22. “Germ Warfare in Korea?” Science News Letter, July 8, 1950, 22; “Defense Against BW,” Science News Letter, August 21, 1954, 115.
23. “Secret Weapon—Opium,” New York Times, January 2, 1953, 14. In a similar vein, the 2002 “National Youth Anti-Drug Campaign” run by the US Office of National Drug Control Policy put out a number of “I helped” terrorism Public Service Announcements featuring young people’s confessions. “Where do terrorists get their money?” the ads asked. “If you buy drugs, some of it might come from you.”
24. Alwyn St. Charles, The Narcotics Menace (Los Angeles: Borden, 1952), 20–21. His description also suggested that “doped-up” “Communist troops have plunged heedlessly into the bayonets of United Nations soldiers in wild (Banzai) charges,” suggesting the widespread utility of invoking a drug frenzy as a disavowal of the political origins of conflict (24).
25. US House, Appropriations for 1954, 300.
26. William McAllister, Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: An International History (New York: Routledge, 2000), 185.
27. US Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearing before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, International Opium Protocol, 83rd Cong., 2d sess., 17 July, 1954, 8.
28. “Protocol for Limiting and Regulating the Cultivation of the Poppy Plant, the Production of, International and Wholesale Trade in, and the Use of Opium,” concluded at New York on 23 June 1953 (No. 456), United Nations Treaty Series, 56 (1963).
29. “Protocol,” 5. The seven included Bulgaria, Greece, India, Iran, Turkey, USSR, and Yugoslavia.
30. “Protocol,” 82.
31. “Protocol,” 24; McAllister, Drug Diplomacy, 180–81; US Senate, International Opium Protocol, 26.
32. David R. Bewley-Taylor, The United States and International Drug Control, 1909–1997 (New York: Pinter, 1999), 92–95.
33. US Senate, International Opium Protocol, 8. The Soviet Union was ready to participate in the drug control regime; it just challenged aspects that were being dictated by the United States. In fact, Anslinger testified, “We do not find any leakage from the Soviet orbit.” In this, I argue, one can see a new imperial rivalry over the terms of global economic regulation.
34. Bewley-Taylor, United States and International Drug Control, 148–58.
35. Earle V. Simrell, “History of Legal and Medical Roles in Narcotic Abuse in the US,” Public Health Reports 83, no. 7 (July 1968): 588.
36. Bewley-Taylor, United States and International Drug Control, 160.
37. McAllister, Drug Diplomacy, 185–211.
38. UN General Assembly, Fifteenth Session, 1960–61. Delegation from the US, The United States in the United Nations—1960 A Turning Point, Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate by George D. Aiken [and] Wayne Morse, members of the Delegation of the US to the Fifteenth Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1961), 10–11.
39. Harold Karan Jacobson, “The United Nations and Colonialism: A Tentative Appraisal,” International Organization 16, no. 1 (Winter 1962): 40–41.
40. Rupert Emerson, “Colonialism, Political Development, and the UN,” International Organization 19, no. 3, The United Nations: Accomplishments and Prospects (Summer 1965): 484; Edward T. Rowe, “The Emerging Anti-Colonial Consensus in the United Nations,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 8, no. 3 (September 1964): 229.
41. Annette Baker Fox, “International Organization for Colonial Development,” World Politics 3, no. 3 (1951): 343.
42. UN General Assembly, Seventh Session, Resolution 67 (VII), “The Right of Peoples and Nations to Self-Determination,” December 20, 1952.
43. See Rowe, “Emerging Anti-Colonial Consensus,” for an analysis of the powers’ voting records at the United Nations during this time period. Rowe characterizes the United States as, along with New Zealand, having “the least pro-colonial records on an overall basis among the colonial powers.” At this moment, the colonial powers responsible for non-self-governing territories included Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The trust territories, defined as temporary mandates on the road to self-government, were administered by Australia, Belgium, France, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
44. While the status of many shifted over the next two decades, in 1946 US non-self-governing territories included Puerto Rico, Alaska, the Panama Canal Zone, Hawaii, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Philippines, and Guam. The US Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands included what are now called the Federated States of Micronesia, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Marshall Islands, and Palau. For an interesting discussion of US-trust territory politics, including the (exclusive) designation of the Pacific Island as a “strategic area” to provide greater control than ordinarily permitted under the UN Trusteeship system, see Harold Karan Jacobson, “Our ‘Colonial’ Problem in the Pacific,” Foreign Affairs 39, no. 1 (October 1960): 56–66.
