15. The Drug Czar Who Supplied a Senator With Drugs
Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger arranged for Senator Joseph McCarthy to pick up as much high-quality morphine as he wanted from a Capitol Hill pharmacy controlled by agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. It was a plot twist that America’s first drug czar described in a thinly disguised autobiographical novel he wrote after his retirement: “One of the most influential members of Congress at the time and one of my most dependable supporters was a confirmed morphine addict. He was an amiable man but would do nothing to help himself to get rid of his addiction …
“He refused medical advice and insisted that no one would ever be permitted to interfere with him or with whatever habit he wished to indulge in … He was also a heavy drinker but it was his addiction to morphine which was the greatest threat to himself and his country even though, in the national interest, his uninterrupted supply of the drug was guaranteed by my Bureau. On the day he died I mourned him deeply as a friend but also thanked God for relieving me of a great burden and a certain danger”. Thus, America’s first drug czar covered up for Joseph McCarthy.