> The canard about targeting specific demographics originates with John Ehrlichman in a 2016 Harper's story [1] Note that that is a story relating an interview

> The canard about targeting specific demographics originates with John Ehrlichman in a 2016 Harper's story [1] Note that that is a story relating an interview in 1994, which you've copied off of a Wikipedia page and apparently misunderstood. But that still kind of fails to explain how I knew about Nixon's War on Drugs targeting blacks and hippies back in ~1991. Also, why did Nixon "just hate drugs"? Was it because of the association with blacks and hippies? And why did his administration support his efforts? When considering the motivations behind policies we shouldn't fall victim of explanations that revolve entirely around cults of personality. Even if Nixon didn't support it for racist and anti-leftist reasons, he still needed the support of his administration, and the application of the war on drugs could have still been racist and anti-leftist due to the actions of the many thousands of people who had to prosecute it.