determined not to suffer the same fate for his newly minted agency, he quickly devised a strategy to ensure that his position remained as relevant as possible to posterity.

From the moment he took over the management of the office, Harry was aware of the weakness of his new position. A war on narcotics alone – cocaine and heroin, which were banned in 1914 – wasn’t enough … They were only used by a tiny minority, and you couldn’t keep an entire department alive on such tiny crumbs. He needed more.

Johann Hari in The Hunt for the Scream

First, he had to reverse his previous opinion that cannabis was not harmful. To do this, he selected 200 “pieces of evidence” relating to the link between cannabis use and violent crime and presented these fabricated topics of conversation to the media. As expected, researchers later found that Aslinger deliberately fabricated the link between cannabis and violent crime in 198 of these cases. The remaining two cases could not even be proven to be present. He also actively disguised evidence from credible scientists and medical professionals, the majority of whom vehemently contradicted his claims against cannabis.

Working with yellow journalism, tabloids, and other unscrupulous media outlets, Aslinger spread misinformation and hysteria among the American public, the government, and even his overseas counterparts, including the Canadian Charles Henry Ludovic Sharman. The FBN was also active in Turkey, Lebanon, Thailand and Europe, expanding its influence and spreading its mission worldwide.

Aslinger with Sharman. Photo by: Harris and Ewing Collection

His campaign of fear and hatred worked like a charm, culminating in the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, which made the possession, transport, and sale of cannabis illegal under federal law throughout the United States.

Marijuana is an abbreviation for insane asylum. Smoke marijuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will become a warehouse of terrible ghosts.

Harry Aslinger

Racism and drug war as a culture war

Aslinger not only solidified his position as head of the FBN and made his agency more important than it was.

He could easily win white America on his side by resorting to convenient dog whistles and portraying cannabis as a tool used by people of color to perpetuate the degeneration of “American values”.

There are a total of 100,000 marijuana smokers in the United States, and most of them are negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz and swing result from the consumption of marijuana. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relationships with negroes, entertainers, and others.

Harry Aslinger

Anslinger published the article “Marihuana, Assassin of Youth” in the same year, in which he imposed the marijuana tax. The essay is an extended talk about how a high will lead to the destruction of America. He went further on his racist and anti-cultural views and denounced in particular jazz music as a catalyst or stimulant for the spread of cannabis use. This, of course, is a thinly veiled assertion that it is really People of Color who try to lure well-behaved white youths to the dark side through their humiliated and decadent cultural offerings.

Those who first spread its use were musicians. They brought the habit north with the wave of “hot” music that challenged players with exceptional skills, especially in improvisation. Along the Mexican border and in southern port cities, it has long been known that the drug has a strangely intoxicating effect on musical sensation.

Harry Aslinger

Jazz singer Billie Holiday was just one of the prominent musicians and cultural icons targeted by Aslinger. He persecuted her incessantly, especially after releasing her song “Strange Fruit,” a severe chastisement for racism and lynching in America. Friends and colleagues often attribute her death in part to the stress she was exposed to from Aslinger’s harassment. Aslinger himself admitted this in his 1964 book The Protectors. In the “Jazz and Junk Don’t Mix” chapter, he boasted of handcuffing Holiday to her deathbed on suspicion of drug use and possession. Aslinger also kept many files on his operations and ideas, including “Marihuana and Musicians,” which detailed his plans for nationwide crackdown on jazz musicians.

Allegedly, even the popularity of the terms “marijuana” or “marijuana” was an Aslinger dog whistle. Allegedly, he moved away from calling the drug “cannabis” and instead preferred the “more exotic” and “foreign sounding” marijuana to fuel xenophobic sentiments.

For decades and to this day, People of Color have borne the brunt of the war on drugs. The United States has the highest incarcerated population of any country, and drug laws disproportionately affect black and brown communities.

The creation of a prison industrial complex undoubtedly benefited government officials like Harry Aslinger. In the decades that followed, politicians continued to use scare tactics and scapegoats to consolidate their power.

Today we know that the war on drugs is unscientific, racist and harmful to communities. Yet governments around the world continue to push anti-drug laws without realizing that their crusades were fueled and justified by the skirmish of a power-hungry racist.