1. Spellings of marijuana varied in the period addressed in this article, but the most common form was “marihuana.” When citing articles, acts, names of committees, or quotations, I have preserved the original spelling. In my own writing, I use the current spelling, “marijuana.”

“Please note page 269 ‘marijuana smoker in Panama.’ I would like to talk with you about it before I leave.” Fiorello La Guardia to Dr. George Baehr, official communication, 6 September 1938, Fiorello H. La Guardia Collection, Microfilm #0127, La Guardia Wagner Archives (hereafter 0127 LGWA). Makes reference to Siler, J. F. et al., “Marihuana Smoking in Panama,” Military Surgeon 73 (1933): 269–80.Google Scholar

2. Kessner, Thomas, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York (New York, 1989), 336.Google Scholar

3. Gerald Gross, “Cracking Down on Dope: Modest United States Office Headquarters of Thrill-Packed Drive on Illicit Narcotics,” Washington Post, 30 August 1936, M1.

4. Brown, Wendy, “Finding the Man in the State,” Feminist Studies 18, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. This article relies on Margaret Canaday’s conception of a “social history of the state” in which the United States government can be seen in the actions of its different units, including municipal, state, and federal, as well as in its agencies and the actions of officials acting on behalf of these institutions. Canaday also emphasizes that state actors interpret and create policies according to the needs of the agencies they represent, which plays a significant role in this analysis of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. For a discussion of this model, see Canaday, Margaret, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, 2009), 4–7Google Scholar; see also Skopcol, Theda, “Why I Am an Historical Institutionalist,” Polity 28, no. 1 (Autumn 1995),Google Scholar and Brian Balogh, “The State of the State Among Historians” Social Science History 27 (Fall 2003).

6. Howard Taubman, “La Guardia Leads at Carnegie Hall: Mayor Wields Baton Before the Bands of Sanitation, Police and Fire Departments,” New York Times, 4 October 1939, 35. NPR, “NYC Mayor LaGuardia’s Legendary Radio Readings,” NPR Special Series: The Sounds of American Culture, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97621982 (accessed 1 March 2013).

7. Thomas Kessner, “The Lost Leader,” in Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York (New York, 1989), 472, 473.

8. Zinn, Howard, LaGuardia in Congress (Westport, Conn., 1972), ix.Google Scholar

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. McWilliams, John C., The Protectors: Harry Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1930–1960 (Newark, Del., 1990), 82.Google Scholar

12. Chauncey, George, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890–1940 (New York, 1994), 333.Google Scholar Friedman, Andrea, “‘The Habitats of Sex-Crazed Perverts’: Campaigns against Burlesque in Depression-Era New York City,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 7, no. 2 (October 1996): 222.Google Scholar “New Methods of Slot Machine Destruction,” New York Times, 18 August 1938, 3.

13. U.S. Census Bureau, Census History Staff, “1930 Fast Facts- History- U.S. Census Bureau,” U.S. Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/fast_facts/1930_fast_facts.html (accessed 18 February 2013). The population of New York City according to the U.S. Census Bureau was 6,930,466 in 1930; Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 1 December 1938, Marijuana 1938–40 Folder, New York Academy of Medicine Library (hereafter Marijuana, NYAM).

14. Bromberg, Walter, “Marihuana: A Psychiatric Study,” JAMA 113, no. 1 (July 1939): 10.Google Scholar

15. Marez, Curtis, Drug Wars: The Political Economy of Narcotics (Minneapolis, 2004), 139.Google Scholar

Booth, Martin, Cannabis: A History (New York, 2003), 161, 179.Google Scholar

16. Campos, Isaac, Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs (Chapel Hill, 2012), 217.Google Scholar

17. McWilliams, John C., The Protectors: Harry Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1930–1960 (Newark, Del., 1990), 13–15, 189Google Scholar. McWilliams argues that Anslinger’s support of the Tax Act represented the actions of a prudent administrator, not an antimarijuana zealot, and that scholars have inappropriately ignored other important areas of his career to focus on his role in shaping American drug policy.

