[2] Drug Addict was originally intended to be a training film for law enforcement personnel, social workers, and medical professionals; Anderson wrote it in 1947 with the assistance of Health and Welfare Canada and R.C.M.P.
Drug Addict outraged Harry J. Anslinger, the ‘moral enforcer’ who was head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) from 1930 to 1962.
The early 20th-century mass migration of minorities to northern U.S. cities, and the emergence of an illicit narcotics market, had created public anxiety and suspicion directed at immigrants and people of color.
He attempted to intimidate Indiana University, he formally called Lindesmith a ‘drug addict’, a ‘crackpot’, and a ‘communist’.
Anslinger knew of the potential political hazards that the film could foster if the public was presented with such a rebuttal, particularly one produced with the assistance of a government as credible as Canada's, and its national police force.
While the two men wrote competing New York Times editorials, Anslinger falsely claimed that the film had been banned under the Motion Picture Association code.
The Women's Christian Temperance Union pressured Lindesmith to stop his campaign; Anslinger tried to involve J. Edgar Hoover.