When The War Started

“Look, we understood we couldn’t make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue…that we couldn’t resist it.” – John Ehrlichman, White House counsel to President Nixon on the rationale of the War on Drugs.

“[Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks” Haldeman, his Chief of Staff wrote, “The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

7 responses to “When The War Started”

  1. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    Good old “Tricky Dick”.

    But, you know the RNC. It was his turn. And he won. I’m fairly certain Hubert Humphrey would have been no better.

  2. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    P.S. The war started back in the 30’s. There are varying reasons I’ve read. Hearst? Harry J. Anslinger? Some neighborhood gossip?

  3. […] This is a response to Kathy Kinsley who commented on my post When The War Started. […]

  4. […] have been saying this for a while And quite a lot recently in different ways. What have I been saying? That the US is now very close to armed insurrection. And I’m not […]

  5. […] Well that is not exactly Nixonian. […]

  6. […] what does that leave us with? Well I hate to say it because I hate Nixon with a purple passion. But his idea of a guaranteed minimum wage is the least distorting economic policy. In that regard […]

  7. […] what does that leave us with? Well I hate to say it because I hate Nixon with a purple passion. But his idea of a guaran­teed minimum wage is the least distort­ing economic policy. In that […]