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> 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
by save_ferris 6y ago
> 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.
- John Ehrlichman, Domestic Policy Chief for Richard Nixon, in a 1994 Interview for Harpers Magazine[0]
0: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/22/11278760/war-on-drugs-racism-nixon https://www.vox.com/2016/3/22/11278760/war-on-drugs-racism-n...
- sibane 6y agoThis is also clearly what happened with psychedelics. When they found out LSD wasn't the truth serum or mind control tool they had hoped it would be, and instead tended to just make people think more like hippies, they put the leg down hard.