as he turned his attention and resources to the underground market anslinger clamored for more severe penalties for the possession of opiates without the appropriate tax stamp. members of congress especially members of the powerful southern delegation were quick to oblige but only on the assurance of certain kinds of drug deals with the subject to anslinger's aggressive tactics and not others. thus began a collaborative relationship between a bureau of narcotics in congress that was intended to construct in hands but also to delimit the boundaries of the nation's drug war. southerners who were well aware of their own local problems with narcotic diversion received assurances from anslinger that in fact illicit use was limited to the major cities but little of it in small cities in rural rural areas. as the commissioner maps the geography of his intentions the district became a special focus of his efforts. in my book i pay special attention to washington d.c. because i'm obliged to. throughout the 20th century the u.s. congress tested the tactics of the drug war in d.c. drafting legis

as commissioner anslinger ratcheted up the punishment, powerful forces changed the metropolitan police department to an agency which largely defined its policing mission through narcotics enforcement. i argue that this transformation enabled police to retain vestiges of traditional law enforcement, be it discretion, use of force or even corruption while in the midst of profound changes wrought by the professionalization movement within law enforcement and civil rights outside of it. as police redefined their presence in the ghetto, drug enforcement became both their preoccupation and their methodology. not just something to police, but a way to police. initially, the fact that law enforcement did not bother to offer services in poor black neighborhoods was something that was both widely known and widely ignored. in 1947 "the washington post" reported results of an investigation that showed police pocketing crimes to be prevalent throughout the metropolitan police department. pocketing meant the failure to report a crime in an official tally, and this in turn meant that no effort was ma