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1956 and the Daniel Act
1956, we get another new drug law, called the Daniel Act, named for Senator Price
Daniel of Texas. It is important to us for only two reasons. One, it perfectly reflects
the formula again. What is the formula? Somebody perceives an increase in drug use in this
country and the answer is always a new criminal law with harsher penalties in every
offense category.
Where did the perception in 1956 come from that there was an increase in drug use?
Answer: Anybody remember 1956? In 1956, we had the first set ever of televised Senate
hearings. And whose hearings were they? They were the hearings of Senator Estes Kefauver
of Tennessee about organized crime in America.
These hearings, which everybody watched on their little sets showed two things that we
all know today, but it sure made their socks roll up and down then. Number one, there is
organized crime in America and number two, it makes all its money selling drugs. There it
was, that was all the perception we needed. We passed the Daniel Act which increased the
penalties in every offense category, that had just been increased times four -- times
eight.
With the passage of each of these acts, the states passed little Boggs acts, and little
Daniel acts, so that in the period 1958 to 1969, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and
Virginia was typical, the most heavily penalized crime in the Commonwealth was possession
of marijuana, or any other drug.
It led to a mandatory minimum sentence of twenty years, no part of which you were
eligible for parole or probation, and as to no part of it were you eligible for a
suspended sentence.
Just to show you where it was, in the same time period first degree murder in Virginia
had a mandatory minimum sentence of fifteen years. Rape, a mandatory minimum sentence of
ten years. Possession of marijuana -- not to mention sales of marijuana with its mandatory
minimum of forty years -- mandatory minimum of twenty years.
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