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“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 he
by inflatableDodo 7y ago
“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.”
- President Nixon’s domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, in a 1994 interview with Harpers magazine.
- Gibbon1 7y agoMore dark stuff. In the 1950's through the early 1970's drug companies were heavily in the business of pushing amphetamines on the public. Enormous amounts were prescribed. And abuse was rampant. Ever notice how anti-drug propaganda describes the effects of 'marijuana dependency'? Yeah it's describing the effects of amphetamine dependency. I'm convinced attempting to shift the blame from legal amphetamines to street drugs was the other part of the drug war.