Introduced in 1971 by former president Richard Nixon who citied murder and moral decline across society, the war on drugs offered harsh penalties that disproportionally affected minority communities.
Nixon's war on drugs fought drug abuse, supply and demand on all fronts. The end result: the social and economic decline of minority communities across the United States.
Now, a quote from a top Nixon aide released by Harper’s Magazine journalist Dan Baum shows that economic and law enforced suppression was the goal all along.
Let's be honest, this is no shock. Deep down we at least thought it could be true, but now straight from the jack asses's horse's mouth we now have undeniable proof that the "War on Drugs" was nothing more than propaganda with an ulterior political motive.
Here's the excerpt from Baum's interview:
"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," Ehrlichman said.
"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," Ehrlichman, who served time in prison stemming from a conviction related to his role in the Watergate scandal, told Baum.
The war on drugs disproportionately affected minority communities with the most notable effects reflected in the way people of color were treated for possessing, selling, and using drugs.
Black people were twice as likely as whites to be arrested for drug possession. Less than a decade later and black people were five times more likely to be in prison for using drugs despite making up a smaller percentage of the drug using population in the U.S.
And it's statistics like these that make this revelation one of the worst kept secrets in American history.
If the nation has any hopes of repairing the damaging impact the war on drugs has had on minority communities, widespread legalization is key, Baum said. That's something we here at MERRY JANE support wholeheartedly.
