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“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar
by Julesman 3y ago
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] 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.”
~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
- pier25 3y agoEven the popularization of the latin name Marijuana (Mary Jane) was to associate cannabis with latin American immigrants. In Spanish it's mostly called marihuana or mariguana.
- overboard2 3y agoIsn't Marijuana pronounced like "marihuana"?
- pier25 3y agoIn Spanish? Not at all. The J has a very strong sound.
- dragonwriter 3y agoThere is considerable regional and subcultural variation, but, even when pronounced strongly its not /g/.
- Julesman 3y agoWhere exactly do people say Mariguana? Not in Mexico. If you over-pronounce Spanish the J catches in your throat a bit, but it's still an H sound.
- dragonwriter 3y agoIt's a sound that English often renders as “ch” from other languages.