Cannabis Fun Club in Russia

Mr. Harold Anslinger, head of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FNA), once said in an interview: “The worst of all then [in the 1930s and 1940s] were the jazz players. I won’t say how many of them used marijuana, but definitely more than half ".

When an ambitious and even vain person thinks that he sees before him a relatively simple and reliable way to gain influence and power, he rushes into battle and it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to stop him.

Having seen a goal in front of him, such a person is no longer tormented by any doubts; he is not too interested in how correct his actions and judgments are, and how much they may contradict universal human concepts of what is good and what is bad.

Mr. Anslinger, by all appearances, was just such a vain man who had set himself a goal. In the previous article we already wrote about his main arguments in the fight against the "tall fragrant plant" and its derivatives: marijuana is the most powerful stimulant of aggression of all known drugs, and if it is not, and even on the contrary relaxes, then all the more reason to fight it, because it will certainly become a weapon in the hands of communists.

In the end, invested with power, having at his disposal a mass of agents to combat the most important evil, Harold Anslinger, apparently, was planning to do something truly large-scale.

Journalists later naturally wondered whether Anslinger was as ruthless about other drugs, such as cocaine. Anslinger's associates claim that he was.

Be that as it may, the large-scale operation that Harry Anslinger had planned was to rid America of jazz musicians.

"We will organize a grand operation!"  
 

Since the late 1930s, Anslinger had been diligently gathering dirt on jazz musicians who "brazenly violated the law" by using "grass." Among these "enemies" were such names as Louis Armstrong (who went to prison for marijuana in 1930), Count Basie, Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Cab Calloway - and these were just a few of the names in the thick files marked "dossier" that Anslinger had been conjuring, anticipating, and lusting over for a decade and a half.

The peak of his activity was between 1943 and 1948, that is, during the war and the first post-war period. As is clear from the archives, it was during this time that Anslinger planned to organize a total "jazz pogrom."

In late October 1947, Anslinger sent a letter to all his agents that read as follows:

"Please prepare all the cases concerning musicians who violate the laws against marijuana. One day we will arrest them all at once. I will inform you of the date later."

But it wasn't all that simple. Anslinger was inundated with reports from Federal Narcotics agents reporting problems or even the impossibility of carrying out this order. In Hollywood in particular, according to a letter from one such agent, the jazz musicians were so united that it was impossible to get informants near them.

Over the next year and a half, Anslinger received many such letters from his subordinates, but, like any maniac, he did not want to see the obvious.

"Dear Agent 00X," he wrote to his men, "I am glad you are going to great lengths to carry out my instructions of October 24, 1947. But we will definitely make mass arrests of musicians violating the marijuana law all over the country and on one day. Don't worry, I will give you the date."

Yes, some jazz and swing musicians were arrested in the late 1940s, but there were no arrests "all at once and in one day."

For Anslinger, it all ended much more prosaically. In 1948, he was called to the Senate. And he said he needed more agents. The senators, naturally, asked, why?

"Because there are still people who break the marijuana laws," Anslinger replied.

“Who?” asked the senators.

"Musicians," Anslinger answered without blinking. And it would be fine if he had said only that, but he immediately blurted out an even greater stupidity: "I don't mean good musicians. I mean these... jazz players!"

Andrew Mallon, US Secretary of the Treasury . 

What happened here! Naturally, these words immediately hit the press. Over the next 24 hours, 76 newspapers, especially the jazz publications that were flourishing at the time, walked all over the head of the FBN, pointed their fingers, mocked, ridiculed and smashed.

But that's not all. It was well known that Anslinger owed his appointment to Andrew Mellon, the US Secretary of the Treasury between 1921 and 1931, a fairly close relative of his. Mellon died in 1937. Nevertheless, it was to this ministry that 15,000 letters were received in three days, some of which the officials there did not even think to open. The most typical one sounded like this:

"Dear Director Anslinger.

I applaud your efforts to rid America of the scourge of drug addiction. However, if you are as ill-informed in this area as you are in the music industry, you will never succeed."

There were probably many more harsh and mocking letters. Whatever the case, those ringing "brugaga!" got on the then Secretary of the Treasury's nerves. Five days later, Anslinger was standing on the carpet in the Secretary's office. He probably had to learn a lot about himself. In any case, he never again mentioned mass arrests of jazz musicians, much less all in one day.

However, the problem remained. Subsequently, the situation developed in such a way that supporters of the legalization of cannabis heard voices of support, literally, from the White House, and at the same time, all sorts of local police officials continued to insist that cannabis and, say, heroin are "birds of a feather" and advocated putting not only drug dealers, but also drug addicts in the electric chair.

The confrontation between supporters and opponents of marijuana legalization is currently ongoing almost all over the world. Somewhere one is winning, somewhere the other.

membrana.ru