As a quick note, I wanted to highlight another effect of legalizing hemp closely related to the subject of my previous post: savings in the federal budget, which could be used to lower the deficit, reduce taxes, or both.

The corn industry, as many already know, is the recipient of billions of dollars in annual federal aid.  While Congress finally eliminated the $5 billion yearly appropriation previously allotted to corn growers (read: large agriculture companies) in 2011, that pork barrel “cut” is really just a ruse: in the same year, Congress awarded the corn lobby $6 billion in subsidies for corn-derived ethanol. (Source)

While these billions are arguably better spent reducing reliance on foreign oil than lowering the cost of high fructose corn syrup, they’re still billions wasted; hemp ethanol, were it allowed under federal law, probably wouldn’t require such subsidies to pay for itself.  As noted in the previous post, hemp-derived ethanol can be produced much more efficiently than ethanol fermented from corn: while corn ethanol requires more energy to produce than it yields, Henry Ford proved the sustainability of hemp ethanol nearly 75 years ago.

There are times when government investment in sustainable technology may be a good idea, but surely everyone can agree that to spend billions of tax dollars on an inefficient solution makes no sense when an efficient, self-sustaining alternative is waiting in the wings.  Federal law is the only hindrance.

By now, you may have heard various conspiracy theories alleging that cannabis was criminalized because of a conspiracy led by certain petrochemical interests, most notably DuPont – this is the thesis of Jack Herer’s influential book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes.  But while Herer’s claims that rich industrialists pulled a fast one on the American people to line their own pocketbooks seems paranoid and farfetched, the story nevertheless contains a nugget of important insight: the likely effect on the price of oil if hemp were legalized.

Let’s start with a little bit of history.  The idea of using hemp-derived ethanol in lieu of gasoline was pioneered by the Ford Motor Company in the 1930s, after Henry Ford saw a fortuitous nexus of opportunity to improve the prospects of his community, the environment, and his company’s balance sheets at the same time.  The moment of Ford’s inspiration may have first come upon the announcement by his rival General Motors that they would begin using environmentally destructive chemical additives, like lead, in their gasoline to improve its octane rating.  But Ford happened across early discoveries of the fuel potential of soybeans and realized that he could produce a higher octane fuel without any major pollution problems, by growing it right out of the soil.  By fermenting soybeans (in a process similar to that of making tofu or miso), Ford’s biochemists successfully produced ethanol, a form of alcohol which could be used in traditional gasoline engines without substantial modifications.   Henry Ford, who pioneered the American idea of compassionate capitalism, saw an opportunity to provide a boost to Michigan’s family farmers by providing them with another income stream; at the same time, he could produce an environmentally-friendly car which distinguished his company from his polluting competitor.

Ford’s scientists quickly realized, however, that even the versatile soybean could not match hemp for usefulness; under Ford’s direction, they built an entire car around the hemp plant.  Not only did its engine run on 100% hemp ethanol; its interior panels were also derived from plant fibers, and its outer chassis was made of a hemp fiber-polymer composite which was fireproof, waterproof, half the weight of steel and ten times stronger.  Discoveries like these soon led to other insights by biochemists, who realized that nearly any plastic then made out of petroleum could be potentially made from plant material instead.  Hemp, with its prodigious growth and environmentally benign profile, became the top candidate to lead America’s industrial-agricultural revolution.

Such a development would have greatly reduced the price of gasoline, by operation of supply and demand.  While demand for gasoline and plastics would have remained relatively constant, the increased supply of petroleum substitutes on the market would have driven prices down, cutting into the profits of oil companies.  Jack Herer maintains that this was the real reason for federal policy in the late 1930s which banned cannabis in all its forms, making no distinction between its psychoactive and industrial uses.

Regardless of what may have happened in the past, it can scarcely be doubted that the contingency of legal hemp in America poses a threat to oil companies today.  While such companies continue to set profit records as a direct result of the high price of gas, all the necessary technology to replace them is already in place.  Ironically, it has been Ford’s competitor General Motors which is now leading the way in ethanol fuels, by operation of its “FlexFuel” technology – a computer-controlled system which detects ethanol in the gas lines and automatically adjusts the engine to compensate.  This system can use gas blends anywhere between 10% and 85% ethanol, seamlessly switching between them – and more and more gas stations now offer high-ethanol fuel blends.

