[bad-joke]

The modern drug war was designed to be a cudgel aimed at political enemies, not a public health effort. Quoth Nixon's advisor John Ehrlichman:

> 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.

[mieseratte]

What's the source on that quote? Best I've found is a Harper's Weekly article from 2016.

[mikestew]

That's the best you're going to find, some journalist's reminiscence twenty-some years after the fact. So I would caution anyone to be wary of whipping that quote out to make a point.

[cbluth]

You can find the source via audio clip from a netflix special called "13TH", which is about racial injustice and the prison system, I'm almost certain this was quoted in the documentary.

EDIT: It's about 18 minutes into the documentary, but I'm finding out their source is Harpers.

[joshuaheard]

The 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act criminalized cannabis and heroin, not Nixon.

[optimuspaul]

Pure Food and Drug Act did not criminalize cannabis and heroin, it merely said products containing them needed to be labeled as such. They were still available without a prescription.

[vonseel]

That’s what I was thinking but he did say “modern drug war”. But I was really thinking of earlier propaganda adverts and such although I didn’t know it was as early as 1906.

[kennywinker]

but nixon started the so-called "war on drugs" that has incarcerated generations of people of color in the US.

[dyeje]

The Nixon White House used its illegality to discredit political opponents and drum up support in their base. When and how it became illegal is irrelevant (even though, ironically enough, the original motivation was still politically and racially motivated against Mexicans).

[mlevental]

why is this upvoted? it's completely wrong.