It’s Long Past Time to End the 50-Year ‘War on Drugs’

R&I – FS

Fifty years ago this month, on June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “full scale attack” on drug use. It was the beginning of the War on Drugs.

Nixon — and many presidents since — promised the War on Drugs would save lives. Trillions of dollars later, incarceration and preventable overdose deaths have skyrocketed and continue to rise.

After generations of broken lives, broken families, and broken dreams, we must end it now.

Nixon’s War on Drugs turned out to be a war on people. Once he saw there was no political benefit in drug treatment, he declared “an all-out war on the drug menace” with a federal Drug Enforcement Agency and stiffer penalties. This helped Nixon target his political enemies.

As White House advisor John Erlichman explained, “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?” Erlichman asked. “Of course we did.”

Mike Rodick

Article URL : https://scheerpost.com/2021/06/24/its-long-past-time-to-end-the-50-year-war-on-drugs/