45. Henry Heller, The Cold War and the New Imperialism: A Global History, 1945–2005 (New York: Monthly Review, 2006), 79. See also Fox, “International Organization,” 342.
46. Jacobson, “United Nations and Colonialism,” 40.
47. Mason Sears, Memorandum by the United States Representative on the Trusteeship Council, September 22, 1953, reprinted in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, United Nations Affairs (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1979), 1165.
48. Delegation from the US, United States in the United Nations, 21.
49. Jacobson, “United Nations and Colonialism,” 51.
50. Hollis W. Barber, “The United States vs. The United Nations,” International Organization 27, no. 2 (Spring 1973): 146.
51. Barber, “United States,” 146; Edward T. Rowe, “Financial Support for the United Nations: Evolution of Member Contributions, 1946–1969,” International Organization 26, no. 4 (Autumn 1972): 655.
52. Barber, “United States,” 148.
53. Emerson, “Colonialism,” 484–85.
54. Edward McWhinney, “Introduction and Procedural History of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples,” accessed in November 2013 from the website of the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law, www.un.org/law/avl. For works on the non-aligned movement see Peter Willets, The Non-Aligned Movement: The Origins of the Third World Alliance (New York: Nichols, 1978); A.W. Singham, ed., The Non-Aligned Movement in World Politics (Westport, CT: Lawrence & Hill, 1978); F. Stephen Larrabee, “The Soviet Union and the Non-Aligned,” World Today 32, no. 12 (December 1976): 467–75.
55. Emerson, “Colonialism,” 495; United Nations, General Assembly, Fifteenth Session, Resolution 1514 (XV), “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples,” December 14, 1960.
56. Seymour M. Finger, “A New Approach to Colonial Problems at the United Nations,” International Organization 26, no. 1 (Winter 1972): 143–44; Barber, “United States,” 151–52. Jacobson, “United Nations and Colonialism,” describes the Latin American role in the General Assembly in a similar vein: “The Latin American states have generally been more sensitive to the Cold War implications of the UN’s actions in this field and more responsive to US leadership” (44).
57. This effectively replaced the 1953 Protocol just one and a half years after it had received enough signatures to come into effect.
58. US House, Committee on Appropriations, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, Treasury-Post Office Departments and Executive Office Appropriations for 1963, 87th Cong., 2d sess., 22–25, 30, 31 February, 1, 2, 7, 8 March 1962, 283–84.
59. Anslinger’s position was extreme and the State Department in fact supported the Single Convention. His use of anticommunist fear-mongering rhetoric was typical Anslinger fare, and was rooted in his effort to retain his and the FBN’s authority at the helm of
drug control, and a genuine reluctance to retreat at all from what he saw as regulatory advances (in this case the Single Convention’s revision of the 1953 Protocol in allowing Chinese inclusion and extending the number of legal cultivators and exporters of opium). However, despite these changes, Anslinger did ultimately support the Single Convention. For a discussion of the State Department–Anslinger split and the enduring US influence on the final treaty, see Bewley-Taylor, United States and International Drug Control, 136–61.
60. US House, Appropriations for 1963, 285–86.
61. Quote in Bewley-Taylor, United States and International Drug Control, 80–81.
62. Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, Message from the President of the United States transmitting the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, open for signature at New York, March 30, 1961, to August 1, 1961, along with the final act of the United Nations conference at which the Convention was adopted (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1967), iii, vi; see also McAllister, Drug Diplomacy, 217.
