One of Richard Nixon’s top advisers and a key figure in the Watergate scandal said the war on drugs was created as a political tool to fight blacks and hippies, according to a 22-year-old interview recently published in Harper’s Magazine.
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.
“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,” Ehrlichman said. “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’s comment is the first time the war on drugs has been plainly characterized as a political assault designed to help Nixon win, and keep, the White House.
Panelist Helena Hansen, who has been studying racialized aspects of U.S. drug policy for a decade, noted that “the opioid crisis came to be seen as white.”
“The popular press and politicians have been circulating images of Black, brown and even Asian people as addicted and dangerous for over 100 years and these racialized images built political support for prohibitionist criminalizing drug policies,” Hansen continued. “Back in 1914, newspapers like the New York Times were reporting that cocaine-crazed Negroes were attacking their white supervisors and raping white women. A couple of decades later in the 1930s, newspapers had stories of ‘Mexican marijuana madness’ and Mexican workers sleeping on the job under the influence of marijuana. These images led to more and more stringent narcotics laws and enforcement policies in Black and Brown communities which live with us even today.”
“All the while, middle-class white people throughout the past century have enjoyed full access to medical narcotics prescribed by private doctors in such large volumes that, by the 1940s and 50s, white Americans were dying from barbiturate overdose rates that rival today’s opioid overdose rates,” said Hansen.
“This put heroin in a really unprecedented position,” said Hansen. “It was not a popular political response to criminalize white, middle-class opioid users. The surprising new face of addiction was reported in the media with lots of humanizing stories of college athletes, housewives, and schoolteachers who were unwittingly addicted to pills, and ultimately heroin. This publicity built support for local decriminalization of heroin and other opioids in white, largely affluent neighborhoods whose empowered residents collaborate with local law enforcement and district attorneys to divert people arrested on low-level drug charges to sentencing in treatment and, in some cases, peer support.
ldi.upenn.edu
While much of the CIA-contra-drug story had been revealed years ago in the press and in congressional hearings, the Mercury News series added a crucial missing link: It followed the cocaine trail to Ross and black L.A. gangs who became street-level distributors of crack, a cheap and powerful form of cocaine. The CIA’s drug network, wrote Webb, “opened the first pipeline between Colombia’s cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the ‘crack’ capital of the world.” Black gangs used their profits to buy automatic weapons, sometimes from one of the CIA-linked drug dealers.
ips-dc.org
The War on Drugs locked up thousands of black men, and a new study finds that it may have also locked many out of the college classroom—and all the benefits that come with a college degree.
There was a time when black men’s college enrollment was gaining ground, as compared to white men’s. From 1980 to 1985, college enrollment among black men ages 18 to 24 grew slightly faster than it did for their white peers.
However, the upward trend started to reverse for black men after the passage of the Anti–Drug Abuse Act of 1986. According to the study, the probability a black man would enroll in college declined by 10 percent due to the passage of the law, from 22 percent to 20 percent, after researchers controlled for other factors, such as changes in the state-level unemployment rates and the costs of college. The study, written by the University of California, Berkeley professor Tolani Britton, appears to be the first to establish a direct link between ’80s drug laws and college achievement.
www.theatlantic.com
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.
“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,” Ehrlichman said. “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’s comment is the first time the war on drugs has been plainly characterized as a political assault designed to help Nixon win, and keep, the White House.
Nixon Invented War On Drugs To Attack Black People And Leftists
Criminal or Patients?
A major theme throughout the discussion was how the issues of equity and anti-racism were, or were not, part of the federal government’s drug policies in the 1980s and 90s versus the today’s raging opioid epidemic. The panel agreed that the earlier War on Drugs criminalized drug use for Black and Latino communities while the current opioid epidemic policy has veered dramatically toward a public health approach to the problem.Panelist Helena Hansen, who has been studying racialized aspects of U.S. drug policy for a decade, noted that “the opioid crisis came to be seen as white.”
