Saturday, May 24, 2014

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics

            The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was originally an agency of the United States Department of the Treasury.  The FBN was established by a congressional Act of June 14, 1930.  This act consolidated the functions and jurisdictions of the Federal Narcotics Control Board and the Narcotic Division.  Both of these agencies were brought into existence to take charge of law enforcement responsibilities that the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, 1914 and the Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act, 1922 (Also known as the Jones-Miller Act)

            The Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon appointed Harry J. Anslinger as the first Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner.  Interestingly, Anslinger's wife, Martha Kind Denniston was the niece of Secretary Mellon. With Anslinger’s leadership, the Bureau aggressively lobbied Congress to pass harsher laws on drug usage, possession, and smuggling.  Also the Federal Bureau of Narcotics is directly responsible for criminalizing cannabis by lobbying Congress to pass the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.  The Bureau also strengthened the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914.  Although the Bureau gave some attention to cannabis their main objective was combating opium and heroin smuggling.  

"The first Federal law-enforcement administrator to recognize the signs of a national criminal syndication and sound the alarm was Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics in the Treasury" (Ronald Reagan 1986)

            One of the bureau’s major victories in the fight against opium was the passing of the Opium Poppy Control Act of 1942.  To further the effect of this law, the FBN operated several offices overseas in France, Italy, Beirut, Thailand, and Turkey.  It was these offices that eventually brought down the French Connection from which a movie was based.  There were never more than 17 agents spread between these overseas offices.  Because they did not posses law enforcement powers in these foreign countries, those agents relied on local police to help them make arrests and not double cross them.


            When Anslinger retired in 1962, Henry Giordano was appointed to replace him as the FBN’s commissioner.  In 1968 Giordano successfully lobbied Congress to criminalize the possession of LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide).  Giordano went on as the commissioner until the FBN was merged with the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control to form the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) in 1968.  The BNDD is the direct predecessor to the most recent federal drug agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration.

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