From Killer Weed to Popular Medicine: The Evolution of American Drug Control Policy, 1937–2000

Journal of Policy History

Volumn 19, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 147-179

  Ferraiolo, Kathleen ^a  

^a JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 44949150710     PISSN: 08980306     EISSN: 15284190     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jph.2007.0009     Document Type: Article

References (138)

1. According to exit polls, 275,373 voters supported I-148, the medical marijuana measure, for a margin of victory of 62 percent to 38 percent. Meanwhile, 265,473 individuals, or 59 percent of all voters, voted to reelect George W. Bush. See cnn.com/election for more details, as well as Walter Kim, “What Color Is Montana?” New York Times Magazine, 2 January 2005, 12.
2. Marijuana has most often been proposed to be useful as a medicine for diseases and conditions including cancer chemotherapy, AIDS wasting syndrome, glaucoma, epilepsy, and multiple sclerosis. See Lester Grinspoon, M.D. and James B. Bakalar, Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine (New Haven, 1993).
3. Elisabeth Gerber, Arthur Lupia, Mathew D. McCubbins, and D. Roderick Kiewet, Stealing the Initiative: How State Government Responds to Direct Democracy (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: 2001).
4. Grinspoon and Bakalar, Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine.
5. One historian of drug policy has called this policy shift one of history's great about-faces. David Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, Mass. 2001).
6. Joseph F. Spillane, “The Road to the Harrison Narcotics Act: Drugs and Their Control, 1875-1918,” in Jonathan Erlen and Joseph F. Spillane, eds. Federal Drug Control: The Evolution of Policy and Practice (New York, 2004), 1-24: 4-5.
7. See Jill Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: A History of America's Romance with Illegal Drugs (New York, 1996)
8. Erlen and Spillane, eds. Federal Drug Control;
9. Sarah W. Tracy and Caroline Jean Acker, eds. Altering American Consciousness: The History of Alcohol and Drug Use in the United States, 1800-2000 (Amherst, 2004).
10. Spillane, “The Road to the Harrison Narcotics Act,” 1-24: 18.
11. The Road to the Harrison Narcotics Act
12. See John C. McWilliams, The Protectors: Harry J. Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1930-1962 (Newark, Del. 1992).
13. Rebecca Carroll, “Under the Influence: Harry Anslinger's Role in Shaping America's Drug Policy,” in Erlen and Spillane, eds. Federal Drug Control, 61–99.
14. Joseph F. Spillane, “Federal Policy in the Post-Anslinger Era: A Guide to Sources, 1962-2001,” in Erlen and Spillane, eds. Federal Drug Control, 209–20: 209.
15. For a classic overview of American drug control policy in the twentieth century, see David F. Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (New Haven, 1973)
16. for overviews of marijuana policy, see Jerome L. Himmelstein, The Strange Career of Marihuana (Westport, Conn. 1983), and
17. Richard J. Bonnie and Charles H. Whitebread II, The Marihuana Conviction: A History of Marihuana Prohibition in the United States (Charlottesville, 1974).
18. Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago, 1993).
19. Agendas and Instability in American Politics E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People (New York, 1960)
20. Roger W. Cobb and Charles D. Elder, Participation in American Politics: The Dynamics of Agenda- Building (Baltimore, 1983).
21. Together and separately, Gerber, Bowler, Donovan, and Tolbert have produced a great deal of scholarship in this area. See, for example, Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan, Demanding Choices: Opinion, Voting, and Direct Democracy (Ann Arbor, 1998)
22. Shaun Bowler, Todd Donovan, and Caroline J. Tolbert, eds. Citizens as Legislators: Direct Democracy in the United States (Columbus, 1998)
23. Richard Briffault, “Distrust of Democracy,” Texas Law Review 63 (1985): 1347–75;
24. Richard J. Ellis, Democratic Delusions: The Initiative Process in America (Lawrence, Kans. 2002)
25. Barbara S. Gamble, “Putting Civil Rights to a Popular Vote, American Journal of Political Science 4, no. 1 (1997): 245-69;
26. Elisabeth R. Gerber, The Populist Paradox: Interest Group Influence and the Promise of Direct Legislation (Princeton, 1999)
27. Elisabeth R. Gerber, Zoltan L. Hajnal, and Hugh Louch, “Minorities and Direct Legislation: Evidence from California Ballot Proposition Elections, Journal of Politics 64 (2002): 164–77;
28. Thomas E. Cronin, Direct Democracy: The Politics of Initiative, Referendum, and Recall (Cambridge, Mass. 1989)
29. John Haskell, Direct Democracy or Representative Government? Dispelling the Populist Myth (Boulder, 2001)
30. Arthur Lupia, “Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections, American Political Science Review 88 (1994): 63-76;
31. Elisabeth R. Gerber and Arthur Lupia, “Voter Competence in Direct Legislation Elections, in Stephen L. Elkin and Karol Edward Soltan, eds. Citizen Competence and Democratic Institutions (University Park, Pa. 1999): 147-60.
