The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, Pub. 238, 75th Congress, 50 Stat. 551 was a United
States Act that placed a tax on the sale of cannabis. The H.R. 6385 act was
drafted by Harry Anslinger and introduced by Rep. Robert L. Doughton of
North Carolina, on April 14, 1937. The seventy-fifth Congress held hearings on
April 27, 28, 29th, 30th, and May 4, 1937. Upon the congressional hearings
confirmation, the H.R. 6385 act was redrafted as H.R. 6906 and introduced
with House Report 792. The Act is now commonly referred to, using the modern
spelling, as the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act. This act was overturned in 1969 in Leary
v. United States, and was repealed by Congress the next year.
Background Regulations and restrictions on the sale
of cannabis sativa as a drug began as early as 1860. The head of the Federal
Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger, argued that, in the 1930s, the FBN had
noticed an increase of reports of people smoking marijuana. He had also, in 1935,
received support from president Franklin D. Roosevelt for adoption of the Uniform
State Narcotic Act, state laws that included regulations of cannabis.
The total production of hemp fiber in the United States had in 1933 decreased
to around 500 tons/year. Cultivation of hemp began to increase in 1934 and 1935
but production remained at very low volume compared with other fibers.
Some parties have argued that the aim of the Act was to reduce the size of the
hemp industry largely as an effort of businessmen Andrew Mellon, Randolph
Hearst, and the Du Pont family. The same parties have argued that with the
invention of the decorticator, hemp had become a very cheap substitute for the
paper pulp that was used in the newspaper industry. These parties argue
that Hearst felt that this was a threat to his extensive timber holdings.
Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury and the wealthiest man in America, had
invested heavily in the Du Pont family's new synthetic fiber, nylon, a fiber that
was competing with hemp. In 1916, United States Department of Agriculture chief
scientists Jason L. Merrill and Lyster H. Dewey created a paper, USDA Bulletin
No. 404 "Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material", in which they concluded that
paper from the woody inner portion of the hemp stem broken into pieces, so
called hemp hurds, was "favorable in comparison with those used with pulp
wood". Dewey and Merrill believed that hemp hurds were a suitable source for
paper production. However, later research does not confirm this. The
concentration of cellulose in hemp hurds is only between 32% and 38%. Manufacture
of paper with hemp as a raw material has shown that hemp lacks the qualities
needed to become a major competitor to the traditional paper industry, which
still uses wood or waste paper as raw material. In 2003, 95% of the hemp hurds
in the EU were used for animal bedding, almost 5% were used as building
material. The DuPont Company and many industrial historians dispute a link
between nylon and hemp. They argue that the purpose of developing the nylon was
to produce a fiber that could compete with silk and rayon.
The American Medical Association opposed the act because the tax was imposed on
physicians prescribing cannabis, retail pharmacists selling cannabis, and
medical cannabis cultivation/manufacturing. The AMA
proposed that cannabis instead be added to the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act. The
bill was passed over the last-minute objections of the American Medical
Association. Dr. William Creighton Woodward, legislative counsel for the
AMA objected to the bill on the grounds that the bill had been prepared in
secret without giving proper time to prepare their opposition to the bill. He
doubted their claims about marijuana addiction, violence, and overdosage; he
further asserted that because the word Marijuana was largely unknown at the
time, the medical profession did not realize they were losing cannabis.
"Marijuana is not the correct term... Yet the burden of this bill is placed
heavily on the doctors and pharmacists of this country."
The bill was passed on the grounds of different reports and hearings.
Anslinger also referred to the International Opium Convention that from
1928 included cannabis as a drug not a medicine, and that all states had some
kind of laws against improper use of cannabis. Today, it is generally
accepted that the hearings included incorrect, excessive or unfounded
arguments. By 1951, however, new justifications had emerged, and the
Boggs Act that superseded the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed. In August
1954, the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 was enacted, and the Marihuana Tax Act
was included in Subchapter A of Chapter 39 of the 1954 Code.
Operation of the act Shortly after the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act
went into effect on October 1, 1937, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Denver
City police arrested Moses Baca for possession and Samuel Caldwell for
dealing. Baca and Caldwell's arrest made them the first marijuana convictions
under U.S. federal law for not paying the marijuana tax. Judge Foster Symes
sentenced Baca to 18 months and Caldwell to four years in Leavenworth
Penitentiary for violating the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act.
After the Philippines fell to Japanese forces in 1942, the Department of
Agriculture and the US Army urged farmers to grow fiber hemp. Tax stamps
for cultivation of fiber hemp began to be issued to farmers. Without any change
in the Marihuana Tax Act, 400,000 acres were cultivated with hemp between 1942
and 1945. The last commercial hemp fields were planted in Wisconsin in
1957. In 1967, President Johnson's Commission
on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice opened, "The Act raises an
insignificant amount of revenue and exposes an insignificant number of
marijuana transactions to public view, since only a handful of people are
registered under the Act. It has become, in effect, solely a criminal law,
imposing sanctions upon persons who sell, acquire, or possess marijuana."
In 1969 in Leary v. United States, part of the Act was ruled to be
unconstitutional as a violation of the Fifth Amendment, since a person seeking
the tax stamp would have to incriminate him/herself. In response the Congress
passed the Controlled Substances Act as Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse
Prevention and Control Act of 1970. The 1937 Act was repealed by the 1970 Act.
Etymology Although the spelling "marijuana" is
more common in current usage, the actual spelling used in the Marihuana Tax Act
is "marihuana". "Marihuana" was the spelling most commonly used in Federal
Government documents at the time. In addition, the Marihuana Tax Act of
1937 legitimized the use of the term "marijuana" as a label for hemp and
cannabis plants and products in the US and around the world. Prior to 1937,
"marijuana" was slang; it was not included in any official dictionaries.
The word marijuana is probably of Mexican origin. Mexico itself had passed
prohibition for export to the US in 1925, following the International Opium
Convention. In the years leading up to the tax act, it was in common use in the
United States, "smoked like tobacco", and called "ganjah", or "ganja".
Considerable issues existed involving illegal immigration of Mexicans into the
United States, and the one thing Mexicans were identified as being in
possession of was cannabis or marijuana. The southern border states called for
action. After the enactment, illegal immigrants and US citizens could be
arrested for possession of cannabis. The La Guardia Committee Report
The only authoritative voice that opposed Anslinger's campaign against
cannabis was the one of the Mayor of New York Fiorello La Guardia, who appointed
in 1938 a commission of investigation, and in 1944 strongly objected to
Anslinger's campaign with the famous La Guardia Committee.
See also Legal history of cannabis in the United
States Hemp for Victory a United States
Department of Agriculture war-time film encouraging farmers to grow hemp
suitable for U.S. Navy hawser requirements.
Reefer Madness, propagandistic film of 1936.
La Guardia Committee, the first in depth study into the effects of smoking
marijuana. References
Further reading The Puzzle of the Social Origins of the
Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 John F. Galliher, Allynn Walker Social Problems,
Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 367–376 Samuel R. Caldwell, First Person Jailed
for the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. External links
Full Text of the Marihuana Tax Act as passed in 1937
Marijuana Tax Stamps: History of the Marihuana Tax Act with photos of
government issued tax stamps Full transcripts of the congressional
hearings for the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937