False War

Dan Baum argues that the "war on drugs" should end by legalizing all drugs. In a 1994 interview, he asked Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman about the origin of drug prohibition.

You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. 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. 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.

Update (March 25):  Other members of the Nixon administration dispute Ehrlichman's intent.

He was . . . known for using biting sarcasm to dismiss those with whom he disagreed, and it is possible the reporter misread his tone.