32. Gerber, Lupia, McCubbins, and Kiewet, Stealing the Initiative; Elisabeth Gerber, “Legislative Response to the Threat of Popular Initiatives, American Journal of Political Science 40 (1996): 99–128;
33. Edward L. Lascher Jr. Michael G. Hagen, and Steven A. Rochlin, “Gun Behind the Door? Ballot Initiatives, State Policies, and Public Opinion, Journal of Politics 58 (1996): 760-75;
34. John G. Matsusaka, “Fiscal Effects of the Voter Initiative: Evidence from the Last Thirty Years, Journal of Political Economy 103 (1995): 587-623.
35. John C. McWilliams, “Through the Past Darkly: The Politics and Policies of America's Drug War, Journal of Policy History, Special Issue on Drug Control Policy: Essays in Historical and Comparative Perspective 3, no. 1 (1991): 356-92;
36. H. Wayne Morgan, Drugs in America: A Social Sistory, 1800-1980 (Syracuse, 1981)
37. Courtwright, Forces of Habit.
38. Morgan, Drugs in America;
39. Courtwright, Forces of Habit;
40. William B. McAllister, “Habitual Problems: The United States and International Drug Control,” in Erlen and Spillane, eds. Federal Drug Control, 175–207.
41. Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 417.
42. Erler and Spillane, eds. Federal Drug Control.
43. Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams.
44. States' rights advocates critical of the Harrison Act, in particular the American Medical Association, were concerned about the federal government's involvement in seeming to regulate the practice of medicine, which had traditionally been a state function. See McWilliams, The Protectors. In his testimony in favor of the Marihuana Tax Act before the House Ways and Means Committee, Clinton M. Hester, assistant general counsel for the Treasury Department, acknowledged that “although the #x0024;100 transfer tax in this bill is intended to be prohibitive, as is the #x0024;200 transfer tax in the National Firearms Act, it is submitted that it is constitutional as a revenue measure.”
45. U.S. House, Committee on Ways and Means, Taxation of Marihuana: Hearings Before the Committee on Ways and Means, 75th Cong. 1st sess. Washington, D.C. 1937, 9. The Harrison Act set several important precedents in American drug policy, including a changed view of addiction from a disease to a vice and a crime and a pattern of drug law enforcement that emphasized interpretation and enforcement of drug legislation. Marijuana was not included in the Harrison Act due in part to opposition from the pharmaceutical industry.
46. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction;
47. Kenneth J. Meier, The Politics of Sin: Drugs, Alcohol, and Public Policy (Armonk, N.Y. 1994).
48. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction, 124;
49. Meier, The Politics of Sin, 63.
50. During congressional testimony, House Ways and Means Committee members asked questions about the growth and production, properties, and effects of marijuana that suggested a lack of familiarity with the drug. U.S. House, Committee on Ways and Means. Taxation of Marihuana;
51. McWilliams, The Protectors;
52. Elaine B. Sharp, The Dilemma of Drug Policy in the United States (New York, 1994)
53. Grinspoon and Bakalar, Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine. The link between marijuana use and insanity, as well as mental illness generally, was strong in Britain and its colony India in the late nineteenth century; for a good account
54. see James H. Mills, Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition: 1800-1928 (Oxford, 2003).
55. Qtd. in McWilliams, The Protectors, 54. The quotation is from Anslinger's private papers on the Victor Licata case, dated 17 October 1933, which are held by the Special Collections Department of Pattee Library at The Pennsylvania State University.
56. U.S. House, Committee on Ways and Means, Taxation of Marihuana, 23.
57. Committee on Ways and Means, Taxation of Marihuana 19.
58. Committee on Ways and Means, Taxation of Marihuana;
59. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction.
60. Sharp, The Dilemma of Drug Policy in the United States, 22.
61. Meier, The Politics of Sin, 37.
62. “When President Eisenhower signed the Narcotic Control Act on July 18, 1956,” one historian notes, “he put into place the heaviest penalties for U.S. narcotics law violations to that point.”
63. Rebecca Carroll, “The Narcotic Control Act Triggers the Great Nondebate: Treatment Loses to Punishment,” in Erlen and Spillane, eds. Federal Drug Control, 101–44: 111.
64. Eva Bertram, Morris Blachman, Kenneth Sharpe, and Peter Andreas, Drug War Politics: The Price of Denial (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996).
65. Grinspoon and Bakalar, Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine.
66. Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine 11.
