DdC

Whether you love or hate 1950s communist hunter Joe McCarthy, does it matter if he was an opiate addict?

McCarthy's life and legacy are back in the spotlight thanks to a new book by hyperconservative commentator and author Ann Coulter. The book, "Treason," not only defends McCarthy, but raises him as a hero.

I'm not really in a position to judge the merit of Coulter's arguments. I don't know a whole lot about McCarthy, and I haven't read all of "Treason."

I did, however, skim about 60 pages of the book in small chunks while loitering in various bookstores. I also checked the index for certain key words. I didn't find "morphine," "drug" or "Federal Bureau of Narcotics."

To be fair, I looked in more academic McCarthy biographies available at my local library, and I didn't find anything tying McCarthy to morphine there either.

But, different researchers have found support for the proposition that McCarthy regularly used morphine, refused to quit and was eventually given an unlimited supply of the drug by the head of the federal government's drug war. A good discussion of the evidence is presented in John C. McWilliams' biography of Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930-1962.

Anslinger, whose FBN was the predecessor of the DEA, first publicized the allegation in his book "The Murderers," published in 1961. Granted, any information from Anslinger must be taken with a grain of salt. He was a one-man propaganda machine whose influence on the drug war lives on today. When known facts didn't fit his ideology, Anslinger ignored them or manufactured his own.

But, his curious tale about a hardened morphine addict in the U.S. Congress has been confirmed by agents who worked under Anslinger, and the co-author of "The Murderers."

In his book, Anslinger details a confrontation with an unnamed congressman, after learning the congressman was a regular morphine user. It clearly wasn't just any congressman.

"He headed one of the most powerful committees of Congress. His decisions and statements helped to shape and direct the destiny of the United States and the free world," wrote Anslinger, like McCarthy, a dedicated anti-communist.

In Anslinger's account, he approached the lawmaker and berated him, saying the morphine habit was a "grave threat to the country." The lawmaker remained unmoved, replying that he would go to the street for drugs if Anslinger interfered with his supply.

"And if it winds up in a public scandal and that should hurt this country, I wouldn't care," the legislator said, according to Anslinger.

Anslinger reports relenting and offering the elected official all the drugs he needed, so long as the politician didn't go to the street, thereby risking a greater scandal. Anslinger "thanked God for relieving me of my burden," when the lawmaker died.

After Anslinger's own death, researchers interviewed Anslinger's associates and pinpointed McCarthy as the likely identity of the unnamed politician.

It is generally believed that alcoholism killed McCarthy. The official cause of death was acute hepatitis. McCarthy Biographer David Oshinski says that years before his death in 1957, McCarthy downed a quart of liquor a day. Near the end of his life, McCarthy appeared "in a trance, unable to recognize familiar faces or form intelligible words."

Anslinger's biographer notes that morphine was sometimes prescribed as a treatment for alcoholics in the era.

Should Ann Coulter care about any of this? Given her views on drugs and drug users, I think so. A few years ago, Coulter addressed drug policy reform in one of her columns. She was not sympathetic.

"The most superficially appealing argument for drug legalization is that people should be allowed to do what they want with their own bodies, even if it ruins their lives," she wrote. "Except that's not true. Back on Earth, see, we live in a country that will not allow people to live with their own stupid decisions. Ann has to pay for their stupid decisions."

By Coulter's own definition, McCarthy made some stupid decisions. Do these decisions impact her description of him as a hero? Did they impact his work? Was it wise for Anslinger to let McCarthy live with his own stupid decisions? Would the world be a better place if Anslinger had busted McCarthy and treated him like a common criminal?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I hope Coulter might consider them next time someone asks her how society should deal with drug users who refuse to quit.

Stephen Young is a freelance writer and an editor with DrugSense Weekly. He promises to actually purchase "Treason" and read the whole thing if Ann Coulter agrees to buy a copy of his book "Maximizing Harm: Losers and Winners in the Drug War"
( <a href="http://www.maximizingharm.c om" target="_blank">http ://www.maximizingharm.c om</A> ), read it in its entirety and then write a column about it.

<a href="http://www.drugsense.org/dsw/2003/ds03.n308.html#sec6" target="_blank">Sen. Joseph McCarthy: Unrepentant Junkie?</a>
By Stephen Young

******************** ********** Related ******************** **********
<a href="http://www.addall.com/Browse/Detail/0874133521.html" target="_blank">Prot ectors: Harry J. Anslinger & the Federal Bureau of Narcotics</a> , 1930-1962
ISBN: 0874133521 - Hardcover - List Price: $40.00
Publisher: University of Delaware Press - Published Date: 08/01/1990
Author: John C. McWilliams

E-mail: jcm6@psu.edu
Office: 814-234-2773
Work address:
Pennsylvania State University
877 Bayberry Drive
State College, PA 16801



<a href="http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Ludlow/madness.html" target="_blank">Lyca eum Reefer Madness</a>

<a href="http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Ludlow/NYT/index.html" target="_blank">New York Times cannabis-related articles</a>
published in the late 1920s and 1930s in The New York Times and concerning cannabis.