18. Carroll, Rebecca, “Under the Influence: Harry Anslinger’s Role in Shaping America’s Drug Policy,” in Federal Drug Control: The Evolution of Policy and Practice, ed. Erlen, Jonathon, Spillane, Joseph F., et al. (Binghamton, N.Y., 2004), 69–70.Google Scholar

19. “Law to Control New Drug Used,” Christian Science Monitor, 25 February 1936, 12. Carroll, “Under the Influence,” 70.

20. Bonnie, Richard J. and Whitebread, Charles H. II, The Marihuana Conviction: A History of Marihuana Prohibition in the United States (New York, 1999), 120.Google Scholar

21. For a discussion of these scholarly disagreements, see Galliher, John F. and Walker, Allynn, “The Puzzle of the Social Origins of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937,” Social Problems 24, no. 3 (February 1977): 367–76.Google Scholar

22. Harry Anslinger and Courtney Ryley Cooper, “Marihuana: Assassin of Youth,” American Magazine, July 1937, 18.

23. Courtwright, David, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (New Haven, 1973)Google Scholar; Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction; Musto, David F., The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (New York, 1999)Google Scholar; Booth, Martin, Cannabis: A History (New York, 2003)Google Scholar. For scholars who discuss the emergence of a new War on Drugs under Nixon and Reagan, see Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York, 2010), 48–49Google Scholar.

24. Hari, Johann, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (New York, 2015), location 160.Google Scholar

25. Acker, Caroline Jean, Creating the American Junkie: Addiction Research in the Classic Era of Narcotic Control (Baltimore, 2002), 9–10.Google Scholar

26. Campos, Home Grown, 4.

27. Most of the marijuana-related coverage in the Amsterdam News and the New York Times during this period either mentions marijuana in a passing conversation regarding another crime or documents an arrest or a seizure, often one that did not occur in the city. In almost no cases were the race of the participants mentioned, and as has been cited earlier, arrests for marijuana possession or sale were relatively rare.

28. Dr. George Baehr to Dr. James A. Miller, Letter, 13 September 1938, Marijuana NYAM.

29. Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York: Sociological, Medical, Psychological, and Pharmacological Studies (Lancaster, 1944), v.

30. Dr. George Baehr to Dr. James A. Miller, Letter, 13 September 1938, Marijuana NYAM.

31. “Insists La Guardia Beer Violates Law” Baltimore Sun, 20 June 1926, 2.

32. Lerner, Michael A., Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), 235.Google Scholar

33. Meeting of the Subcommittee on Marihuana, 6 December 1938, Marijuana NYAM.

34. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marijuana Conviction, 134. The Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, The Marihuana Problem, foreword.

35. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marijuana Conviction, 154–74.

36. “Dr. Wallace Dies,” New York Times, 16 January 1948, 21.

37. A. M. Wendell Malliet, “Harlem Hospital’s ‘One Way Passage,’” New York Amsterdam News, 31 July 1943, 1.

38. Minutes of the Executive Committee, New York Academy of Medicine, 17 October 1938, Marijuana NYAM.

39. Minutes of the Subcommittee on Marihuana, 6 December 1938, Marijuana NYAM.

40. For a discussion of the way in which doctors’ attitudes on marriage and male supremacy informed the way they treated venereal diseases in their patients, see Allan M. Brandt, No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880 (Oxford, 1985), 17–19. For a discussion of the way in which World War I impacted scientific research, see Ronald C. Tobey, The American Ideology of National Science, 1919–1930 (Pittsburgh, 1971), xii.

41. Report of Subcommittee on the Clinical Study of Marijuana, 21 March 1939. Marijuana, NYAM.

42. Ibid. “Dr. K. M. Bowman Resigns, Bellevue Director of Psychiatry to go to California,” New York Times, 11 November 1941, 25.

