3 ms·
Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman told a journalist that the main purpose of the War on Drugs was to attack Nixon's "enemies" and that they knew the WOD was based o
by kirsebaer 11y ago
Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman told a journalist that the main purpose of the War on Drugs was to attack Nixon's "enemies" and that they knew the WOD was based on lies about drugs:
> "You want to know what this was really all about? 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."
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-war-on-drugs-how-president-nixon-tied-addiction-to-crime/254319/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-war-on...
- endergen 11y agoI couldn't find that quote in that article. Was it from elsewhere?
- curtis 11y agoThat quote doesn't appear in the linked article. Did you intend to link to a different source?
- nl 11y agoIt appears it was published offline, and the original source is The Moment: Wild, Poignant, Life-changing Stories. Edited by Larry Smith, Harper Perennial, 2012. See http://waliberals.org/the-ugly-origin-of-the-war-on-drugs/2012/06/21/ http://waliberals.org/the-ugly-origin-of-the-war-on-drugs/20... There doesn't appear to be a copy of this online anywhere I can verify it.