63. US Senate, International Opium Protocol, 17–18.
64. William O. Walker, Opium and Foreign Policy: The Anglo-American Search for Order in Asia, 1912–1954 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 197.
65. US Senate, International Opium Protocol, 20. For more information on the embargo, see Shu Guang Zhang, Economic Cold War: America’s Embargo Against China and the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949–1963 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001).
66. In similar testimony before the House, the commissioner described Chinese efforts to sell opium as “perfectly ridiculous,” while simultaneously confirming that “Unquestionably a lot of this has disappeared into the illicit traffic” (US House, Appropriations for 1954, 302). A number of historians have documented the fundamental inaccuracy and political expediency of Anslinger’s allegations of Communist dope pushing. See, for example, Douglas Clark Kinder, “Bureaucratic Cold Warrior: Harry J. Anslinger and Illicit Narcotics Traffic,” Pacific Historical Review 50, no. 2 (May, 1981): 169–91; Douglas Clark Kinder and William O. Walker III, “Stable Force in a Storm: Harry J. Anslinger and United States Narcotic Foreign Policy, 1930–1962,” Journal of American History 72, no. 4 (March 1986): 908–27; McAllister, Drug Diplomacy; Jeremy Kuzmarov, The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009), 38. For this ongoing tactic vis-à-vis US anticommunist foreign policy, see Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).
67. Stuart Hall et al., Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order (Hong Kong: Macmillan Press, 1982), vii–viii.
68. On Cold War cultural paranoia see Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Richard M. Fried, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold War America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
69. US Senate, International Opium Protocol, 45.
70. Ibid., 38, 50. The chairman concluded the hearing by reminding his audience “there are many weapons that the Communists use. . . . We can have Pearl Harbors again in many ways. This is one of them if we are not alert to the terrific impact of this opium menace” (51).
71. A number of scholars have described the long history of American ideological depictions of drug addiction as a foreign, imported contagious disease. See especially David F. Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), and chapter 1 in Daniel Weimer, Seeing Drugs: Modernization, Counterinsurgency, and US Narcotics Control in the Third World, 1969–1976 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2011).
72. US House, Appropriations for 1954, 315–16.
73. “Article 1- No Title,” New York Times, January 29, 1953, 3.
74. John H. Thompson, “Number of Vet Dope Users in Prisons Grows,” Daily Defender, April 1, 1956, 24.
75. “Narcotics’ Use by Korea Yanks Worries ‘Brass’,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 9, 1953, B12.
76. US House, Appropriations for 1954, 299–300.
77. Richard H. Kuh, “A Prosecutor’s Thoughts Concerning Addiction,” Journal of Law, Criminology, and Police Science 52, no. 3 (September–October 1961): 322.
78. “Youth Forum Outlines Needs for Right Living,” Los Angeles Times, November 20, 1952, B1.
79. Lois L. Higgins, “The Status of Narcotic Addiction in the United States,” American Biology Teacher 16, no. 4 (April 1954): 94.
80. “Dope in Space Age Health Fair Topic,” Daily Defender (Chicago), March 21, 1960, A20.
81. Frederic Sondern, Jr., “We Must Stop the Crime that Breeds Crime!” Reader’s Digest 68 (June 1956): 21–26.
82. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (March 2005): 1249 [emphasis in the original].
83. Joel Rosch, “Crime as an Issue in American Politics,” in The Politics of Crime and Criminal Justice, eds. Erika Fairchild et al. (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1985), 27. For good overviews of the connection between crime, race, and American society, see Loïc Wacqant, “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration,” New Left Review 13 (January–February 2002): 41–60; Colin Dayan, The Story of Cruel and Unusual (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007); Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2009); Heather Ann Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar American History,” Journal of American History 97, no. 3 (December 2010): 703–34.
84. US House, Committee on Appropriations, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, Treasury-Post Office Departments Appropriations for 1962, 87th Cong., 1st sess., 16, 28 February, 1, 2, 6–10, 13 March 1961, 267.
