Was the War on Drugs created for political needs?

[Ace Pace]

While the easy answer is yes but this quote is atrocious.

From an interesting essay

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.”

Just...wow.

[Ziggy Stardust]

The beginning of that essay is a little strangely posed. I mean, after reading it twice through it's clear that he is referring to a conversation that happened in 1994, but it almost feels like he is trying to present Ehrlichman as having broken this recently (despite the fact that he died 17 years ago). I don't know, something about the way this article is presented feels very disingenuous to me. That doesn't make any of the facts in it wrong, mind you, but it bothers me, rhetorically speaking.

Anyway, in Nixon's defense (which is not a phrase I often use), even though he did coin the "war on drugs" and create the D.E.A., it didn't become an actually militarized war the way we know it today until 1982, when Reagan/Bush got involved. And that was in no small part an extension of their foreign policy in general. So I think pointing at Nixon and saying he started the modern war on drugs for political gain is a bit disingenuous, because the "war on drugs" from 1972-1982 wasn't the war on drugs from 1982-present, and the latter was more shaped by the Reagan administration than by Nixon's (and was informed by a more complicated array of domestic and foreign policy decisions than simply "derp arrest the hippies").

EDIT: That is not to defend the war on drugs, mind you. It is an idiotic and wasteful exercise for a variety of reasons.

[Raw Shark]

The War on Drugs started in the nineteen-tens, when King Cotton and his lackies in Congress realized that hemp was an economic threat. The rest was just snowballing, racism, and opportunism.

[General Zod]

You can trace it at least as far back to the 1800s when San Francisco outlawed opium because they thought the Chinese were luring white women into opium dens.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judge-fre ... 84624.html

[Flagg]

It's mostly economic, but the propaganda was racist. Like, I don't know what economic reason (if any) cocaine was prohibited, but it was done based on black men getting high and gaining super-powered abilities to rape white women.

Marijuana was largely banned because hemp was cheaper to turn into paper than tree pulp and William Randolph Hearst (son of notorious dickbag and fictional Al Swearingen designated cocksucker George Hearst) owned a fuck ton of lumber and paper mills. He used his papers to spread shit about kids smoking it, going nutso, and murdering their parents (and dem n***er jazz players!!!) which if any of it were true, considering how much more potent the shit I smoke now is compared to what I smoked 20 years ago, we'd be living in a "Children of the Corn" dimension.

But then came the RICO laws, and further legislation that turned the 4th amendment ass-up, which allowed that any police agency that busted anyone thought to be distributing drugs to seize any assets the 'bustee' couldn't prove to have been gotten legitimately and keep 25% of the liquidation.

So now the drug war is just a money making venture for policing agencies. Which is why the FDA moved pot up to schedule 1 status (right next to meth and heroin) despite tons of information coming out about it's practical medical uses.

I also suspect (and I have no evidence of this, it's pure cynical speculation) that's why the FDA and DEA (even the fucking CDC is joining in) are pushing for tighter constrictions on prescription painkillers, especially for people like me who are in chronic pain. The less pills people can get, the more likely they are to move to heroin (for pain control, or more likely just to get high) so that the traffickers, distributers, and dealers are putting more illegitimate money into the system for agencies like the DEA to seize. Again, that is pure speculation on my part, but it makes sense in a cynical, "The US Government would never do that!" kind of way. Why else move a drug like marijuana which clearly has medicinal benefits and is not chemically addictive to the "these are the most horrible and addictive drugs" list?

[Esquire]

Actually, the reason they're pushing for tighter opioid restrictions is because there's been a massive increase in OD deaths since they began being widely prescribed, especially over the past decade. If you read the articles being published, your kind of chronic pain is specifically the kind where opioids remain the best choice.

[Patroklos]

It's mostly economic, but the propaganda was racist. Like, I don't know what economic reason (if any) cocaine was prohibited, but it was done based on black men getting high and gaining super-powered abilities to rape white women.

A assume you mean cocaine based substances like crack. Quite the opposite actually. The fervor over crack and the push to have it be considered especially dangerous with the attached sentencing was sourced from black lawmakers. Ironically given your story, in the eighties it was considered racist NOT to go along with the CBC bandwagon on this. Some still recognizable names were influential in this like Chales Rangel:

