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If there’s one image that perfectly captures the futility of America’s long and hopeless War on Drugs, it might be the 1971 photograph of a bizarre Oval Office summit between President Richard Nixon, perfectly polished and typically uneasy, posing side-by-side with his first volunteer in the newly declared war, G-Man-wannabe Elvis Presley.
Toned down for the occasion in basic black and tastefully accessorized with a crime-fighting cape and a gold buckle the size of a Krispy Kreme, the aging Elvis stood ready to take arms against the illicit trade, asking only for a badge (preferably gold) and a license to kill. The clinically paranoid Nixon was convinced the spread of marijuana was a dark conspiracy brought to bear by commie potheads. As he stated on a White House tape, “…that’s why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing the stuff. They’re trying to destroy us from within.”
America’s misunderstanding of marijuana is largely the result of a long history of ignorance and racism. Prior to the 1930s, pot was legal and untaxed. But a man named Harry Anslinger changed all that.
In 1929, J. Edgar Hoover chose Anslinger to head up the Department of Prohibition. Following the repeal of the alcohol ban in 1933, however, there was no Department left to run. So Harry Anslinger was given the top spot at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Anslinger, who would publicly state that marijuana was no big deal, promptly changed his tune. He knew that heroin and cocaine enforcement would not be enough to sustain an entire department, so he took on cannabis.
Harry Anslinger went on to run the Federal Narcotics Bureau until 1962. During his long tenure, he played a significant role in the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, outlawing possession and sale. He spearheaded the American premiere of “Reefer Madness,” a propaganda film so heavy-handed it has become the must-see cult classic of stoners everywhere. Anslinger vilified cannabis at every opportunity, applying an undercoat of racism that slanted enforcement heavily toward Mexicans and African-Americans. It was Anslinger himself who was credited with the popularization of the word marijuana to more heavily associate it with Mexicans. And he once proclaimed, “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.”
It wasn’t until marijuana found its way to the middle-class that government began to take notice. In 1970, Congress passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act, which temporarily placed pot in the pantheon of dangerous narcotics, Schedule One, residing at the right hand of heroin.
In 1971, Nixon created a special Presidential Commission to examine the “marijuana problem” and issue recommendations. He appointed Pennsylvania Governor and former hardline prosecutor Richard Shafer to head the commission. Shafer had been a law-and-order governor. The administration felt he could be relied on to get tough on weed. Shafer himself even admitted to a pre-conceived anti-pot bias.
In the course of their due diligence, the commission heard testimony from police, judges, doctors, politicians, students, lawyers, and others. They conducted surveys and research, even traveled abroad to learn how other countries dealt with the issue. By all reports it was a thorough job.
Despite unrelenting pressure from the White House, the Shafer Commission would ultimately conclude that marijuana caused “no significant physical, chemical, or mental abnormalities,” and that “Most users demonstrate an average or above-average degree of social functioning, academic achievement, and job performance.” They concluded that marijuana use did not lead to violent behavior nor was it a gateway to heroin or other drugs.
Nixon and Elvis were not amused. The administration, in fact, simply ignored the report and turned up the heat. Marijuana-related arrests spiked by over 130,000 between 1972 and 1973, totaling some 420,000. The large importers continued to operate with impunity as law enforcement aggressively chased street dealers and users, parading them before the media like kingpins. Make no mistake, the early days of Nixon’s war on drugs was a war on pot. And to further complicate his spectacularly failing presidency, pot was winning.
MIKE HALLIDAY
One night Jack and I were down on the river checking out a new place we were thinking of using. It was pretty late, when we got in the car to head back. As soon as we hit the freeway, we got pulled over by the Border Patrol.
It was back in the hippie days and I still had a ponytail. So Jack got out of the driver side and went back to talk to the Border Patrol agent. The guy started looking around with his flashlight. When he saw the ponytail, he just assumed I was a chick, and we were down at the river fucking our brains out. So he said, “Have a nice night,” and sent us on our way.
But while Jack was talking to the guy, I was looking out over the river. I realized that you could see a house here, a stationary light here, here, and here, and you could pretty much determine exactly where the river was.
You could probably see headlights a mile away. And if you saw one set coming from Mexico and another set coming from the U.S., and they met at the river—or worse, one of the cars just keeps going right across the river—those are smugglers. We never would have realized that if the guy hadn’t pulled us over. But now we knew that nighttime was not the best time to be doing our business. So we started crossing our loads at high noon.
There was a little hilltop that you could get up on with binoculars and a radio, and you could see anybody who was coming. It was actually a pretty unusual place—I mean, the river ran straight as an arrow for miles and miles. But at this one little spot, it makes an S-turn. And if you did your deal at this little spot on the S-turn, nobody on either side of the levee could see you. If any one of us saw any kind of problem, we’d just stay put in Mexico until it was cool to cross.
So that was our place of choice. By now, we were bringing over three or four trucks at a time—nearly 3,000 pounds while the Border Patrol was having lunch.
We had another spot that was very interesting. It was right in the middle of Ascarate Park—a high population area that was close to the river. That was a place we could only use at night. There was an apartment building right up against the levee. It was maybe a hundred units, two stories with a parking lot that backed right up to an irrigation ditch that stayed dry most of the year. We rented an apartment there. We would take a couple of trucks with camper shells and back ’em right up to the ditch at the edge of the parking lot—close to the levee. Hector would go about a quarter-mile down the levee one way and I’d go the other way. We’d make sure it was clear and signal with our radios.
It was like natives in a jungle movie marching down the ditch with bales on their heads. You could barely see them throwing bales into the trucks up above. Fifteen minutes, done. We’d fill up the trucks with bales of pot and just leave them there until morning. Then a couple of our guys would come out wearing hardhats and carrying lunchboxes, get in their trucks and drive off with the regular morning traffic. We’d go and unload it somewhere, and that’s how that was done.
JACK STRICKLIN
By now we were starting to make some real money doing 2,000 or 3,000 pounds at a time—three trucks. What we needed was a place to put it. Our stash houses weren’t big enough or private enough, and every load had to be weighed and graded before we could send it out. So I went and talked to Bill Holt about using one of his barns.
Bill was a big farmer in the Upper Valley—I knew him through his son Doug. It was his basement where I smoked my first joint. Bill owned a lot of land, but he was cash poor and I knew it. So I went over one day and said,
