Anslinger, Harry J. Papers

U. S. Commissioner of Narcotics, 1930-1962

The papers of Harry J. Anslinger consist of correspondence, newspaper clippings, other printed materials, and memoranda pertaining to his career as Commissioner of Narcotics.

Size: 1 linear feet, 4 linear inches (about 1,800 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: Harry J. Anslinger donated to the U.S. Government his copyright interest in all writings in this collection. Documents created by U. S. Government employees in the course of their official duties are also in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents in the collection presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Willie L. Harriford, Jr. (1966); Mary Ann Walsh and Laura Heller (1969)
Updated by: Alexander Eichstadt (2012) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivists: Randy Sowell and David Clark.

The Harry J. Anslinger papers include correspondence, newspaper clippings, other printed materials, and memoranda relating to the career of Harry J. Anslinger and his involvement in United States drug policy during the 20th century.

The collection contains many publications concerning law enforcement and drug policy, including articles and essays by Anslinger, and various United Nations publications from conferences he attended.

The collection also contains correspondence and memoranda between Anslinger and colleagues in the Bureau of Narcotics. There is also a significant amount of correspondence dating from the 1960s between Anslinger and Judge Twain Michelsen, a good friend of Anslinger's who was, like him, an advocate of tougher drug laws.

Other papers are related to Anslinger's work on narcotics, opium in China, and marijuana; conferences that he attended, such as the Conference on Narcotics in Mexico City; and the U.N. Economic and Social Council's Commission on Narcotic Drugs, with which Anslinger was involved as U. S. representative in the 1960s.

There are many newspaper clippings in the collection, covering Anslinger's entire career but focusing especially on his activities during the 1950s and 1960s.

A larger collection of Anslinger's papers is at Pennsylvania State University. Related information in the papers of Harry S. Truman can be found in Official Files 21-F (Bureau of Narcotics), 8S-Q (U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs), and 431 (Narcotics).