Alexandra Chasin's "Assassin of Youth," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Assassin of Youth: A Kaleidoscopic History of Harry J. Anslinger's War on Drugs by Alexandra Chasin.

The entry begins:

To play Anslinger, there has never been any question in my mind: Woody Harrelson actually looks like Harry J. Anslinger, and with his pro-pot politics, he would be perfect.

Harry J. Anslinger was commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from its founding in 1930 until his retirement in 1962. He was like the J. Edgar Hoover of drugs, but without the personality. Anslinger was a consummate bureaucrat, surviving both Republican and Democratic administrations. He passed federal legislation criminalizing marijuana, and supported harsh penalties (including compound penalties for repeat offenders), and mandatory minimum sentencing. And he had a particular genius for propaganda, forging indelible connections between certain drugs and certain racial and immigrant groups. In other words, he started the war on drugs, long before Nixon’s declaration in the 1960s and...[read on]

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My Book, The Movie: Assassin of Youth.

--Marshal Zeringue