“The popular press and politicians have been circulating images of Black, brown and even Asian people as addicted and dangerous for over 100 years and these racialized images built political support for prohibitionist criminalizing drug policies,” Hansen continued. “Back in 1914, newspapers like the New York Times were reporting that cocaine-crazed Negroes were attacking their white supervisors and raping white women. A couple of decades later in the 1930s, newspapers had stories of ‘Mexican marijuana madness’ and Mexican workers sleeping on the job under the influence of marijuana. These images led to more and more stringent narcotics laws and enforcement policies in Black and Brown communities which live with us even today.”
“All the while, middle-class white people throughout the past century have enjoyed full access to medical narcotics prescribed by private doctors in such large volumes that, by the 1940s and 50s, white Americans were dying from barbiturate overdose rates that rival today’s opioid overdose rates,” said Hansen.
From Oxycodone to Heroin
In the 1990s, corporate marketing campaigns flooded Oxycodone and other prescription opioids through the health care system, addicting large numbers of white middle-class people in suburbia and rural regions. When new controls such as drug monitoring laws, tightened prescribing, and tamper-resistant drug formulations were put in place, white drug users were cut off from their prescription pharmaceuticals and began turning to street heroin as a substitute—and overdosing in ever-larger numbers, creating the current crisis.“This put heroin in a really unprecedented position,” said Hansen. “It was not a popular political response to criminalize white, middle-class opioid users. The surprising new face of addiction was reported in the media with lots of humanizing stories of college athletes, housewives, and schoolteachers who were unwittingly addicted to pills, and ultimately heroin. This publicity built support for local decriminalization of heroin and other opioids in white, largely affluent neighborhoods whose empowered residents collaborate with local law enforcement and district attorneys to divert people arrested on low-level drug charges to sentencing in treatment and, in some cases, peer support.
The War on Drugs as Structural Racism
Report from a University of Pennsylvania seminar looking at the contrast between the “War on Drugs,” which devastated Black and Latino communities through mass incarceration, and today’s public health…
ldi.upenn.edu
The War on Drugs - Where to invade next
In August 1996, the San Jose Mercury News initiated an extended series of articles linking the CIA’s “contra” army to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles. Based on a year-long investigation, reporter Gary Webb wrote that during the 1980s the CIA helped finance its covert war against Nicaragua’s leftist government through sales of cut-rate cocaine to South Central L.A. drug dealer, Ricky Ross. The series unleashed a storm of protest, spearheaded by black radio stations and the congressional Black Caucus, with demands for official inquiries. The Mercury News‘ Web page, with supporting documents and updates, received hundreds of thousands of “hits” a day.While much of the CIA-contra-drug story had been revealed years ago in the press and in congressional hearings, the Mercury News series added a crucial missing link: It followed the cocaine trail to Ross and black L.A. gangs who became street-level distributors of crack, a cheap and powerful form of cocaine. The CIA’s drug network, wrote Webb, “opened the first pipeline between Colombia’s cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the ‘crack’ capital of the world.” Black gangs used their profits to buy automatic weapons, sometimes from one of the CIA-linked drug dealers.
The CIA, Contras, Gangs, and Crack - Institute for Policy Studies
Based on a year-long investigation, reporter Gary Webb wrote that during the 1980s the CIA helped finance its covert war against Nicaragua's leftist government through sales of cut-rate cocaine to South Central L.A. drug dealer, Ricky Ross.
ips-dc.org
The CIA’s Cocaine (1993)
2Pac - Changes ft. Talent
The War on Drugs locked up thousands of black men, and a new study finds that it may have also locked many out of the college classroom—and all the benefits that come with a college degree.
There was a time when black men’s college enrollment was gaining ground, as compared to white men’s. From 1980 to 1985, college enrollment among black men ages 18 to 24 grew slightly faster than it did for their white peers.
However, the upward trend started to reverse for black men after the passage of the Anti–Drug Abuse Act of 1986. According to the study, the probability a black man would enroll in college declined by 10 percent due to the passage of the law, from 22 percent to 20 percent, after researchers controlled for other factors, such as changes in the state-level unemployment rates and the costs of college. The study, written by the University of California, Berkeley professor Tolani Britton, appears to be the first to establish a direct link between ’80s drug laws and college achievement.
How the War on Drugs Kept Black Men Out of College
A new study finds that federal drug policy didn’t just send more black men to jail—it also locked them out of higher education.
www.theatlantic.com