[naringas]

I think about the "war on drugs" with that same pattern.

what if the point was never public health but increasing overall corruption?

they knew prohibitions increase corruption after the alcohol prohibition... so why not?

[djaque]

That was very explicitly the point. We now have top Nixon advisors explaining that they couldn't make hippies or black people illegal, but they could do it by proxy with "the war on drugs" [1].

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/nixon-adviser-ehrlichman-ant...