indiginous weed that was growing wild alongisde gravel roads in all 48 states. But there was no turning back now.

At first, the enforcers assumed cannabis could just be wedged into the existing anti-narcotics regulations, but Treasury Department lawyers warned them not to tinker with the Harrison Act.  It was in enough trouble with the Constitution already.  What they recommended was a separate treaty altogether.  And so in the summer of 1936, Harry Anslinger followed the footsteps of Hamilton Wright to the League of Nations forum in Geneva. He made a valiant pitch for a global ban on marijuana, and got an emphatic thumbs-down from all 26 nations present. They, too, were aware that the stuff grew “like dandelions,” and that any attempt at global eradiction would be Sysyphean. When Anslinger came home empty-handed, the Department lawyers decided to take another look at the tax law.  Encouraged by the success of their latest effort, a prohibitive tax on machine guns, they proposed a tax on buyers and sellers of marijuana so onerous the trade would be completely discouraged.^[35]  Anslinger swallowed his doubts and went up the Hill to try to shove the bill through Congress, and he found such a level of willful ignorance on the subject that it turned out to be a pushover.

The transcript of the 1937 Congressional Hearings on H.R.6385, the Taxation of Marijuana, is a legendary chronicle that was destined to become a source of embarrassment to almost everybody involved. As University of Virginia law professor Charles Whitebread said, “the hearings before the House Ways and Means Committee and the floor debate on the bill are near comic examples of dereliction of legislative responsibility.”^[36]  What the professor was referring to was this sort of thing on the day of the House vote: 

Mr. SNELL:  What is the bill?

Mr. RAYBURN:  It has something to do with something that is called marihuana.  I believe it is a narcotic of some kind.