So if ethanol is already freely available, why are gas prices still so high?  The answer has to do with where the ethanol comes from – which in the United States means corn.  The corn lobby, one of the most powerful in the country, has worked hand in hand with the federal government to ensure steady demand for its product to convert into fuel ethanol, despite the fact that corn is one of the least efficient ways of producing it.  In fact, studies have revealed that it takes the equivalent of 1.5 gallons of petroleum to produce 1 gallon of corn-based ethanol – a deplorable ratio which assures that corn-derived ethanol perversely increases the price of gasoline by reducing the supply of petroleum.

Other crops, notably switchgrass and kudzu, have been proposed as superior alternatives because of their ability to yield a net energy gain – thus actually reducing gas prices.  Yet neither crop is likely to succeed as well as hemp, which was recognized over 75 years ago as the best temperate zone crop for the job.  Because of its rich source of cellulose (up to 75% in the bast fibers, and between 35-50% in the woody hurds), its rapid rate of growth, and the fact that it can be grown without petroleum-derived fertilizers and pesticides made hemp the favored choice for replacing oil back in the 1930s.

And that’s why, if we want to benefit the American consumer instead of multinational oil companies, we should legalize industrial hemp today.

Anyone who’s taken a minute to listen to some of the claims elected politicians and NIDA-funded surveys make about marijuana knows that there have been some real zingers.  But what are the most outrageous claims ever made about marijuana?  That would be a daunting task; for ease, I have culled together what are, in my opinion, the ten most outrageous statements made by an American public figure or official – which ought to put today’s hysteria in some context.  Enjoy!

#10: “When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t inhale and never tried it again.” - President William Jefferson Clinton

#9: “At the present time, the underworld has been quick to realize the value of [marijuana] in subjugating the will of human derelicts to that of a master mind.  Its use sweeps away all restraint, and to its influence may be attributed many of our present-day crimes.”  – New Orleans District Attorney Eugene Stanley, ca. 1930

#8: “Casual drug users should be taken out and shot.” – Darryl F. Gates, L.A. Police Chief

#7: “[In] my era everybody smoked and everybody drank and there was no drug use” – DEA Chief Thomas Constantine, July 1, 1998

#6: “Some beet field peon takes a couple puffs of this stuff, and he comes to believe that he’s just been elected president of Mexico, and sets out to execute all of his political enemies.” – 1927 Montana legislature hearings

#5: “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.” - Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics

#4: “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.” - Harry Anslinger, 1937 testimony to Congress in support of the marijuana Tax Act.

#3: “Not all perverts are marihuana smokers, but practically all marihuana smokers are perverted.” – Col. Garland Williams

#2: “If the hideous monster Frankenstein came face to face with the monster Marihuana, he would drop dead of fright.” – Henry J. Anslinger

#1: “I now have irrefutable proof that smoking one marijuana cigarette causes brain damage equal to standing on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast.” – Ronald Reagan

In the past two weeks, two separate studies have been released, which the major media often claim prove that teen marijuana use causes 1) lowered IQ or 2) testicular cancer.  While each study should serve as a caution to any teenager who is considering experimenting with pot, both studies should also be taken with a grain of salt.  As is usually the case with such research, the studies’ actual authors have been relatively straightforward about the implications of their work while the popular media have gone hog wild trumpeting their supposed conclusions.  In sum, while each study reveals a correlation between teen marijuana use and some undesirable outcome, neither study proves causation.

What’s the Difference?

A correlation is the existence of some incidental link between two things which appear to just “go together.”  Let’s take a classic American example: the PB&J.  Peanut butter and jelly can be said to be correlated because of the relatively high percentage of incidences when they can both be found in a child’s lunchbox.  Mind you, nothing about the relationship requires that the two foods go together – we can always use either peanut butter or jelly in other recipes, if we want to.  But the fact that they go together so often gives rise to the existence of a correlation.

Contrast that with causation.  If a causal link exists, the existence of one event earlier in time actually sets in motion a chain of events causing – or at the very least making more likely – an otherwise separate, later event. For example, if it begins to rain outside and I am out without my umbrella, I will get wet.  I may be able to minimize my wetness by taking advantage of other factors, like awnings; but at the very least it can be said that the initial conditions of the rain and my presence outside without an umbrella make it more likely that I will get wet.  That’s causation.

