Saturday, July 7, 2007
2007 MISSION STATEMENT
2007 SELF ASSESSMENT
Unfortunately, I had to make various cutbacks. I was forced to step back from working as a staff writer for the Echo as well as working with OCTV. As hard as these decisions were to make, they had to be made. As a man, a student, a husband and a father, I am not as free as most others to dedicate a large portion of my time to various activities, regardless of how much I would prefer otherwise.
When all was said and done, I came out scathed, but a better man. While it was difficult - and even hurt at time - it was a semester well worth the trouble.
Thank God for Olivet College. I'm not at all sure I could have managed to make it through anywhere else.
2007 ACADEMIC WRITING
Learning Outcomes demonstrated by this exhibit: |
1. Research
2. APA citation |
This project was required for one of my political science classes. The topic had to be a relatively obscure law and the public policy process it went through. |
I was able to learn more about the public policy process, the champions and advocates of various bills, and the difficulty (or ease) of getting a specific bill to pass given the stealth of the statesman or even the susceptibility of public opinion.
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This exhibit reflects my best work in the areas noted above.
___JTB___
FROM FREEDOM TO PROHIBITION
On the Unforeseen Consequences of the
By, Jeremiah Bannister
When first told that I was responsible for writing a twelve-page paper dealing with public policy, I figured that it would be in my best interest, for convenience sake, to deal with more recent public policies that were well known, controversial, and not lacking in accessible information. After considering the matter for a few days I decided that going this route was not the path I wanted to take. The last ten years of my life had been spent studying well known policies such as the New Deal, the Great Society, abortion laws, the Patriot ACT, and many others. Instead, I wanted research a relatively unknown public policy that, while being relatively obscure, had major ramifications on future public policy.
Little did I know that I would find myself researching a public policy enacted in 1914 which received virtually no discussion in the Congress and absolutely no mention whatsoever in the media. The more I read about this policy, the more I became aware that public policies can be as far reaching in their effect as they are subtle in their being put into place. This policy, in my estimation, has had massive consequences, both seen and unseen. I believe that this policy was the first step on a slippery slope that has resulted in (amongst many other things) an erosion of personal freedom, the creation of large and intrusive bureaucracies, an extremely dangerous black market, increased crime rates, and an overpopulated prison system. The public policy I am speaking of is the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act (HNTA) of 1914.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
In “
Enter the industrial revolution. This posed Americans with many problems, not least of which was the diversity of foreign drugs coming into the country. Another factor brought on by this revolution was the breakdown of cultural norms due to the decentralization of the community. People began moving from the countryside to the city. This created an entirely new demographic which could not provide an adequate regularity concerning social and cultural norms.
ADVOCATES OFTEN MAKE FOR STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
The early 1900’s was a time of vast reform in
THE FOREIGN TRADE FACTOR
The early years of the 20th century saw a growing interest in opening up otherwise closed foreign markets. At the top of the list was
Mike Gray, author of “Drug Crazy: How We God Into This Mess & How We Can Get Out,” writes that this was meant to “pull the rug out from under the British, who had created the problem in the first place.” According to Gray, the British East India Company had been forcing
THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY FACTOR
The medical community was relatively small at the turn of the century. Cures for ailments were hard to come by, yet the need for this was certainly not in want. The market for people in need of medical assistance became a serious issue during and after the Industrial revolution. Not only were accidents and injuries becoming more common, but so was depression.
The problem facing the medical community was that the most doctors could normally do was to prescribe substances which simply made their patients “feel better” rather than actually curing the problem. Of course, the physicians could do the exact same thing. Technically the grocery store manager up the road could do the exact same thing as the physician and pharmacist. The reason for this was that drugs such as those containing opium were completely legal in the
American pharmacists and physicians saw the increase in drug use and dependency as being favorable forces in pushing legislation regulating drug use. The medical community also took advantage of the fact that
THE TEMPERANCE FACTOR
During this time there was a very powerful religious movement known as the Temperance Movement. This movement was primarily made up of Methodists, Quakers, Baptists, and Congregationalists. Temperance advocates also had members from among the Pentecostals (i.e. Charles Grandison Finney), the Mormons, and the liberal neo-orthodox. Interestingly, many of these forces were also behind the abolition movement of the nineteenth century.
The years following the Industrial Revolution marked a change in the way Americans perceived the saloon. What once was a middle class meeting place had become in the eyes of many a den of robbers, thieves, drunks, prostitutes, and racial minorities. Some theorists also believe that this was used by Protestants to retain power over newly arriving Roman Catholic immigrants.