43. George Wallace, Leon Cornwall, Malcolm Goodridge, and E. H. L. Corwin, “Report of the Subcommittee on Marihuana,” 31 October 1938, Marijuana NYAM. Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 27 June 1940, Marijuana NYAM.

44. Minutes of the Subcommittee on Marihuana, 14 March 1939. Marijuana, NYAM. Report of Subcommittee on Clinical Study of Marihuana, 21 March 1939, Marijuana NYAM.

45. Dr. S. S. Goldwater to Mayor La Guardia, Letter, 22 March 1939, 0127 LGWA. Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 18 January 1940, Marijuana NYAM.

46. Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 18 January 1940, Marijuana NYAM.

47. Letter from James A. Miller to Mayor La Guardia, 6 December 1938, 0127 LGWA.

48. Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana Meeting Notes, 18 January 1940, Marijuana NYAM.

49. Letter from Archie S. Woods, vice president, John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, to Mayor La Guardia, 6 June 1939, 0127 LGWA. Letter from Mayor La Guardia to Albert Milbank, 5 May 1939, 0127 LGWA. Letter from Mayor La Guardia to J. Willard Hayden, 5 May 1939, 0127 LGWA. Letter from J. Willard Hayden to Mayor La Guardia, 9 May 1939, 0127 LGWA. Memorandum from Anna H. Clark to Mayor La Guardia, 6 June 1939, 0127 LGWA. Letter from Mayor La Guardia to Mr. Barry Smith, 19 June 1939, 0127 LGWA. Letter from Mayor La Guardia to Dr. Frank Boudreau, 19 June 1939, 0127 LGWA. Letter from Dr. Frank Boudreau to Mayor La Guardia, 30 August 1939, 0127 LGWA.

50. Letter to Mayor La Guardia to Heyman of the New York Foundation, 23 January 1940, 0127 LGWA.

51. Acker, Creating the American Junkie, 156.

52. Ibid., 34–35.

53. Hari, Chasing the Scream, location 826.

54. Acker, Creating the American Junkie, 158–62.

55. Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, The Marihuana Problem, 34.

56. Ibid., 107.

57. Ibid., 43–44.

58. Ibid., 30.

59. Ibid.

60. Letter from Dr. Walter Bromberg to Dr. Lewinski-Corwin, 26 October 1938, Marijuana NYAM.

61. Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 8 March 1940, Marijuana NYAM.

62. Bonnie and Whitebread, Marijuana Conviction, 188.

63. Studies that challenged the FBN line on marijuana included work by Dr. Jorge Sequra Millan, Dr. Salazar-Viniegra, and Dr. Bromberg, among others. For a complete discussion of the FBN’s reaction to these studies, see Bonnie and Whitebread, Marihuana Conviction, 189–203.

64. Bonnie and Whitebread, Marihuana Conviction, 192.

65. Harry Anslinger to Mayor La Guardia, 9 November 1938, 0127 LGWA.

66. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marijuana Conviction, 188.

67. Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, The Marihuana Problem, ix–x.

68. Report of the Subcommittee on Marihuana (not dated), Marijuana NYAM; “vipers” used in Meyer Berger, “Tea for a Viper,” The New Yorker, 12 March 1938.

69. “Sales in Wilton, Conn.: Dr. Ryan of this City Buys Tract of Sixteen Acres,” New York Times, 22 May 1938. “Books and Authors,” New York Times, 23 August 1936, BR14.

70. Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 3 March 1939, Marijuana NYAM. The Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, The Marihuana Problem, 8.

71. Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 21 March 1939, Marijuana NYAM. Minutes of the Subcommittee on the Sociological Study of Marihuana, 26 June 1939, Marijuana NYAM.

72. Report by Olive Cregan (undated), Marijuana NYAM.

73. Ibid.

74. Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 18 January 1940, Marijuana NYAM.

75. Minutes of the Subcommittee of the Sociological Study of Marihuana, 26 June 1939, Marijuana NYAM. Minutes of the Subcommittee on Marihuana, 6 December 1938, Marijuana NYAM. Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 27 November 1941, Marijuana NYAM.

