been conducted on marijuana.”  For the next five years they bent to the task, and when the final report came out just after World War II, it blew away virtually every statement Harry Anslinger and the Bureau of Narcotics had made on the subject.  To begin with, they found that marijuana smoking did not lead to addiction in the medical sense of the term, nor was it a gateway to harder drugs. There was no evidence whatsoever that it was widespread in school yards or being used by children. And contrary to the belief that marijuana smokers were aggressive and belligerent, the investigators found the opposite.  When one of the committee members visited a Harlem smoking den, he said the people seemed relaxed and “free from the anxieties and cares of the realities of life.”  And finally, they found no significant relationship between marijuana and juvenile delinquency, and interviews with the police debased the idea that major crimes were inspired by smoking the weed. In summary, “the publicity concerning the catastrophic effects of marijuana in New York City is unfounded.”^[46]

The clinical section of the report was equally revealing. Seventy-seven volunteer prisoners at Riker’s Island were subjected to a series of experiments that showed no alterations in personality or behavior and not a speck of evidence to back Anslinger’s claims that marijuana led to insanity or violence.

But anyone who imagined that this stunning indictment might alter the nation’s drug policy had seriously underestimated Harry Anslinger.  When details of the report began to leak out, Anslinger went after the authors like a pit bull. A full three years before the report was released, he launched a series of preemptive strikes openly attacking members of the committee as “dangerous” and “strange” people, questioning everything but their parentage.^[47]  His arguments contained no scientific data, no new evidence, just dark accusations and name calling, but that was good enough.  Anslinger understood one thing these other fellows didn’t.  If the issue is complex, you don’t have to win the debate, you just have to raise enough dust. His