<a href="http://www.hempforus.com/471.htm" target="_blank">Harr y J. Anslinger Collection Guide</a>
Historical Collections and Labor Archives, Pattee Library, The Pensylvania State University:

<a href="http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread8050.shtml" target="_blank">Drug War Trivia</a>

<a href="http://www.consortiumnews.c om/2001/030401a.html" target="_blank">The Consortium for Independent Journalism, Inc.</a>

<a href="http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/mccart.htm" target="_blank">Witc h Hunts, Pledges, and Blacklists</a>

The war on drugs has always served a political agenda. During the Red Scare in the early 1950s, Sen. Joseph McCarthy blamed Red China for peddling heroin to weaken the moral fiber of the United States and the Free World.

Ironically, it appears that McCarthy himself developed a nasty little addiction to morphine while leading the anticommunist crusade. But his dope wasn't coming from Maoist China. According to Ladies Home Journal, that bastion of left-wing political correctness, McCarthy was getting his daily morphine script from Harry Anslinger, longtime head of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

<a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodfuelfiberfarmace uticals/message/251" target="_blank">Ansl inger & Walters: Fiction to Legislation</a>



<a href="http://www.nasen.org/sandiego/aidswar5.htm" target="_blank">In Harm's Way</a>
--Lisa Moore analyzes harm reduction and the War on Drugs in communities of color

Likewise, the Chinese Exclusion Act was, in part, justified by racist concerns about Asian opium smokers and male Asian involvement with white women. Marijuana smoking was also said to drive Mexican American to crime and to acts of depravity. Harry Anslinger, who was the director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930-1962 continued this war on people of color while fighting his drug war. Some of his favorite targets were jazz muscians and one of his political triumphs was in making marijuana smoking a felony. Anslinger was a close colleague of Joseph McCarthy and supplied the senator with morphine, ostensibly to protect him from communist blackmailers.

These early drug wars were, in large part, motivated by desires to control people of color, communists, musicians and others who were "undermining the fiber of U.S. life." Drug policy also has a long legacy intermingling with foreign policy. Our government, while decrying the effects of drugs on Americans and urging citizens to "Just Say No," has a long history of using drugs as part of foreign diplomacy. Drugs have been one of the many currencies of foreign policy, as evidenced in part by the interface of drugs with immigration policies at the turn of the century, the CIA's utilization of opium distribution networks during the Vietnam war, and Oliver North's drugs for guns Iran-Contra scam, North and his colleagues were accused of directly involving themselves in the drug trade while, ironically, in order to further the ends of the war on drugs, other military personnel have been sent to countries like Peru, Columbia and Bolivia to eliminate drugs and to put the growers out of business. In this century, drug policy has served to extend the long arm of U.S. manifest destiny into the Western hemisphere.

A publication of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
Correspondence address: B.P. 18, 95430 Auvers-sur-Oise, France
Chapter Twelve: <a href="http://www.iran-e-azad.org/english/special/chap12.html" target="_blank">CHAR ACTER ASSASSINATION</a>
Character assassination, a particularly repugnant political tactic, has been employed extensively throughout history. A recent extreme case in contemporary American history, McCarthyism, has since been condemned by the public and political circles, both Democrat and Republican. Unfounded charges were leveled to discredit certain artists and public figures, in a hysteric atmosphere. Slander, distortion, fabrication and sophistry are the tools of the trade. Hitler's propaganda minister, Goebbles, believed that the bigger the lie, the more convincing. Machiavelli
taught that the ends justify the means. Both "principles" are applied in character assassination.



<a href="http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/s041001.html" target="_blank">THE 'LOSS' OF CHINA, McCARTHY, KOREA, AND THE NEW RIGHT</a>

THE ROLE OF McCARTHYISM
Much has been made of the evils of something called "McCarthyism" – apparently America's close brush with "fascism" and something always to be expected from the Right.

<a href="http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/1.htm" target="_blank">THE LAST CIRCLE</a> By Carol Marshall

Chapter 7: Murchison was an ardent supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist crusade. McCarthy came often to the exclusive hotel that Murchson opened in La Jolla, California, in the early 1950's. So did Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover.

<a href="http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/303a.htm" target="_blank">Ain' t Nobody's Business If You Do</a>
Peter McWilliams

Who would have thought we'd have a czar in the same Washington that gave us Joseph McCarthy, the Bay of Pigs, and the cold war?

In 1944, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and the New York Academy of Medicine released the La Guardia Marijuana Report, which, after seven years of research, claimed that marijuana caused no violence and had certain positive medical benefits. In a rage, Anslinger banned all marijuana research in the United States. He attacked La Guardia vehemently. In 1948, however, Anslinger dropped the "marijuana causes violence" argument. He made, in fact, a
complete about-face when he testified before Congress in 1948 that marijuana made one so tranquil and so pacifistic that the communists were making abundant supplies available to the military, government employees, and key citizens. Marijuana was now part of a Communist Plot aimed at weakening America's will to fight.

