America’s Drug Czar Was Not Lenient on Drug Users Who Were Not his Personal Pals
Anslinger was not lenient on other drug users. As seen above, the racist Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics seriously hated jazz. He also believed that marijuana made people insane. Jazz musicians habitually smoked the stuff, and their music sounded freakish to his ears. So he put two and two together, came up with nine, decided that jazz was proof that marijuana caused insanity, and targeted jazz musicians. He wrote his agents to: “prepare all cases in your jurisdiction involving musicians in violation of the marijuana laws. We will have a great national round-up arrest of all such persons in a single day“. When congressmen questioned his anti-musician vendetta, Anslinger reassured them that his crackdown focused not on: “the good musicians, but the jazz type“.
Jazz legend Billie Holiday was one of Anslinger’s main targets. As part of a seedy vendetta, he sent a black undercover agent, Jimmy Fletcher, to go after the singer. Fletcher got close enough to Holiday to bust her on a drug possession charge in 1947 that got her a year in prison. It also got her a felony record that limited the venues in which she could perform. In 1949, agent Fletcher once again busted Holiday on a possession charge after she was set up. Fletcher was assigned to Holiday for years. Anslinger kept after Holiday until her final breath. In 1959, as she lay dying of cirrhosis, her hospital room was raided. She was kept under police guard until she died.