Does teen pot use lower IQ?

One study, released late last month, reported that a body of test subjects were given IQ tests separated by a 25-year interval – one at age 13 and one at age 38.  Subjects were also quizzed about their use of various drugs at various ages.  It was found that while the groups who either never used marijuana or only began using it after age 18 suffered little to no drop in IQ scores as compared to the rest of the cohort, those who began using marijuana after age 13 and before age 18 dropped an average of 8 points by the same comparison.  That’s a relatively strong correlation, made stronger by the curious fact that the same correlation cannot be found between lowered IQ and pot use after age 18.

However, the study’s own authors note that these facts do not necessarily demonstrate a causal relationship between teen pot use and lowered IQ.  The primary reason for this is the lack of any identified mechanism – the chain of events which leads to a result – which can be traced from a teen’s inhalation of marijuana smoke to lowered IQ in the future.  Such a mechanism may exist; given the fact that human brains are still forming at age 18, it’s at least plausible that marijuana use at such a formative stage may have intrinsic consequences later on.  But the lack of evidence for such a specific mechanism leaves open the door for alternate causal mechanisms which might also be responsible for the correlation.  For example, it is known that socially maladjusted teens – teens who may suffer from depression, or otherwise experience low drive – are more likely to try marijuana than teens who don’t experience such maladjustment (this is the same correlation which gave rise to the fallacious “amotivational syndrome” in the 1980s).  It could be that some teens who scored poorly later in life did so because of depression or other issues, and that their marijuana use in teen years was a symptom, not a cause.

Does teen pot use cause testicular cancer?

A study released this morning reporting a correlation between teen pot use and testicular cancer later in life used methodology which was in some ways similar to the above study on IQs.  Yet, in other ways, its methodology was less precise; rather than studying a general population, this one only examined men who had actually contracted testicular cancer.  Other limitations include the fact that all of the men studied came from the same city (Los Angeles), the fact that the sample size was relatively small (163), and the fact that all diagnoses came in the same five-year span (late 1986 to early 1991).

While these limitations reduce the study’s precision, the correlations reported nevertheless appear remarkable:  subjects who used pot were twice as likely to have developed a specific kind of testicular cancer than subjects who didn’t, and subjects who used cocaine were only half as likely to do so.  That would appear to be strong evidence that pot causes cancer, and that cocaine prevents it.

But these correlations suffer from the same weaknesses as the IQ correlation above.  The study’s authors caution that “[t]he current results warrant mechanistic studies of marijuana’s effect[s]” – in other words, no causal mechanism has been identified by the study.  Other causal mechanisms may be at play: while the study’s authors controlled their results for age, race, and neighborhood data, they did not control for wealth – the rich can afford both cocaine and preventive cancer treatment better than can the poor.  It should also be noted that in the 1980s, dangerous poisons like paraquat were more often found in the nation’s marijuana supply than today – a result of Ronald Reagan’s aggressive War on Drugs.

A needed grain of salt

So, should teens smoke pot?  Unless their doctor prescribes it, no.  Just as these studies don’t prove a causal link between pot and certain scary outcomes, neither do their flaws prove that pot doesn’t cause lower IQ or cancer – either way, we just don’t know.  Given the uncertainty, the wisest course is for teens to hold off on using any drugs – including marijuana, tobacco, or alcohol – until adulthood.  Even so, the next time someone tells you that science has proven that teen pot use makes you stupider, point out that the study’s own authors disagree.

A typical stoner.

When one takes pride in the products they craft and the work they do, it’s always nice to get a little appreciation from a satisfied customer.  But one day in the early 1860s, the Hohner Harmonica Company received a letter in the post which was so auspicious in nature that they stored it in the company archives for safe-keeping.  The letter read in part:

“Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica.”

Nice enough words to make the day of any company boss, but it was the letterhead that really drew attention: the compliments had been sent directly from the Oval Office.*

That’s right – the man usually considered America’s greatest President, Mr. Abraham Lincoln himself, smoked pot.  And not just some youthful flirtations, Obama-style – Abe lit up at the White House.  If America had had the same laws 150 years ago as it does today, our greatest leader would have been impeached and imprisoned.

