Effective Drug Control: Toward A New Legal Framework

who acts bona fide and according to fair medical standards, may never give
an addict moderate amounts of drugs for self-administration in order to
relieve conditions incident to addiction. Enforcement of the tax demands no
such drastic rule, and if the Act had such scope it would certainly encounter
grave constitutional difficulties.” 138
The Court also expressed its view that drug addiction is a disease and that relieving the
“conditions incident to the addiction” may be medically appropriate. 139
In the short span between the Behrman and Linder decisions, however, the die
had been cast and the Court’s reversal had little effect on national drug enforcement
policy. The Treasury Department’s punitive enforcement practices were so firmly
established by 1925 that “few were willing to challenge Treasury’s actions politically or
in court, and the ruling had little real impact.” 140 The Linder decision’s irrelevance is
evidence of how embedded the “anti-drug” sentiment had become in American politics in
such a short period; the changing social and political climate allowed Congress to expand
its police powers to calm the passions of the time, laying a firm foundation for an era of
drug prohibition that continues to the present day.
DRUG PROHIBITION AND BUREAUCRATIC ENTRENCHMENT
Concerns about the constitutionality and wisdom of the Harrison Narcotic Act
continued throughout the 1920s. In 1928, however, the Supreme Court partly settled the
issue by specifically upholding the constitutionality of the Act. 141 By that time there was
a widespread national debate about alcohol prohibition, but apart from the continuing
controversy between the medical community and the federal government, there was
comparatively little national discussion about the Harrison Act.
Heavy enforcement of the Harrison Narcotic Act led to prison overcrowding,
however, and to calls for alternatives to imprisonment. By the late 1920s more federal
prisoners were being housed for Harrison Act violations than for any other class of
offense. 142 Representative Stephen G. Porter (R-PA), chair of the House Committee on
Foreign Affairs, who had emerged as a new leader in the fight against narcotics, took up
the idea of creating “federal narcotics farms” where drug addicts convicted under the
Harrison Act could be housed and treated for their addiction. President Coolidge signed
into law the Porter Narcotic Farm Act in 1929, which established one farm in Lexington,
Kentucky and another in Fort Worth, Texas. 143
The Porter Act of 1930
Following the success of his Narcotic Farm bill, Rep. Porter turned his attention
to the creation of a new government agency to take up enforcement of the Harrison Act.
It was Porter’s desire to have a separate drug enforcement agency both to streamline the
bureaucracy and to represent the United States at foreign conferences. In 1930 Congress
thereby established the Bureau of Narcotics, to be housed in the Treasury Department,
and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon appointed his nephew-in-law Harry J. Anslinger
as its first commissioner. 144 Although not fully realized at the time, Anslinger’s