85. “Resume of Hearings Conducted on June 12, 13, 14 by Attorney General Nathaniel. L. Goldstein, at the State Office Building, New York City, Investigation Pursuant to Chapter 528 of the Laws of 1951”; Vol. I–IV, 46–59; Branch Registries; Archives and Records Services; Registry Section; S-0441–0511; United Nations Archives, NY [UNANY].
86. “Degradation in New York,” Newsweek 37, June 25, 1951, 19–20. President Truman had dismissed General MacArthur in April 1951 over tactical disagreements in the Korean War.
87. “Narcotics: An Ever-Growing Problem,” Newsweek 37, June 11, 1951. 26.
88. US House, Committee on Appropriations, “Control of Narcotics, Marihuana, and Barbiturates,” 82nd Cong., 1st sess., 7, 14, and 17 April 1951, 40–41.
89. Harry J. Anslinger and William F. Tompkins, The Traffic in Narcotics (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1953), 166.
90. John C. McWilliams, The Protectors: Harry J. Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1930–1962 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990), 108. “Narcotics” was extended under the law to apply not simply to coca, opium, and their derivatives but also to barbiturates and marijuana. The Boggs Act did not distinguish between trafficking and possession, as Rep. Boggs explained: “It is not the intent of this legislation to affect a teen-ager or any such person who has possession of narcotics. But the gentleman also knows that if we try to make a distinction between possession and peddling, that we immediately open the law to all types of abuse.” See Richard J. Bonnie and Charles H. Whitebread II, “The Forbidden Fruit and The Tree of Knowledge: An Inquiry Into the Legal History of American Marijuana Prohibition,” Virginia Law Review 56, no. 6 (October 1970): 971–1203.
91. Alfred R. Lindesmith, “How to Stop the Dope Traffic,” The Nation 182 (April 21, 1956): 337–39. These were the only crimes for which mandatory minimum sentences existed, apart from a federal statute decreeing twenty-five years for armed robbery of the mails. US House, Committee on Appropriations, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, Treasury-Post Office Departments Appropriations for 1959, 85th Cong., 2d sess., 22–24 January, 3 February 1958, 125.
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92. US Treasury Department, Traffic in Opium . . . Year Ended December 31, 1950, 10.
93. “Control of Narcotics, Marihuana, and Barbiturates . . .,” 82nd Cong., 1951, 69.
94. McWilliams, Protectors, 115.
95. Stanley Meisler, “Federal Narcotics Czar,” The Nation, February 20, 1960.
96. In fact, according to a survey conducted by a committee convened by the president, “the size of the problem [was] considerably below that suggested by popular statements which have been made during recent years. The Committee feels that the problem has been somewhat exaggerated, though it does not wish to deprecate its qualitative aspects. This is particularly true with respect to the numbers of juvenile addicts; while it is reassuring to find that the total number is considerably smaller than it had been thought to be, the fact that any young persons have become involved is clearly a matter of concern.” “Revised Draft of Interim Report; Interdepartmental Committee on Narcotics,” November 28, 1955; File 0120–40, Background Material; 170–73–1; DEA; RG 170; NACP.
97. “Degradation in New York,” Newsweek 37, June 25, 1951, 19–20.
98. Mc Williams, Protectors, 10. In 1951, the government increased the FBN’s appropriation by $650,000 to $2.5 million and in 1956 it was increased by another $530,000 to $3.7 million.
99. US House, Committee on Appropriations, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, Treasury-Post Office Departments Appropriations for 1956, 84th Cong., 1st sess., 31 January, 1–4, 7–9, 14, 16, 18, 23 March, 1955, 189.
100. US House, Committee on Appropriations, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, Treasury-Post Office Departments Appropriations for 1958, 85th Cong., 1st sess., 25, 28–31 January, 1, 4–6, 22 February 1957, 355.
101. US House, Appropriations for 1963, 294–95.
102. US House, Appropriations for 1953, 304.
103. US House, Appropriations for 1958, 368.
104. US House, Appropriations for 1958, 355.
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