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The war on drugs certainly did not have noble goals. It’s a matter of public record that the government used the drug war to target “free love” political radica

The war on drugs certainly did not have noble goals. It’s a matter of public record that the government used the drug war to target “free love” political radicals, and far worse happened than that.

zajio1am 6y ago
What public record? AFAIK, the association between war on drugs and targeting radicals and black is mostly based on hearsay.
- knightofmars 6y ago
  https://www.jazziz.com/the-hunting-of-billie-holiday/ https://www.jazziz.com/the-hunting-of-billie-holiday/
- thundergolfer 6y ago
  "At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. "You want to know what this was really all about?" he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. "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." - Dan Baum, talking about John Ehrlichman, who served as domestic policy chief for President Richard Nixon
  - zajio1am 6y ago
    Yes, this is exactly that hearsay. Not public record, but unauthorized quote published years after Ehrlichman's death. The authenticity of the quote is often disputed.
    - thundergolfer 6y ago
      What about all this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_trafficking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traffi...

zajio1am 6y ago

What public record? AFAIK, the association between war on drugs and targeting radicals and black is mostly based on hearsay.

knightofmars 6y ago
https://www.jazziz.com/the-hunting-of-billie-holiday/ https://www.jazziz.com/the-hunting-of-billie-holiday/
thundergolfer 6y ago
"At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. "You want to know what this was really all about?" he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. "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." - Dan Baum, talking about John Ehrlichman, who served as domestic policy chief for President Richard Nixon
- zajio1am 6y ago
  Yes, this is exactly that hearsay. Not public record, but unauthorized quote published years after Ehrlichman's death. The authenticity of the quote is often disputed.
  - thundergolfer 6y ago
    What about all this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_trafficking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traffi...