Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

Harry Anslinger was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania in 1892. His first job was with the Pennsylvania Railroad, and he later became one of its investigators. In the late 1920s, he became an agent in the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Prohibition—and when that agency transitioned from alcohol prohibition to narcotics, he was appointed the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He held this post from 1930 until 1962 and was the only man ever to run a US security agency longer than J. Edgar Hoover. Anslinger worked to add marijuana to the list of banned drugs by creating what Hari refers to as “race panic,” warning Americans that the drug was dangerous and addictive and that mainly Mexican immigrants and African Americans used it.

Anslinger’s earliest targets were doctors who legally prescribed opiates to patients in the early 1930s. Later, he went after African American jazz musicians and was particularly obsessed with arresting the vocalist Billie Holliday, who had become famous for her provocative anti-lynching song Strange Fruit. Anslinger was not only the most important figure in America’s century-long war on drugs but also responsible for other nations across the globe adopting the same hardline stance and policies on drugs.