[colechristensen]

Psychedelic drugs and their countercultural following were transforming into something like a radical religion in the mid 20th century (the 60s prominently).

An example:

Timothy Leary was a Harvard psychologist who went a big rouge and was said to be "the most dangerous man in America" by Nixon. His slogan was "Turn on, tune in, drop out" and a lot of people were taking him seriously.

Charles Manson used LSD to indoctrinate his cult members.

Psychedelics are powerful tools, they can give profound, religious experiences and the people administering and using them have a lot of power to change their worldview, behaviours, etc. It seems they can be used to do a lot of good or bad or something in between like any powerful tool, but they were being used by a counterculture that wanted quite a lot of change very fast.

[pm90]

They did change the world though.

I was brought up in a conservative household and hippie was a derogatory term in my household for a drug-addicted vagabond. But the counterculture gave us music, changes sexual and religious mores, and lead to a fundamental shift in how people thought of themselves as a part of society and the world, at least in the West. And a lot of this experimentation and culture was fueled/inspired by drugs.

Nixon wanted to end, or at least control that.