67. See also Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction, 204;
68. McWilliams, The Protectors.
69. Baumgartner and Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics.
70. Sharp, The Dilemma of Drug Policy in the United States, 135.
71. Nancy D. Campbell, Using Women: Gender, Drug Policy, and Social Justice (New York: Routledge, 2000)
72. Michelle McClellan, “'Lady Tipplers': Gendering the Modern Alcoholism Paradigm, 1933-1960,” in Tracy and Acker, eds. Altering American Consciousness, 267–97;
73. Lori E. Rotskoff, “Sober Husbands and Supportive Wives: Marital Dramas of Alcoholism in Post-World War II America,” in Tracy and Acker, eds. Altering American Consciousness, 298–326.
74. Caroline Jean Acker, “Portrait of an Addicted Family: Dynamics of Opiate Addiction in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Tracy and Acker, eds. Altering American Consciousness, 165-81: 167.
75. Spillane, “The Road to the Harrison Narcotics Act,” 9.
76. Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams.
77. Morgan, Drugs in America, 138;
78. Mills, Cannabis Britannica.
79. Meier, The Politics of Sin, 33.
80. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction, 222.
81. Meier, The Politics of Sin, 34;
82. see also Himmelstein, The Strange Career of Marihuana.
83. The newspapers and magazines of William Randolph Hearst's media empire, as well as social reform groups such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union, had been engaged in a crusade against narcotics for years before the passage of the MTA. Hearst developed a personal relationship with Anslinger, and he knew that sensational stories about the dangers of marijuana use among Mexicans, African Americans, and other politically unpopular groups would sell newspapers. See Spillane, “Building a Drug Control Regime,” in Erlen and Spillane, eds. Federal Drug Control.
84. See also Harry J. Anslinger and Courtney Riley Cooper, “Marihuana: Assassin of Youth,” American Magazine, July 1938, 18–19, 150-53;
85. Wayne Gard, “Youth Gone Loco,” Christian Century, June 1938, 812–13.
86. See, for example, Himmelstein, The Strange Career of Marihuana; Bertram et al. Drug War Politics;
87. Carroll, “The Narcotic Control Act Triggers the Great Nondebate.”
88. Musto, The American Disease, 291.
89. Sharp, The Dilemma of Drug Policy in the United States, 136.
90. The Dilemma of Drug Policy in the United States
91. Himmelstein, The Strange Career of Marihuana;
92. Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams.
93. Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams;
94. Larry Sloman, Reefer Madness: A History of Marijuana in America (Indianapolis, 1979).
95. Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 238.
96. Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams;
97. Himmelstein, The Strange Career of Marijuana.
98. The Strange Career of Marijuana For example, in a statement on the Senate floor in 1970, Senator Edward Kennedy articulated the broader view of drug abuse that emerged during the 1960s and 1970s in which the law enforcement approach was seen as, by itself, incapable of solving America's drug problem. “Drug abuse is not only a law enforcement problem, or only a medical problem,” Kennedy argued, “it is a legal, moral, medical, psychological, social and cultural phenomenon.”
99. U.S. Senate, Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts speaking during the testimony on Controlled Dangerous Substances Act of 1969, 91st Cong. 2d sess. Congressional Record (19 January 1970-27 January 1970), vol. 116, pt. 1.
100. U.S. House, Subcommittee on Public Health and Welfare of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Drug Abuse Control Amendments–1970, 109.
101. Drug Abuse Control Amendments–1970 116.
102. Bertram et al. Drug War Politics, 88–89;
103. see also Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, chap. 14.
104. Qtd. in Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure (Boston, 1996), 95;
105. Sharp, The Dilemma of Drug Policy in the United States.
106. Meier, The Politics of Sin. The decriminalization statutes retained civil fines for minor marijuana offenses but eliminated arrest and jail, substituting a citation similar to a traffic ticket.
107. Patrick McCartney, “Green Fire,” manuscript, April 2003.
108. Bertram et al. Drug War Politics, 110.
109. Campbell, Using Women.
110. Musto cites a September 1989 New York Times poll in which the drug issue surpassed all other causes for concern in the United States. Musto, The American Disease, 281.
111. Qtd. in Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, 291.
112. Sharp, The Dilemma of Drug Policy in the United States, chap. 4.
113. The Dilemma of Drug Policy in the United States 56.
114. Alan W. Bock, Waiting to Inhale: The Politics of Medical Marijuanas (Santa Ana, Calif. 2000). Twenty-four states permit the use of the ballot initiative.
115. Eight patients are still receiving medical marijuana through the IND program. “U.S. Rescinds Approval of Marijuana as Therapy,” New York Times, 11 March 1992, A21;
116. Karen Auge, “Medicinal Pot: A Heated Debate; Voters to Weigh Legalizing Patients' Medical Use,” Denver Post, 16 July 2000, A1.
