Lee compares Holder’s raids to the “Reefer Madness” campaign of the 1930s.
“Marijuana’s illegality has long been a useful vehicle for Machiavellian public officials,” Lee writes.
“In the mid-1930s, when Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, realized his entire department was on the chopping block because of Depression-era budget cuts, he launched the Reefer Madness campaign to convince Congress and the American people that a terrible menace threatened the country, one that required a well-funded antinarcotics program. He demonized marijuana to preserve and expand his bureaucratic fiefdom.”
Lee argues that this is not dissimilar from what Holder did.
“Backed into a corner, Holder drew from a similar playbook as Anslinger, underscoring once again that marijuana prohibition has little to do with the actual effects of the herb and everything to do with cynical bureaucratic self-interest,” Lee writes.
