Is The War On Drugs Racist?

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Is The War On Drugs Racist? Nixon Aide Admitted Policies Were Designed To Target Black People, Anti-War Protesters.


A previously unreleased interview with a top aide to President Richard Nixon indicates that the disgraced American leader stepped up drug prohibition in the United States for some pretty cynical reasons. When asked about the policies in 1994, Watergate co-conspirator John Ehrlichman, Nixon's White House domestic affairs adviser (1969-1973), bluntly responded that the so-called war on drugs was started to disrupt and imprison anti-war protesters and black people.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.ibtimes. ... %3Famp%3D1

I don't think so because I don't think drug use is that different across race or even socioeconomic status aside from perhaps people in harder situations looking for the more numbing experiences rather than transcendental or noetic ones.

I would say it's a bit authoritarian however. Thankfully we're starting to see things come back full circle - psychiatry is seriously looking back into psychedelic drugs, including stuff as strong as DMT and ayahuasca but mostly for now psilocybin, in treating people with trauma or end-life depression with terminal illness. Similarly MAPS is looking into MDMA to help soldiers with PTSD. Eventually I think a lot of this stuff will be mainstreamed, just that the late 60's got unhinged enough for society to panic - this time it seems like the caution for the academic vetting process to play itself out is happening and any psychiatrists who go off the rails too far in calling LSD or psilocybin cure-all wonder drugs will likely be rebuked heavily by the broader research community for putting the process in jeopardy.

I recently posted the article below to WP and started a thread by that title:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/ ... -treatment

no the war on drugs is not racist. Actually one of the major reason's that Nixon stepped up the war on drugs was because the congressional black caucus was pushing him to, because they recognized the harm that drugs were doing to their communities.

Funny how they mostly catch minorities using drugs. Or how easy it is to plant the evidence. Or how having large amounts of cash on hand gives law enforcement the right to steal it. The war on drugs is a moral failure on top of everything else.

In 1995 black people made up 13% of the population, but 40% of the the drug arrests.


https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... 3Ji-8Cxy7Q

www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/won ... id-verizon

The war on drugs was racist even before Nixon gave it that name!

The whole reason that they legislated the first laws against Marajuana back in the 1920's (local laws in the southwestern states of the US) was to create an easy legal excuse to deport Mexican migrants (the only demigraphic that used marajuana at the time).

The percentage of drug use among blacks and whites is about the same, but even today, drug arrests and convictions apply overwhelmingly to black Americans, and other minorities. That, and if there was a police presence in white neighborhoods as there is in black neighborhoods, with all the reports of police harassment, the police station switchboard would be overwhelmed with calls by angry whites demanding the damn cops get the hell out. Or in other words, the war on drugs is still racist.

The War on Drugs probably has racist origins, but we probably shouldn't tell Average Joe that.

Most people don't trust a guy who shouts "racist!" anymore. That's why Trump won.

Saying "The war on drugs is racist!" won't win any elections.

Anyone who isn't a white, straight, cis-gender Christian male should be above the law and above criticism.

That's right dude! Attack that strawman!

Of course Tex was being ironic.

I was. I am just upset that we've become a country of highly polarized, highly self-righteous pricks when it comes to politics.

The drug laws are immoral and only serve to support the prison industrial complex. When law enforcement acts overly aggressive, they are often beyond reproach. Individual liberties and fiscal responsibility aren't so important when it comes to these pet projects. I'm going to be very polarized on this issue until our government starts doing the right thing.

Identity politics were put to the test in 2016. They were found lacking.

Yet here we are in 2017, still being told how terrible wh***y is.

I don't think that race has anything to do with it; I see it as more of an escape valve for lower economic conditions.

Wow, I hope that was irony because that is quite a jump in logic to go from "this policy is racist" to "why are you blameing wh***y"?