Of course, not only the laws but the entire national situation was much different then.  For one thing, hemp grew abundantly in American fields in the 19th century, especially in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, which boasted a long tradition of producing superior fiber for rope and textiles.  In fact, hemp had been grown in America since practically Day One of the English colonization of North America: the first cannabis law of the Colonies, passed in 1619, fined any settler who didn’t grow any.

It didn’t take long for these farmers to figure out the remarkable qualities of the female blossoms of their crop** – it never does.  Indigenous slaves working on Mexican plantations adopted cannabis (which they called ‘pipilzintzintlis’) to their culture soon after the first hemp crop in the New World was sown by the Spaniards in 1530.  Similarly, African slaves and indentured servants from India used their cultural knowledge of the plant to adapt the fiber hemp laid down by British overseers in Jamaica – creating the syncretic religion now known as Rastafarianism.

Given that no social stigma existed at that time against indulging in hemp blossom, many of Lincoln’s antecedents tried smoking it too:  George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp (Washington had seeds special-ordered from India); James Madison smoked it while drafting the Constitution; James Monroe and Benjamin Franklin both tried hashish while serving as ambassadors to France; and Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, and Franklin Pierce probably smoked occasionally too.  None of these men were ever considered unqualified for their jobs because they used it.

So next time you want to see what a typical stoner looks like, pull out a five dollar bill.

*Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robbie-gennet/on-role-models-and-their_b_164387.html

**It should be noted that the strains which the early Americans smoked were mostly descended from land races used for fiber from places like the Baltic Sea regions of Russia.  These strains were probably low in THC and higher in CBD, meaning that the ‘high’ enjoyed by Lincoln was probably less intense and more relaxational than the high-THC strains favored today (although high-CBD strains are making a comeback).

Shortly after the passage of the Harrison Act Frank Freericks, a pharmacist and lawyer writing in the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association, ominously warned that the newly-adopted legislation would be used by the federal government to encroach on the traditional police power of the states by attempting to curb the narcotics traffic.  He pooh-poohed the position of those who maintained that the Act had been passed for the purpose of record-keeping only, predicting that the provisions for fining noncompliant dealers would be wielded like a penal cudgel from Washington, D.C.  The Journal’s own editor, James H. Beal, disagreed with Freericks’ position, assuring the professional pharmacists of the nation that the only consequence of the Harrison Act would be to collect information.  Beal’s appears to have been the majority view, with even the Surgeon General of the U.S. opining (in 1915) that nothing in the Act would hinder a physician or pharmacist from continuing to provide morphine and other narcotics dispensed “in good faith.”

Yet the disagreement revealed the ambiguity in the Harrison Act’s language, which extended not only to questions of enforcement but even to what kinds of treatment would be allowed.  For example, the “good faith” provision of the Act cited by the Surgeon General left much open to interpretation, and legal scholars almost immediately began to debate whether that provision allowed doctors to pursue a controversial treatment: maintenance therapy.

To this very day, no “cure” for opiate addiction has ever been discovered.  There are services on offer similar to any other 12-step method, which combines group support and personal conviction to achieve some measure of success, but most doctors agree that such services do not end opiate cravings; they merely make them easier to resist by replacing an unfavorable behavior set (and often environment) with one which is more beneficial.  There are also palliatives available, such as marijuana, which can help the patient step their opiate intake down over time (marijuana potentiates morphine and heroin, enabling the addict to attain the same level of relief by using roughly half the dose) or dull the pains of withdrawal (marijuana also relieves the muscle cramps and loss of appetite associated with opiate withdrawal); but the medical consensus is that such treatments also fail to “cure” the addiction, because heavy and extended opiate use actually destroys a portion of the endoopioid receptors of the patient’s brain, permanently warping their pharmacology.

In 1914, the prognosis was even worse.  At that time, a majority of doctors believed that any attempt by the morphine addict to give up his habit would invariably end in her death,[1] and that therefore the most compassionate course was to keep the patient comfortable on a regimen of maintenance therapy – maintaining their addiction under the supervision of a doctor, who could make sure that the drugs were administered safely and minimize the risk of overdose (this is the same principle behind methadone clinics, which remains controversial almost a hundred years after the Harrison Act).  Experiments in public policy in Jacksonville, Florida, New York City, and the state of Tennessee had shown considerable success in providing state-paid narcotic maintenance to addicts, allowing the government to prevent overdose, unclog courts, and gather accurate data on the scope of the addiction problem.  In a country dominated by the Temperance movement (which would go on to ratify the 18^th Amendment prohibiting sale of alcoholic beverages in 1919), however, many observers took the cold position that it’s better to let the patients die than condone the use of opiates, which they likened to alcohol for their ability to sate the basest hedonistic kens.  Immediately after the Harrison Act’s passage, it was hotly disputed whether maintenance therapy could be allowed under the Act’s provision shielding doctors who prescribed narcotics “in good faith.”