76. Minutes of the Subcommittee on Marihuana, 6 December 1938, Marijuana NYAM.

77. Ibid.

78. George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York, 1994), 247. Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, Or Does it Explode? Black Harlem in the Great Depression (New York, 1991), 193. “Crime and the Police,” New York Amsterdam News, 18 July 1936, 20.

79. Deutch, Sarah, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870–1940 (Oxford, 2000), 86.Google Scholar Mumford, Kevin, Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (New York, 1997), 35, 158Google Scholar.

80. Minutes of the Subcommittee on the Sociological Study of Marihuana, 26 June 1939, Marijuana NYAM. Meyer Berger, “Tea for a Viper,” The New Yorker, 12 March 1938.

81. “Thirteen Suspects Nabbed in Dope Raids as Police Comb Harlem Dens,” New York Amsterdam News, 21 December 1940. “Night Club ‘Dope’ Ring Believed Smashed; Jazz Band Players Among 24 Arrested,” New York Times, 10 July 1945. “Raid Reefers on Sugar Hill,” New York Amsterdam News, 25 December 1937. “Reefers Salesman: Harlem Lad Arrested Upstate for CCC Camp Peddling,” New York Amsterdam News, 12 June 1937. “Chi. Youngsters Now Fall for ‘Reefers,’” Baltimore Afro American, 30 May 1931. “Cops Get List of ‘Reefer Smokers’” New York Amsterdam News, 18 October 1933. “Harlem ‘Reefers’ Put on High Hat; Move Downtown” Chicago Defender, 2 December 1933. “New Jive Talk Rage of Harlem,” Pittsburgh Courier, 25 June 1938.

82. “Chi. Youngsters Now Fall for ‘Reefers.’”

83. “Thirteen Suspects Nabbed in Dope Raids as Police Comb Harlem Dens”; “Raid Reefers on Sugar Hill”; “Reefers Salesman”; “Cops Get List of ‘Reefer Smokers.’”

84. Friedman, Andrea, “‘The Habitats of Sex-Crazed Perverts’: Campaigns against Burlesque in Depression-Era New York City,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 7, no. 2 (October 1996): 204, 233.Google Scholar

85. Erenberg, Lewis A., “From New York to Middletown: Repeal and the Legitimization of Nightlife in the Great Depression,” American Quarterly 38, no. 5 (Winter 1986): 763.Google Scholar

86. Minutes of the Subcommittee on Marihuana, 18 November 1938, Marijuana NYAM.

87. Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 18 January 1940, Marijuana NYAM.

88. Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, The Marihuana Problem, 18.

89. Ibid.

90. Untitled Report by Olive Cregan (undated), Marijuana NYAM.

91. Untitled Report, Olive J. Cregan, not dated, Marijuana NYAM.

92. Ibid.

93. Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 27 November 1941, Marijuana NYAM.

94. “Harlem Problems Occupy the Mayor” New York Times, 28 November 1941.

95. Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 27 November 1941, Marijuana NYAM.

96. Letter from Dr. Baehr to Mayor La Guardia, 3 April 1944, Marijuana NYAM.

97. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marijuana Conviction, 201.

98. Letter from Dr. Baehr to Mayor La Guardia, 3 April 1944, 0127 LGWA.

99. Hari, Chasing the Scream, location 738–842.

100. Ibid., location 860–89.

101. Lindesmith, “Dope Fiend Mythology,” 203.

102. McWilliams, The Protectors, 120.

103. Bonnie and Whitebread, Marihuana Conviction, 199.

104. Samuel Allentuck and Karl M. Bowman, “The Psychiatric Aspects of Marihuana Intoxication,” American Journal of Psychiatry (September 1942): 251.

105. Harry Anslinger, Letter to the Editor, “The Psychiatric Aspects of Marihuana Intoxication,” JAMA 121 (16 January 1943): 212–13.

106. Ibid.

107. Hearing on the Taxation of Marihuana, House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, 27 April 1937, 19.