THE INTERNATION OPIUM CONVENTION
The U.S. State Department had been pushing for an international convention dealing with the opium issue and international trade. In 1909, the
While the convention was not officially implemented by the
The
THE PROHIBITIONIST JUGGERNAUT
The
Wright was a graduate of
While with the State Department he worked on the opium crisis. He began traveling from city to city in order to see just how widespread the opium issue had become. In a March 12, 1911, edition of the
Mike Gray claims that this was nothing more than spin put out by a man on a crusade. He insists that the average addict at the turn of the century were middle-aged Southern women addicted to laudanum, an opium-alcohol mix, rather than the opium fiends described by Wright. He went on to say that vast amount of users were using it as medication for pain. Furthermore, Gray says that the evidence indicates that addiction had been on the decline after 1906 due to the Pure Food and Drug Act which required companies to label their product with active ingredients.
Either way, Wright won the day. Regardless of a British report indicating that opium addiction was no worse than alcoholism, Wright managed to get what he needed. He convinced the nations involved of what is now known as Resolution 5 which required all signatories to begin establishing regulations against opium, its derivatives, manufacturing, and sale. Having gained this victory, knowing the long-term ramifications of this resolution, he became what Gray described as a “one-man
Regardless of his success, he certainly had hurdles to overcome, most importantly was the need for a national police force. It did not take him long to realize how difficult this would be given the existence of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In “The American Disease: Origins of Narcotics Control” David Musto quotes Wright as saying that getting his prohibitionist legislation through Congress was “a difficult business… [because] the Constitution is constantly getting in the way.”
It did not take long though before Wright saw a crack in the system. The Supreme Court had ruled in Fensenheld v.
SECRETARY OF STATE & INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS
Then Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan had joined with Wright on the crusade against drugs.
The Secretary of State eventually ousted Wright after he smelled liquor on Wrights breathe one too many times. Turns out, while Wright was on a crusade against opium addiction, he was becoming an addict to rum. Wright never returned to his position. He later left for
LOSING THE
While Wright may have lost his place at the head of the Prohibitionist table, his works continued to win the day. The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, named after the Congressman who pushed it through the Congress, Francis Burton Harrison (D-NY), actually was written by Wright. The HNTA was approved on December 17, 1914, with little debate or discussion.
Congress thought that the bill was relatively harmless and that believed that it would only mandate everyone involved in the drug trade to purchase a license and keep a complete sales record. The little amount of debate that took place on the floor revolved around the moral issue, rather, it focused on the need to implement the Hague agreement. Evidence of how low-profile this bill was considered to be is the fact that the New York Times,
CONSEQUENCES: UNEXPECTED v. UNINTENDED
The passage of this bill brought with it a series of unexpected consequences. The medical profession had backed the passage of this bill, knowing the power and profit it would give their profession, but had no clue as to what one single word in the Act would do. The word: Only. As Mike Gray points out, “Although the medical profession had largely been brought around in support of the act, they were in for a rude awakening. Hamilton Wright had installed a couple of land mines in the bill, and the trip wire was hidden in a clause that the doctors thought was supposed to protect them. There was one extra word in the sentence. A physician could prescribe narcotics ‘in the course of his professional practice only.’ The interpretation of this phrase was left to the Treasury Department, and to the revenue agents, who determined that giving dope to an addict was not ‘professional practice.’ It was simply feeding a bad habit- not only immoral, but now illegal.”
In fact, it appeared that even the Surgeon General of the
FINALLY GETTING AROUND THE CONSTITUTION
Wright had been trying to overcome the Constitutional hurdle for many years. So when he drafted the HNTA he had learned a thing or two. He knew that it would have to be put together as a tax act if it were to have any legs. He had many setbacks but, as any good politician would do, he used these to his advantage. He worded it in such a way that it would pass muster with virtually no discussion. It appeared relatively innocent as it was shrouded with good intentions.
All of this aside, it did not take long before it was in the courts. In 1916, the Supreme Court heard the first case dealing with the new tax act. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., believed that the act was unconstitutional. The Court voted seven-to-two in favor of a doctor who had sold narcotic prescriptions to a drug addict. It was upon this verdict that other doctors, pharmacists, and drug addicts who had been convicted of crime under the tax act were let free.
Rufus King, in his book, “The Drug Hang-Up: America’s Fifty-Year Folly,” reports that the Narcotics Division used strong-arm tactics against those in the medical community in order to force them to comply with the least amount of public knowledge. One tactic they used was to indict people, 35,000 in two-years time, without bringing them to court. King argues that this would coerce the medical community to comply with the Narcotics Division interpretation of the act without a verdict or interpretation from the Court.