Both debates were rendered moot by the adopted position of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (now the Internal Revenue Service), the department in charge of levying the punitive “taxes” on any drug dealer who failed to comply with the Act’s registration requirements.  According to Internal Revenue, the Harrison Act was no mere record-keeping requirement; rather, the Bureau saw its role as enforcing an essentially police power, aggressively punishing doctors, pharmacists, and even patients who were seen as violating the BIR’s interpretation of the law, which forbade all maintenance therapy and allowed only minute, atomistic use of narcotics.  Almost immediately upon the Harrison Act’s passage, Internal Revenue promulgated strict rules for its enforcement of the Act, clearly signaling a zero tolerance position for any maintenance therapy – and began arresting doctors, druggists, and patients on March 1^st, 1915.

Almost immediately, the federal government reaped a raft of rejection by the courts, which declared the government’s application of the Harrison Act unconstitutional in Pittsburgh, Memphis, Kansas City, and Florida.  But the biggest defeat would come in 1916, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down large portions of Harrison, in particular the Treasury’s interpretation of the “good faith” clause as prohibiting maintenance.  The Treasury commissioner complained that the decision “makes it practically impossible to control the illicit traffic in narcotic drugs.”  It seemed like the principles of small government had won.

But then, only three years later, the Supreme Court dramatically reversed.  What happened?  David Musto, one of the foremost authorities on the history of American drug policy, attributes the reversal to a “Red Scare” which occurred immediately after the triumph of the Allies in World War I.  The sudden and rapid rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia in the wake of the Great War shocked American capitalists, who greatly feared a similar uprising in the U.S.  Pro-capitalist propaganda warned Americans to be constantly vigilant against insidious Communists, employing a sharp mind to defeat their ploys.  Incidentally, 1919 was also the first year of Prohibition, and public opinion weighed heavily against the use of any intoxicants.  In any case, the Supreme Court decided two Harrison Act cases on the same day: the first (U.S. v. Doremus) declared that under the Harrison Act, transfers of narcotics were only legal if by “prescription”; in the other (Webb et al v. U.S.), it defined a “prescription” as a recommendation of treatment for something other than the maintenance of an addiction.

And just like that, in a 5 to 4 decision, the Court rubber-stamped an unprecedented expansion of federal authority, setting a precedent for Congress to encroach even more against the powers of states and the civil rights of individuals, the first step in a long history of gathering ever more power in the halls of Washington, D.C., in the name of fighting a war on drugs.

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states that “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding” [emphasis added].  For centuries, courts have recognized in this clause a clear statement of the supremacy of federal law, including foreign treaties, over state law; if ever a conflict arises between the laws of a state and a foreign treaty, the foreign treaty will control.

By late 1909 Hamilton Wright had realized that the Supremacy clause could prove the linchpin to his plan to make an end run around the Constitution and enact prohibitionist domestic drug laws.  Having learned from his failures at the Shanghai conference, he sketched out his plan: Musto 41

The proposed treaty, were it ratified, would be the masterstroke.  In such a treaty’s wake, any state which passed laws which conflicted with the treaty would run afoul of the Supremacy clause – and thus the federal government could strong-arm the states into doing its own policing.  The feds would assist, of course; under Wright’s proposed legislation, anyone found in possession of narcotics without proper registration records would be presumptively guilty under federal law, and anyone who complied with federal law by registering could have their records delivered by the feds to state prosecutors, who would use the defendant’s registration as a confession against him.  Thus the thorny constitutional issues of federal drug policing were tied up in a neat little bow.

