Despite Starting the “War on Drugs,” Nixon Privately Said Pot Was ‘Not Particularly Dangerous.’
In 1971 US president Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one“, stating “In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.” This campaign became commonly known as “The War on Drugs.”
However, just 2 years later Nixon was recorded in private saying cannabis was “not particularly dangerous.” The tapes have only recently been rediscovered and become accessible.
“Let me say, I know nothing about marijuana,” Nixon said. “I know that it’s not particularly dangerous, in other words, and most of the kids are for legalizing it. But on the other hand, it’s the wrong signal at this time.” He also mentioned harsh sentencing in cannabis cases. “The penalties should be commensurate with the crime.” He called a 30-year sentence for marijuana-related offenses “ridiculous.”
Kurtis Hanna, a Minnesota lobbyist, discovered the recordings and shared them with The New York Times who published the findings on Saturday, 14th September. Hanna was surprised by Nixon’s stance on cannabis, as it contradicted the public policies he spearheaded. “He was essentially saying the exact opposite of what I understood him to believe.”
President Nixon’s private remarks were in stark contrast to his administration’s policies, including the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 which established a scheduling system for drugs with Cannabis placed in Schedule I, alongside heroin and LSD where it remains there to this day. As a result of this, scientific research into cannabis’s potential medical benefits has been subdued while millions of arrests have been made for marijuana, impacting black communities disproportionately.
Birth of The DEA
Drug prohibition became a national obsession under Nixon; he created the Drug Enforcement Agency in 1973 to carry out his war on drugs. Fifty-one years and over $1 trillion later, the war on drugs has claimed thousands of victims, but is still ineffectual.
In 1994, the year of Nixon’s death, John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s top advisor made some very interesting comments in an interview later published in Harper’s Magazine. These 1994 comments revealed the naked political reasons for the foundation of the war on drugs:
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, 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.”
On August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned as president due to impeachment proceedings underway against him for his involvement in the Watergate affair. On April 22, 1994, Nixon died at 81.
Source: 420intel.com
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