It was not long before the Treasury had found a case that would cause the Court, and public opinion, to side with them. In 1919, the Treasury found a man who had been selling narcotics for $0.50 to any and all comers without any examination or sales record. This was the slam-dunk case the Treasury had been hoping for. The Treasury prosecuted the man as if he were the run-of-the-mill pharmacist and called on the Court to adopt an understanding of the tax act that was more in line with their own. In Webb et al. v.
THE ENFORCERS
Since 1914, federal drug enforcement agencies have gone through quite an evolution. What began in 1914 as the Bureau of Internal Revenue became known as the US Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, in 1973. The fifty-nine years between the two had witnessed a change in name, as well as moderate changes in responsibility, 8 times. The DEA began as a department within the Treasury. It later came under the mast of the Department of Health Education and Welfare, the Department of Justice, the Executive Office of the President, back to the Department of the Treasury, only to return back to the Department of Justice. The Department also works closely with U.S. Customs Service.
The annual cost of the DEA is staggering. The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) says that the federal government spent over $20,000,000,000.00 on the drug-war during fiscal year 2005. According to ONDCP, the federal government spends over $600 per second in their crusade against drugs. The DEA admits to a cost of operations at $2,415,000,000.00 for fiscal year 2006. They operate with 10,891 total employees, 5,320 of which are special agents.
Cities and States are also actively involved in the drug war. According to the
The DEA has created Mobile Enforcement Teams (MET) that work with local and state agencies in cracking down on drugs. The DEA boasts of having had 13 MET deployments in the State of
The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) is based upon trafficking trends. The districts currently included in Michigan HIDTA accounts for 60% of
Since the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act we have seen an alarming amount of continued regulation. Here is a list of the most important acts and amendments in drug war history since 1914:
- The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 affected marijuana in the same way as the HNTA had affected narcotics.
- The Food and Drug Cosmetic Act of 1938 was radical in that it gave the FDA complete power over the drug issue. This gave them the power to define what a drug is, establish which are permitted for prescription, and safety requirements.
- The Boggs Amendment to the HNTA (1951) established mandatory minimums for narcotic violations.
- The Drug Abuse Control Amendments (DACA) of 1965 places severe restrictions on the use of amphetamines, LSD, barbiturates, etc.
- The 1966 Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act allowed for rehabilitation as an alternative to jail time for those addicted to narcotics.
- The Analogue (Designer Drug) Act of 1986 makes use of a substance with similar effects and structure to existing illicit drugs illegal. This was specifically damaging to MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy.
1. Ted Gottfried, Should Drugs Be Legalized?.
2. David Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotics Control.
3. Mike Gray, Drug Crazy: How we got into this mess & how we can get out.
4. Douglas Husak, Legalize This! The Case for Decriminalizing Drugs.
5. Steven Duke
8. http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov
12. http://www.drugwarfacts.org
NARRATIVE
This project was one of the more exciting, and interesting, assignments I have had to do. My choice of this particular public policy was on account of both its obscurity as well as the far reaching, and grossly overlooked, affect this particular policy has had on America and specifically the American legal system.
2007 RESUME
| Phone 269-317-1263 jbannister@olivetcollege.edu |
Jeremiah Bannister
Objective | To host a weekend talk-show on 95.3 FM, WBCK. |
Education | 2006-current Major: Jourmalism Minor: Political Science Key Courses: · Writing and Rhetoric II · Basic Reporting · Introduction to Broadcast Journalism · Introduction to Communication · Introduction to Mass Communication · State and Local Government · American Foreign Policy · 2 semesters of Radio Practicum Experience: · I host the weekly Paleo Radio program on WOCR, 89.7 FM. This involves show prep, managing the board, taking callers, and writing material. · I Co-host the weekly television program, Bannister & Sutherby. I work with lighting, cameras, directing, editing, and compile the subject matter for each program. · I am a former staff writer for the Olivet’s campus newspaper, the Olivet Echo. I wrote articles and op-eds on a wide range of topics, I took pictures, and I interviewed many people. |
Interests and activities | |
Work experience | 2006 Bannister and Sutherby TV Program Co-Host · Research · I work with the editor, director, producer, and crew · I manage the TV show blog and email 2004 Top Aide to Lobbyist · Research · Coalition building · Worked with numerous lobby networks on Marriage Amendment |
References |
John Tomicki, Founder of NJ League of American Families
Al Cavasin, former candidate for State Senate and owner of Great Northern Security Co.
Bob Sutherby, Nationwide Insurance and Co-Host of Bannister and Sutherby
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