108. Dr. J. Bouquet, Letter to the Editor, “Marihuana Intoxication,” JAMA 124 (1 April 1944): 1010–11. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction, 200.

109. “Experts Discount Marijuana as Big Factor in Crime but Drive on It Will Be Pressed,” New York Times, 12 January 1945. “Report of Marihuana Denies Organized Sale to Children,” New York Sun, date unclear.

110. Editorial, “Sanity Concerning Marihuana,” Military Surgeon 96, no. 6 (June 1945): 4.

111. Editorial, “Marihuana Problems,” JAMA 127 (1945): 1129.

112. David Musto, ed. Drugs in America: A Documentary History (New York, 2002), 452. Bonnie and Whitebread, Marihuana Conviction, 201.

113. Acker, Creating the American Junkie, 74.

114. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marijuana Conviction, 65.

115. Lester Grinspoon, M.D., and James Bakalar, Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine (New Haven, 1997), 7.

116. Armstrong, William D. and Parascandola, John, “American Concern over Marihuana in the 1930’s,” Pharmacy in History 14, no. 1 (1972): 29Google Scholar. Galliher, John F. and Walker, Allynn, “The Puzzle of the Social Origins of the Mairhuana Tax Act of 1937,” Social Problems 24, no. 3 (February 1977): 370Google Scholar. Reasons, Charles E. “The ‘Dope’ on the Bureau of Narcotics,” in The Criminologist: Crime and the Criminal, ed. Reasons, Charles E. (Pacific Palisades: Goodyear Publishing Co., 1974), 146.Google Scholar

117. “Warns Against Demerol: Pain Killing Drug Causes Addiction, U.S. Official Says,” New York Times, 11 July 1946. Robert E. Geiger, “U.S. Wolfs Sleeping Pills by the Hundred Tons,” Washington Post, 26 January 1947, B6.

118. Editorial, “Marihuana Problems,” JAMA 127 (1945): 1129.

119. Minutes of the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 2 May 1945. Marijuana, NYAM.

120. “In the Realm of Medicine: New Solution Found for Resuspension of Blood Cells—Marihuana Denounced Anew,” Baltimore Sun, 26 April 1945,13. “Assails Medical Journal: Mayor Scores Criticism of His Group’s Report on Marijuana” New York Times, 27 April 1945. Herald Tribune, 25 April 1945.

121. George B. Wallace to the Editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, 12 June 1945, 0127 LGWA.

122. Letter from Theodore R. Robie, M.D., to Mayor La Guardia, 30 April 1945, 0127 LGWA. Letter from Mayor La Guardia to Theodore R. Robie, 7 May 1945, 0127 LGWA.

123. Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia, 566–69.

124. Letter from Dr. George Baehr to Dr. James A. Miller, 13 September 1938, Marijuana NYAM.

125. The Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 3 March 1939. Marijuana NYAM.

126. “La Guardia Is Dead: City Pays Homage to 3-Time Mayor,” New York Times, 21 September 1947.

127. Alex Dobuzinskis, “Marijuana Legalization Victories Could Be Short-Lived,” Reuters, 7 November 2012.

128. Harry Anslinger, Letter to the Editor, “The Psychiatric Aspects of Marihuana Intoxication,” JAMA 121 (16 January 1943): 212–13.

129. For a discussion of the findings of one example of such an inquiry, the Shafer Commission, chaired by former Governor of Pennsylvania, Raymond Shafer, whose report recommended legalization of marijuana possession, see Warren Weaver Jr., “U.S. Drug Study Stresses Treatment Not Penalties,” New York Times, 23 March 1973, 1. For a brief discussion of current scientific attitudes toward marijuana use, see Philip M. Boffey, “What Science Says About Marijuana” New York Times, 30 July 2014. For a more in-depth discussion of the medical uses of marijuana and the federal barriers to medical use and research, see Grinspoon and Bakalar, Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine (New Haven, 1997).