Hobson had been completely reinvigorated by the anti-marijuana campaign.  And though Harry Anslinger despised the man (a dilettante, said Anslinger, who lived off his wealthy female financial backers)^[29] Hobson could still ignite middle America like a prairie fire. Dispatches from the western States to the New York Times headlined: “STATE FINDS MANY CHILDREN ARE ADDICTED TO WEED,” “POISONOUS WEED SOLD FREELY IN POOL HALLS AND BEER GARDENS,” “USE OF MARIJUANA SPREADING IN WEST,” “CHILDREN SAID TO BUY IT.”^[30] 

Now a very real sense of fear welled up in the heartland.  Young people were involved.  Harry Anslinger found himself in demand as a speaker before women’s clubs and parent-teacher associations all over the country, and he painted a horrifying picture. “Take all of the good in Dr. Jekyll and the worst in Mr. Hyde—the result is opium.  Marihuana may be considered more harmful...  It is Mr. Hyde alone.”^[31]  Within a couple of years, his campaign overwhelmed the State governments and by 1936 most of them had signed off on the uniform narcotics law, which now included cannabis. The argument was compelling.  As one Montana lawmaker put it: “When some beet field peon takes a few puffs of this stuff, he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico so he starts out to execute all his political enemies.”^[32]

Anslinger’s campaign may have been just a tool in the beginning, but fueled with this kind of racial tinder, it quickly got out of hand. The Treasury Department was barraged with cries for help from civic leaders: “I wish I could show you what a small marijuana cigarette can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents... ”^[33]  “...a direct by-product of unrestricted Mexican immigration...” “Mexican peddlers have been caught distributing sample marijuana cigarettes to school children.”^[34]  Anslinger’s boss, Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, was starting to get pressure from police, mayors, and Western governors to do something about the dreaded plant on a national scale. All of a sudden Anslinger, a victim of his own success, was given the unenviable assignment of controlling the use of an