> "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."
The war on drugs was purely designed to target hippies and people of color [1]. The sooner it is gone on all levels, the better.
Bullshit. That quote came from Baum in a 1994 interview of Ehrlichman. Baum was writing a book about the war on drugs, so why did the quote only come out in 2016? Why not put it in the book?
> "because it did not fit the narrative style focused on putting the readers in the middle of the backroom discussions themselves, without input from the author."
The worst lie I've ever heard. The quote is gold for a backroom discussion.
Then Ehrlichman dies, and the quote comes out more than a decade later, when he can't dispute it; with zero corroboration except Baum, and no recording! (No recording for a book background interview of an influential US political actor?)
The quote is reddit-catnip but only spreads because of low-integrity operators in the media. Golden rule: don't put words in people's mouths after they're dead.
I'm German. The complete ban on cannabis and the begin of the full blown war on all drugs and not just opiates in Germany came in 1971, three years after the mentioned events. We only have cultural hegemonism of the US to "thank" for that.
The war on drugs was purely designed to target hippies and people of color [1]. The sooner it is gone on all levels, the better.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-...