Editor’s Note: This week, Bob Beach follows up on an earlier post about the Harry J. Anslinger papers. Today, Bob shares some of his findings from the infamous “gore file.”
In roughly four years, between 1933 to 1937, Harry Anslinger led a policy push to marginalize and strictly regulate the use of marijuana in the United States. His victory, the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, was the culmination of bureaucratic maneuvering, public lobbying, and the use of extreme, sensationalist propaganda. These facts are not in doubt.
But what of propaganda? What is it? Where does it come from? There is no doubt that propaganda can be completely fabricated. But the most effective propaganda is rooted in some form of truth: cultural anxieties, social tensions, economic hardship. Indeed, all three of these were factors during the 1930s and it seemed like each of these elements found their way into the moral panic that was reefer madness.