Harris Isbell, research director at the Public Health Service hospital in Lexington, told the Kefauver committee that marijuana smokers were usually mildly intoxicated, bothered no one and developed no dependence, and that a link to violent or sexual crime was unproven. Harry Anslinger replied that over half of young heroin addicts had started on marijuana. He had rejected this stepping-stone claim in 1937; from 1951 it became the official reason to punish marijuana like heroin.[1]
Listed for context. No score change is recorded for United States here.
References
- The Marijuana Conviction: A History of Marijuana Prohibition in the United StatesRichard J. Bonnie, Charles H. Whitebread II · The Lindesmith Center · 1999 · chapter 11, pp. 213–215 · ISBN 1891385062
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.