John Ehrlichman Quote

"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."

by:	John Ehrlichman (1925-1999) Counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
Source:	1994 interview with Dan Baum, http://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
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Categories:	Drugs, War, Marijuana, Racism, Politics, Law, Power, Corruption, Prohibition
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Wow, wtf?  -- Howard, Bangkok      1
hmmm, not quite sure how to rate this. Five stars for accuracy or a thumbs down for the cause and effect on freedom, liberty, rights, individual sovereignty or the implementation of such gross form of slavery. Welcome to Amerika  -- Mike, Norwalk      2
Straight from the horse's mouth. The War on Drugs has always been war -- and like most wars, it's about power, insatiable power, as it turns out. Unlike a war with a nation, this war is never ending, the end being also the end of the state apparatus to 'enforce' the drug laws. Big government needs money, and they will get it by any means -- taxing, fining, confiscating, all "in the name of the law." The bigger government gets, the more it's going to take from the people. The entire Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter movements would be non-existent without the War on Drugs. Strike at the root!  -- E Archer, NYC      2

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