[cowmoo728]

Nixon is actually quite removed from the beginning of the War on Drugs. That quote is also of questionable authenticity, so doesn't illustrate the point very well. Reefer Madness, for example, was released in 1936 when Nixon was only 23.

Harry Anslinger was actually one of the most influential figures in the beginning of the modern big-government war on drugs. The anti-marijuana movement was a marriage of convenience between sensationalist yellow journalism from the Hearst empire, and good old-fashioned racism.

"By the tons it is coming into this country — the deadly, dreadful poison that racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms. ... Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him."

"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger