facts and figures in most of these newspaper clippings had originated with the Commissioner himself. Then the doctor started asking embarrassing questions. “We are told that the use of marihuana causes crime.  But yet no one has been produced from the Bureau of Prisons to show the number of prisoners who have been found addicted to the marihuana habit.”  Woodward, in fact, had checked with the Bureau of Prisons himself, and they told him they had no such evidence.  The same with the crisis among young people: “You have been told that school children are great users of marihuana cigarettes.  No one has been summoned from the Children’s Bureau to show the nature and extent of the habit among children.”  When Woodward himself checked with the Children’s Bureau and the Office of Education, they hadn’t heard anything about it.  Finally, Woodward asked, why is there nobody here from the Public Health Service?  This question hit a nerve.  The Public Health Service experts were the last people Anslinger wanted in the room.  A few months earlier he had sent the Assistant Surgeon General a series of questions about marijuana and got this reply: “Cannabis indica does not produce dependence... it probably belongs in the same category as alcohol.”^[39]

When Woodward finished his testimony, the Congressmen ate him alive.  They accused him of obstruction, evasion, bad faith, and when he finished, they didn’t even bother to thank him.  “If you want to advise us on legislation,” said the chairman, “you ought to come here with some constructive proposals rather than criticism, rather than trying to throw obstacles in the way of something that the Federal Government is trying to do.”  But this remarkable display of hostility to the sole scientific witness had nothing to do with marijuana.  This was strictly a political kick in the teeth.  The majority in this room were New Deal Democrats and they had been slugging it out with Woodward and the AMA in one hearing after another on the issue of Social Security and health care.  This was their little way of getting even.^[40]