[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.

[nkozyra]

> People on the Internet are extremely pro-drug

I think that's a reductive reading - the war on drugs and in particular as it relates to marijuana has been under a lot of scrutiny. And public acceptance of marijuana is steadily growing.

This more suggests to me that a critical analysis of the criminalization of marijuana has tended toward a verdict of "folly" (in the best case scenario) or "targeted mode of oppression" (in the worst).

Reading that as implicitly pro-drug is simplistic in my view.

[colek42]

Everyone in the US is on the internet, for all intensive purposes.

[gnu8]

Having a smart phone and a Facebook account does not constitute being on the Internet. In many ways, AOL users were closer to being Internet users than most people are now.

[vonseel]

To play devils advocate, if I don’t have a Facebook/Twitter/IG/Reddit account, and I am unaware of what’s going on and being discussed on social media, am I really “on the internet”?

[gnu8]

I was really talking about people who never stray outside of the walled garden of Facebook. In the case of someone who never enters the walled garden, but partakes of the web, email, and other such applications, I would say they are on the Internet.

[ysr23]

>> for all intensive purposes

I've never actually seen that written down, i have _suspected_ people have been saying it, rather than: "for all intents and purposes"

but was never sure, so i googled and its fairly common: https://grammarist.com/eggcorns/for-all-intensive-purposes/

[jessaustin]

One reading of GP would be "Online anonymity allows honesty, so basically everyone is against drug prohibition."