The bill reached the floor of the House on a hot afternoon in August in an age before air conditioning.  The handful of lawmakers still in the chamber were understandably interested in keeping things moving, and in this case they managed to wrap up the whole debate in a little under two minutes.^[41]  Mr. Snell, the Republican from upstate New York, had a final question: “Mr. Speaker, does the American Medical Association support this bill?” 

Committee member Fred Vinson of Kentucky leaped to his feet, “Their Doctor Wentworth came down here. They support this bill 100 percent.^”  Vinson was talking about Dr. Woodward, of course, and this was a flat-out lie—all the more remarkable since Fred Vinson later went on to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But the hour was late and it was time to move on. In a vote they didn’t bother to record, on a matter of little interest, a handful of Congressmen forwarded a bill that would one day fill the nation’s prisons to the roof beams.

Three years earlier Anslinger had declared the marijuana situation to be a national crisis.  Now he declared it to be under control.  The lay organizations that were spreading the alarm about cannabis were told to shut up, and the company that created the anti-marijuana propaganda posters was put out of business.^[42]  There was no longer any need to frighten people.  The Bureau of Narcotics was on the case.  Anslinger could point to the soaring arrest rates as evidence of his success. And though there was never any credible evidence to back any of his charges, he prevailed simply because he controlled the pulpit.  In the same way that he wielded his licensing authority to keep the pharmaceutical industry in line, he used his law-and-order credentials to confer endorsements on friendly legislators like a prince dispensing boons of knighthood.  And when he was testifying before a Congressional subcommittee and needed some impressive numbers, he just made them up.  Throughout the 1930s, for