In 1983, Rangel became chair of the Select Committee on Narcotics, which solidified his position as a leading strategist on this perennially important issue to him.[46][63][69][70] Rangel kept the committee going, in the face of the usual pressure to disband special committees.[63] He battled against proposed cutbacks in the federal anti-drug budget, and advocated increased grants to states and cities for better shelters for the homeless.[37] Rangel's amendments providing increased funding for state and local law enforcement were included in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986.[37] He traveled to countries in Central and South America and elsewhere to inspect the sources of drugs and the law enforcement efforts against them; Ebony magazine termed Rangel "a front-line general in the war against drugs."[71] Rangel said "We need outrage!", making reference to the slow reaction by both government and religious leaders to the epidemics of crack cocaine, heroin, PCP, and other drugs that hit American streets during the 1980s.[71] He believed that legalizing drugs would represent "moral and political suicide".[71] Nor did he refrain from criticizing those most affected by drugs, saying that Hispanic and black teenagers had no sense of self-preservation, and that drug dealers were so stupid that they had to eat in fast-food places because they could not read a menu.[6] By 1988, Rangel was saying that President Ronald Reagan had not done enough in the war on drugs, but that First Lady Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign had been quite valuable.[72] The narcotics committee itself was termed possibly the most important select committee of its time. The Washington Post said Rangel was "in a powerful position to shape policy on an issue at the top of the nation's agenda."[70] He would remain as chair of the committee through 1993,[69] when it was abolished along with other House select committees.[53]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R ... ial_figure

So no, the increased enforcement against cocaine products had nothing to do with saving white women from crazed black men. If you opposed these initiatives you were just a racist who relished the thought black community poisoning itself while you stood back and laughed.

[Joun_Lord]

Why else move a drug like marijuana which clearly has medicinal benefits and is not chemically addictive to the "these are the most horrible and addictive drugs" list?

Because its a drug and drugz r bad.

Really though, leaving aside the economic or racist reasons, is a possible reason for Mary Jane being considered a hard drug. Its "immoral", its a vice, its terrible for the kids and turns good people into bad.

Its the same arguments you see against porn, against alcohol, against vidya games against all kinds of bullshit. There will be trumped up flimsy as frack evidence to try to back up those bans like porn causes rape (even though some studies show the opposite), that alcohol will corrupt the fabric of the nation, that vidya games will turn our children into mass murderers.

Weed is just part of that. Something immoral that will turn the youth of America into drugged out hippie zombies who worship Mao. Any evidence of its medical properties (which it does have even if way played up by greasy hippie punks who are like weed is like whoa man, like awesome and cures what ails you man, if its natural man it goes in my body man) is ignored and its side effects are played up.

And it does have negative side effects. Its supposed to permanently negatively effect the intelligence of long term teen smokers, the smoke is supposed to cause many of the same negative breathing problems associated with cigarette smoking, and of course problems with fetal development. But none of those problems are worse then what is caused by alcohol or tobacco, so it seems stupid they are legal while weed is not. And that ain't me saying alcohol or tobacco needs banned either, I don't like any of them really but as long as nobody is trying to literally shove them down my throat I don't give a fuck.

Marijuana is considered worse because of what it is usually associated with. Liquor is associated with the common man and everyone, everybody drinks (save apparently me, probably why I'm a joy at parties) and the only people trying to ban it are considered elitists. Tobacco is associated cowboys and manliness, smoking used to be considered quite hip and only recently (relatively recently) has gotten a bad stigma because of the health problems associated and the fact its considered only used by poor and dirty people anymore and is why its gotten fucked. Weed has for the longest time been associated with damn dirty hippies, those greasy radical shitstains on society that are both feared and loathed by upstanding citizens, and of course dirty foreign types with their rasta music and dreadlocks (and of course middle class white kids also with their rasta music and dreadlocks).

Weed had and still does have an image problem. One that is being overcome nowadays where its seen that not only greasy hippie garbage and college dropouts gets high but there is still alot of inertia with the older weed smoker stereotype. As old farts either fuck off and die or just get a clue that weed ain't that bad (though certainly some who smoke is but then hippies and white rastas would suck even without the weed) things are changing, weed is no longer saw is a hard drug by many and is even being legalized in some areas.

I think its a bit like the fight for gay marriage, an incremental thing that will become more accepted as moral assclowns lose power and more accepting people call for change. And that will be good, will actually fit my dream for Murica. A place where a person can get gay married while smoking weed and firing off assault weapons in celebration. All shit I have no intention of doing or having.

[Raw Shark]

But none of those problems are worse then what is caused by alcohol or tobacco, so it seems stupid they are legal while weed is not. And that ain't me saying alcohol or tobacco needs banned either, I don't like any of them really but as long as nobody is trying to literally shove them down my throat I don't give a fuck.

I think this line of reasoning was about 50% of how we swayed the fence-sitters who don't smoke pot but don't care if I do in Colorado. Everybody knows alcohol and tobacco are worse for your body, and worse for society in the former case, and we sure as hell aren't going to ban those, so why not allow weed?

Tobacco is associated cowboys and manliness, smoking used to be considered quite hip and only recently (relatively recently) has gotten a bad stigma because of the health problems associated and the fact its considered only used by poor and dirty people and the entire service industry anymore and is why its gotten fucked.

Fixed that for you.

And that will be good, will actually fit my dream for Murica. A place where a person can get gay married while smoking weed and firing off assault weapons in celebration.

If this hasn't already happened in Denver, I will eat my hat.