117. Consistent with their attempts to frame the debate over medical marijuana in terms of medicine and public health, many medical marijuana advocates argue that the DEA should not be responsible for making decisions about medical marijuana policy. However, supporters were also disenchanted with the Food and Drug Administration's drug approval process, which they believe disadvantages “natural” remedies like marijuana that are not developed by profit-seeking drug companies. This dissatisfaction with the scheduling of marijuana and the way in which new drugs, particularly “natural, plant-based medicines,” are approved may also help explain the nontraditional policymaking route advocates pursued. See Bill Zimmerman, Rick Bayer, and Nancy Crumpacker, Is Marijuana the Right Medicine for You? A Factual Guide to Medical Uses of Marijuana (New Canaan, Conn. 1998).
118. Joseph B. Treaster, “The 1992 Campaign; Candidates' Records; Four Years of Bush's Drug War: New Funds but an Old Strategy,” New York Times, 28 July 1992, A1.
119. Bertram et al. Drug War Politics, 115.
120. Greg Lucas, “Bills on Pot, Needles Die in Flurry of Vetoes; Wilson Acts at Last Minute on Controversial Measure,” San Francisco Chronicle, 1 October 1994, A1; “Votes– Roll Call, SB 1364.” [Available online.] Available from http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/. Accessed 6 August 2003.
121. San Francisco Chronicle Letter from Senator John Vasconcellos to Governor Pete Wilson, 15 September 1995. I obtained the latter document as well as other such documents cited here either from interview subjects or from the California and Maine State Archives; Governor Pete Wilson, Veto Message, 15 October 1995.
122. Written notes, California Narcotic Officers' Association, “Use of Marijuana as a “Medicine” 17 June 1996;
123. Thomas J. Gorman, “Marijuana is NOT a medicine” (Sacramento: California Narcotic Officers' Association, 1996).
124. Personal interview by author, 29 January 2003, San Francisco, tape recording; personal interview by author, 20 May 2003, Augusta, Maine, tape recording; CMA On- Call: The California Medical Association's Information-On-Demand Service, Document #1315, The Compassionate Use Act of 1996, The Medical Marijuana Initiative, CMA Legal Counsel, January 2003.
125. The Compassionate Use Act of 1996, The Medical Marijuana Initiative, CMA Legal Counsel Joshua L. Weinstein, “Medical Marijuana Question Likely to Go to Maine Voters,” Portland Press Herald, 24 November 1998, 3B.
126. Californians for Compassionate Use, “David Binder Poll Results, California Medical Marijuana Initiative.” This document was obtained from a California interview subject. Respondents were more likely to support medical marijuana when asked if they would be in favor of “a ballot proposition that would end the prohibition on possession of marijuana for personal medical use where the medical use has been recommended by a licensed physician or other certified medical provider.” When given more specific information about the content of the initiative, including a provision that would allow patients to cultivate their own marijuana, support dropped to 59 percent. These results foreshadow the proponents' campaign strategy, which emphasized the general idea of medical marijuana rather than the particular, more controversial features of the ballot initiative. The poll had a sample size of 750 and a margin of error of +/- 3.6 percent; interviews were conducted from 2 March to 8 March 1995.
127. See also Richard Schmitz and Chuck Thomas, with Robert Kampia, eds. “State-by-State Medical Marijuana Laws: How to Remove the Threat of Arrest,” [Available online.] Marijuana Policy Project, available from http://www.mpp.org/statelaw/index2.html. Accessed 1 June 2002.
128. Californians for Medical Rights Press Release, “Poll Illuminates Reasons Voters Support Prop. 215,” 28 October 1996. As stated above, many of the campaign materials I cite were obtained either directly from proponents and opponents I interviewed or from California freelance journalist Patrick McCartney, who is writing a book about Proposition 215 and generously agreed to share many of his files with me.
129. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People.
130. Jim Shultz, The Initiative Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from California's Ballot Wars (San Francisco, 1996).
131. Sharp, The Dilemma of Drug Policy in the United States, 135.
132. Memo from Dale Gieringer, coordinator, California NORML, to Californians for Medical Rights, Re: “Our Message and How to Win the Campaign,” 1 May 1996.
133. Jim Baumohl, “Maintaining Orthodoxy: The Depression-Era Struggle over Morphine Maintenance in California,” in Tracy and Acker, eds. Altering American Consciousness: 225–66, 251.
134. Of many examples, see Ellis, Democratic Delusions;
135. Haskell, Direct Democracy or Representative Government? David S. Broder, Democracy Derailed: Initiative Campaigns and the Power of Money (New York, 2000).
136. Fairbank, Mauslin, & Associates, Maine Statewide Poll, 17 June 1997.
137. “Interdiction and Incarceration Still Top Remedies,” The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 21 March 2001, available from http://peoplepress. org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=16. Accessed 3 October 2005.
138. Finkel advances a similar argument in a study of campaign effects; see Steven E. Finkel, “Reexamining the Minimal Effects Model in Recent Presidential Elections,” Journal of Politics 55, no. 1 (1993): 1-21.