Wright shopped the federal law portion of his plan around Capitol Hill, and on April 30, 1910 Rep. David Foster of Vermont formally introduced it as a bill.  The Foster bill was sweeping and punitive, requiring fastidious recording of each and every minute amount of morphine, heroin, cocaine, chloral hydrate, and cannabis dispensed to any patient for any purpose; failure to register or record a transaction invoked penalties of up to $5,000 (a large sum in 1910) and up to five years’ imprisonment.  A month later he appeared before the House Ways and Means Committee to defend it.  There he encountered sharp skepticism from Southern Democrats, who remained quite wary of federal intervention; memories of Reconstruction remained sharp and clear.  But Wright knew their Achilles’ heel.  “[O]ne of the most unfortunate phases of the habit of smoking opium in this country” was, he sorrowfully reported, “the large number of women who have become involved and were living as common-law wives or cohabiting with Chinese in the Chinatowns of our various cities.”  Nor were good white folk living in the rural areas safe from the drug menace, either, because the specter of cocaine had recently attained great popularity “among the humbler ranks of the Negro population in the South.”  While Wright expressed puzzlement as to why more people weren’t aware of this dreadful menace (and indeed how the drugs got to remote rural areas in the first place, since “the lower order of working Negro is not willing, as a rule, to go to much trouble or send to any distance for anything”), he urged his audience not to belittle their fears, for “it has been authoritatively stated that cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the Negroes of the South and other sections of the country.”

Despite Dr. Wright’s virtuoso performance, the House remained hesitant to pass such an unprecedented expansion of federal power, and the bill stayed stalled in committee into 1911, the year that the Hague conventions were scheduled to convene.  Thus Wright appeared at his own treaty convention, for the second time in a row, empty-handed.  With him went Bishop Brent and an unseasoned California pharmacist named Henry J. Finger whose political connections to Secretary of State Philander Knox ensured his appointment.  The choice mortified Wright, who wondered what Finger could possibly add to the discussion.

Wright soon found out.  While at the convention, Finger “unexpectedly rose from his seat” to denounce the evils of cannabis, insisting that every sovereign nation present at the conference criminalize the pernicious drug to the full extent of the law.  The other delegates, who had come expecting a conference on opiates, were mostly dumbfounded; only Italy supported the proposal, and the other nations merely expressed indifference and moved on.  Yet despite constant negotiations, the Hague convention closed with no treaty, a failure more than one contemporary blamed on Wright’s roughshod diplomatic style.  The countries pledged to meet again, which they did, in 1913 at The Hague again, and for a moment Wright appeared close to his triumph; but while the treaty was still two votes short of passage, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand set off World War I, and the treaty was forgotten.

Nevertheless, the legislative gears Wright set in motion back in Washington, D.C. had not lost their momentum by that time, and the doctor rushed back home to try to salvage that much of his plan.  Although the Foster bill was eventually killed while still in the House, Wright found another sponsor, Representative Francis Burton Harrison of New York, a Tammany Democrat who never minded a sip of whiskey but hated all narcotics.  The Harrison bill, which was similar to the Foster bill in almost every respect, showed promise of better prospects than the ill-fated Foster bill, benefiting from a sweep of the House by a Democratic party comprised of crusading Progressives from the North and Dixiecrats from the South; if Wright could present a pitch combining muckraking aimed at the Progressives and race-baiting aimed at the Dixiecrats, he might shepherd the bill through.  Even more crucial was the support of the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Pharmaceutical Association (APhA), two powerful trade groups which had opposed the onerous recordkeeping of the Foster bill but would favor a version of the bill with simpler record-keeping requirements because they believed that tough federal legislation could shutter the patent medicine vendors, a mutual competitor.

That coalition of influential players proved sufficient.  After amending the Harrison bill to give the AMA and APhA the simpler paperwork procedure they desired (and dropping cannabis from the regulated list due to widespread professional doubt of its supposed harms), the House passed it as HR 6282 on June 26^th, 1913.  The Senate passed its own, somewhat watered down version in August, but various compromise negotiations and procedural matters held up passage of a final version by both houses until December of the following year.  On December 17^th, 1914, with no fanfare or even a mention in the New York Times’daily legislative record, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Harrison Act into law.

Almost immediately, legal experts began debating how the Harrison Act would be enforced.  Some argued that the intent of the bill was to collect records only, and to use such records as the basis for convincing state legislatures of the need for action.  Others ominously pointed to the Act’s punitive fines for noncompliance, predicting that the Treasury, the federal department charged with enforcing it, would employ the act like weapon against drug dealers.  Which side was proven right, and how, is the subject of the fourth and final installment in the series.