Rufus King, The Drug Hang-Up: America’s Fifty-Year Folly (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972)

Cites: Lindesmith and Grinspoon, and therefore incorporates their inaccuracies.

Primary published sources utilized: but without specific attribution of quotes or other statements to specific documents or page numbers.

MTA House Hearings

National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, Uniform Narcotic Drug Act (1932)

unspecified League of Nations documents, including FBN reports to the League control organs

Archival sources utilized:

none

This book is written in a freewheeling style full of questionable editorializing blended in among factual elements, and which features internal inconsistencies.

- King described the MTA incorrectly as “a full-blown prohibition against this unimportant garden weed” (p. 72) The law did not prohibit the plant, and in any case King did not grasp the distinction between what does and does not constitute “marihuana” under the law.

- King’s description “…the way the Act was slipped through Congress highlights the Commissioner’s amazing adeptness at steering federal lawmakers in whatever direction he chose…” (p. 72) did not reflect certain aspects of the published record, including how the administration’s bill took account of even minor commercial uses for the product. Moreover, a reading of the discussions within the FBN now available in Record Group 170 at the National Archives (Bonnie and Whitebread consulted some of this material for their book published in 1974) indicates significant concern among officials that they would not be able to craft a law acceptable to congress and/or pass constitutional muster with the Supreme Court.

- King drew from Lindesmith for a discussion of the Rowells, which he described as a “quixotic partnership.” (pp. 74-75)

- King seemed to be unaware at this stage of his writing of the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act and its relation to the federal position on a national marijuana control law. (He did discuss the UNDA at page 153-154 below.)

- With no attribution whatsoever, King speculated that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s success on the domestic front spurred Anslinger to utilize publicity generated by the Rowells to enhance the FBN’s position by proposing national marijuana legislation. (p. 75) Again, this claim exhibits no cognizance of the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act. (He did discuss the UNDA at page 153-154 below.)

- King’s general discussion of the MTA hearings (pp. 75-77) presented the proceedings as a superficial puppet show, with Anslinger pulling the strings on a gullible congress.

- (pp. 80-81) King does discuss Anslinger’s moves on the international stage between 1935 and 1938 but did not take into account the shift in federal policy that occurred in 1934-35 (i.e. away from delegating the responsibility for marijuana control to the states via the Uniform Narcotics Drug Act by instead promoting a national control law). Nor did King grasp the U.S. attempt to secure an international trafficking treaty in 1936 as a way to impose federal cannabis control at home. See my Drug Diplomacy, pages 120-123 for a succinct accounting. Since King apparently consulted at least some League of Nations published records and/or FBN reports to the League, sufficient information was available to him to at least partially grasp what actually transpired.

- (p. 154) King noted that optional marijuana-related provisions of the Uniform Narcotics Drug Act were brought into conformity with the MTA in 1942, which begs a key question he did not address: what were the principal differences that required this additional legislative adjustment?