[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.

[mieseratte]

So that is the only source then? I've previously asked and never received an answer.

If so, I feel worth pointing out the quote was allegedly acquired some 20 years prior to publishing, 17 years past the quoted's death.

[mikestew]

So that is the only source then?

As far as I can tell, all roads lead back to that one Harper's article. I haven't bothered to try and find the book the author said he was working on. The quote is poorly-sourced enough for me to just not use it, and golly-gee-willickers is it a convenient one now that the quoted is long dead and buried. (EDIT: I will point out that I want to believe the quote is real, or close to it. It certainly doesn't strain credulity to imagine Erlichman saying that. Which is all the more reason to be skeptical. <g>)

[opo]

Yea I am amazed this quote continually keeps coming up. As user GatorD42 pointed out when this was brought up before:

>...Baum claims Ehrlichman said that to him in 1994 while he was researching for a book he published in 1996 about the drug war. He didn't include the quote in that book, but instead published it in 2012 and again in 2016, after Ehrlichman had died (in 1999).

This is an amazing and explosive quote - if Baum had included it in his book in 1996 I am sure it would have garnered a great deal of attention for the book. Instead Baum did not include it in his book, but instead would wait for decades later when Ehrlichman was no longer around to dispute it.

At any rate, if the quote was actually said by Ehrlichman, it doesn't actually describe the drug polices of the Nixon administration. While Nixon is remembered for "war on drugs", the actual substance of his policies seem to be different than what people think it was:

>...I have been fortunate over the years to discuss the distorted memory of Nixon's drug policies with almost all of his key advisors as well as with historians. Their consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right wing that he hadn’t gone soft. So he laid on some of the toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a White House speech declaring a “war on drugs” and calling drugs “public enemy number one”. It worked so well as cover that many people remember that “tough” press event and forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief but…a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him).

http://www.samefacts.com/2011/06/drug-policy/who-started-the...

>..."Enforcement must be coupled with a rational approach to the reclamation of the drug user himself," Nixon told Congress in 1971. "We must rehabilitate the drug user if we are to eliminate drug abuse and all the antisocial activities that flow from drug abuse."

>The numbers back this up. According to the federal government's budget numbers for anti-drug programs, the "demand" side of the war on drugs (treatment, education, and prevention) consistently got more funding during Nixon's time in office (1969 to 1974) than the "supply" side (law enforcement and interdiction).

>Historically, this is a commitment for treating drugs as a public health issue that the federal government has not replicated since the 1970s. (Although President Barack Obama's budget proposal would, for the first time in decades, put a majority of anti-drug spending on the demand side once again.) ...

https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs

[kennywinker]

You can try to rehabilitate nixon as much as you want, but even if he was a Nice Guy™, the facts are that the war on drugs was designed by racists (e.g. Harry Anslinger), and along with imprisoning many generations of people of color, it was weaponized specifically and pointedly against people who challenged the establishment.

Excellent listening for anyone who doubts that the war on drugs was anything but racism in action: https://www.wbez.org/shows/on-the-media/this-american-war-on...

[Throw_Away_5473]

> Yea I am amazed this quote continually keeps coming up.

People on the Internet are extremely pro-drug. People like to believe things that confirm their priors, and since nearly no one on the Internet is against marijuana legalization, the quote does normally go unchallenged.

[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.

[refurb]

My understanding is that many states passed laws in the late 1800’s making drugs like heroin illegal without a prescription.

In addition, the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 put many restrictions around them.

The Nixon Controlled Substances Act just put a federal guide posts around what was already a mish-mash of laws.

[vonseel]

I can’t imagine how any drugs like heroin or cocaine could have been sold OTC (although they were). It just seems like something that addictive that makes you feel amazing would cause problems damn well near instantly.

[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.