Harry J. Anslinger Quotes

Marijuana is used largely in the form of cigarettes, which cause delusions and produce insanity and often lead to atrocities that only a drugsoaked mind could conceive. Marijuana is a sinister drug that has only recently become available and popular among the younger element

How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries, and deeds of maniacal insanity it [marijuana] causes each year ... can only be conjectured.

Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror.

Alcohol remained, and remains, a vital instrument of social control, used without any regard to its horrifying consequences in addiction and violence.

All drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with your self-esteem. They’re no good at all. But I’m not going to go around preaching against them.

Liquor will actually make a brute out of a Negro, causing him to commit unnatural crimes. The effect is the same on the white man, though the white man being further evolved it takes a longer time to reduce him to the same level.

Of course, the primary interest of the Bureau of Narcotics is the enforcement aspect. From this point of view it is very unfortunate that Doctors Allentuck and Bowman should have stated so unqualifiedly that the use of marijuana does not lead to physical, mental or moral deterioration

While the collateral consequences of drugs such as cocaine are indisputably severe, they are not unlike those which flow from the misuse of other, legal, substances

Here we have drug that is not like opium. Opium has all of the good of Dr. Jekyll and all the evil of Mr. Hyde. This drug is entirely the monster Hyde, the harmful effect of which cannot be measured. Some people will fly into a delirious rage, and they are temporarily irresponsible and may commit violent crimes. Other people will laugh uncontrollably. It is impossible to say what the effect will be on any individual. Those research men who have tried it have always been under control. They have always insisted upon that. … It is dangerous to the mind and body, and particularly dangerous to the criminal type, because it releases all of the inhibitions.

How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured... No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his lips, whether he will become a joyous reveller in a musical heaven, a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer...

I've never heard of anybody smoking a joint and going on a rampage. It makes you lie around on the floor and look at the ceiling. What's wrong with that?

Methamphetamine is a hideous drug. Meth makes a person become paranoid, violent, and aggressive - making them a serious threat to society and law enforcement. And maybe more importantly, meth users are a threat to their own children and families.

This is the way I look when I'm sober. That's enough to make a person drink, wouldn't you say?

I used to be a drinker but I found out how bad it was and I let it alone.

There are more old drunkards than old physicians.

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

I grew up around a lot of aggressive guys. My parents used to take me to AA meetings when I was very young. So I know aggression, I know insanity.

People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.

And as far as I'm concerned, it's like I say, drugs are not the problem. Other stuff is the problem.

People in the business will stay with you through drugs and alcohol and divorces and insanity and everything else, but you have a failure, pal, and they don't want to know nothing about you!

Drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with with your self-esteem. They're no good at all.

State Universities are breeding grounds, quite literally, for sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, homosexual behavior, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, alcoholism, and drug abuse.

Marijuana doesn’t produce dependence and it doesn’t produce overdose deaths.

Continuous use [of marijuana] leads directly to the insane asylum.

Liquor traffic is un-American, pro-German, crime-procuring, food-wasting, youth-corrupting, home-wrecking, [and] treasonable.