That this statement was a complete reversal of his congressional testimony only eleven years before went unnoticed. Anti-communism put Anslinger back in the public eye, along with his good friend Senator Joseph McCarthy. It was later revealed by Anslinger in his book, The Murderers, and also by Dean Latimer in his book, Flowers in the Blood, that Anslinger supplied morphine to McCarthy on a regular basis for years. Anslinger's justification? To prevent the communists from blackmailing such a fine American just because he had a "minor drug problem."

<a href="http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/tban.htm" target="_blank">Citi zen Kane</a>

In the 1920's and 1930's Cannabis hemp was transformed into Marijuana like Jekyll into Hyde. Newspaper owner/publisher Willian Randolph Hearst was one of the leaders in the drive to make cannibis illegal. Hearst, through his newspaper's articles, brought the word 'Marijuana' into the
English language, associating it sensationally with crime and violence.

Coincidentally, Hearst owned the Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division and millions of acres of prime timber land that would have lost their value had the 'hemp decorticating machine' that had just been invented been allowed to be widely distributed. This new invention greatly simplified the
hemp-to-paper process.

Another player in this bit of history is Pierre DuPont, the paint maker. DuPont held patent rights to the sulphuric- acid wood-pulp paper process. And DuPont's synthetic petrochemicals had replaced hemp seed oil and hemp cordage. (With nylon rope, Patented in 1937.)

Of course these extremely rich men had connections in government, and had the Marijuana Tax Act passed in 1937. To this day, cigarette, pharmaceutical and petroleum industries attempt to control the debate. It's not just the fact that people smoke marijuana that bothers them, it's the
economic threat.

It is easier to corner the market on something artificial than on something that grows like a weed.

It is a battle between the synthetic and the organic.

<a href="http://www.paulkrassner.com " target="_blank">The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race</a>
Paul Krassner (Seven Stories)
<a href="http://www.paulkrassner.com/vonnegut.htm" target="_blank">Fore word by Kurt Vonnegut</a>

<a href="http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/93/49/04_3_m.html" target="_blank">Toba cco, aspirin and caffeine are drugs that will not deny you your Pell Grant.</a>



Hearst even got Anslinger -buddy and morphine supplier to Senator Joseph McCarthy - to publish that "If ... Frankenstein came face to face with the monster marijuana he would drop dead of fright," and that, "(Marijuana) is reducing thousands of boys to criminal insanity."

<a href="http://www.padrak.com/alt/BUSHBOOK_2.html" target="_blank">GEOR GE BUSH: THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY - PART 2 of 8</a>



In those days, Wisconsin's drunken Senator Joseph R. McCarthy was making a circus-like crusade against communist influence in Washington. McCarthy attacked liberals and leftists, State Department personnel, politicians, and Hollywood figures. He generally left unscathed the Wall Street and London strategists who donated Eastern Europe and China to communist dictatorship -- like George Bush, their geopolitics was beyond left and right.

Prescott Bush had no public ties to the notorious Joe McCarthy, and appeared to be neutral about his crusade. But the Wisconsin senator had his uses. Joe McCarthy came into Connecticut three times that year to campaign for Bush and against the Democrats. Bush himself made charges of "Korea, Communism and Corruption" into a slick campaign phrase against Benton, which then turned up as a national Republican slogan.

The response was disappointing. Only small crowds turned out to hear Joe McCarthy, and Benton was not hurt. McCarthy's pro-Bush rally in New Haven, in a hall that seated 6,000, drew only 376 people. Benton joked on the radio that "200 of them were my spies."



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Richard M. Nixon

<a href="http://www.borowitzreport.c om/archive_rpt.asp?rec= 630" target="_blank">SMAL L CHILDREN MAY BE TRAUMATIZED BY ANN COULTER, PSYCHOLOGIST SAYS</a>

<a href="http://www.bushwatch.org" target="_blank">Bush Watch</a>

<a href="http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/3820722.htm" target="_blank">Scie ntist's death haunts family</a> (Merc News Complete Article)

excerpted: The death in 1953 of a government scientist, Frank Olson, in a fall from a New York hotel window, is one of the most notorious cases in CIA history.

The documents show that two of the key officials involved in the decision to withhold that information were White House aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, today the nation's vice president and secretary of Defense.

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<a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodfuelfiberfarmace uticals/message/248" target="_blank">Bush Escalates Ganjawar on Doctors</a>

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jamf

Yeah, thats the word on the street that he was a morphine addict. Wouldnt be surprised if he lost his morphine connection and turned to alcohol.

Its ironic that people will view him differently if they know he was an opiate addict instead of a drunk.

Antediluvian

No ,unfortunately people will view him pretty much the same................ .as dead.

You cannot change history ,only perhaps the way it's remembered. And to what end ?

You could look at Hitler as an example. Some germans only remember him as the person who created jobs and strengthened their society. Depends on your prespective really ,doesn't it.


...........I bevieve he's dead too by the way.


How about today............... ....who are the little Hitlers/McCarthys of today ,not 50 years ago.

We can only discuss history ,Whereas (in some countries) people can still effect change.....in real time.

DdC

Those who refuse to learn from the past mistakes of History,
Are braindead sluts bound to repeat them...
DdC

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