The “war on drugs” was never about winning. It was about funneling public money into private pockets and about scaring the populace into compliance. Same with the immigration bullshit.
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
John Ehrlichman, President Nixon’s Domestic Policy Cheif. (Harper’s Magazine)
The “war on drugs” was never about winning. It was about funneling public money into private pockets and about scaring the populace into compliance. Same with the immigration bullshit.
Let me introduce you to the racist motive