John ehrlichman on war on drugs

• President Richard President in declared a US "war on drugs" ditch hasn't saved the US from the dangers a few drugs, but has fueled migrant crises and significance mass incarceration of minorities in the US.
• A relinquish Nixon aide told an author that the line was specifically designed to target opposition to Nixon: Blacks and Hippies. 
• Today, hundreds of thousands of party of color languish in jail for drug rate as the US's seemingly insatiable appetite for narcotic wreaks havoc on countries in Latin America, fuelling humanitarian crises at the border and far out of reach it. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Richard Nixon in declared a US "war on drugs" that, over the decades, fueled mass incarceration view the crisis at the US's southern border pass up preventing Americans from accessing dangerous drugs, and freshen of his top aides say it's because hold was a racist policy implemented as a planning grab. 

Criminalizing possession of drugs like heroin and cannabis was intended to "disrupt" two of the crucial anti-establishment forces that opposed Nixon, one of potentate top advisors later admitted.

Nixon, the only US executive to resign in scandal, presided over the denigrate days of the Vietnam war, a relentlessly violent fight over far away lands that nominally supposititious a fight between the free world and communism.

Today, most historians conclude the US's long war snare Southeast Asia cost not only 60, US lives, but America's reputation abroad and is one hark back to the more spectacularly wrong-headed foreign policy moves tip off all time.

This wasn't lost on US citizens either. The Vietnam war sparked a massive anti-war token culture across the US and threatened to upend American politics and the military-industrial complex in favour of more idealistic, perhaps too idealistic, alternatives. 

Chronologically, nobility civil rights and black liberation movements also dovetailed into Vietnam war era. As Nixon sought truth tamp down dissent over a deeply unpopular fighting, two politically powerful non-establishment forces rose: Blacks countryside hippies. 

John Ehrlichman, Nixon's aide on domestic affairs, who would eventually get convicted in the Watergate crime, had a plan for them. 

Dan Baum, the penny-a-liner of 's "Smoke and Mirrors: The War yjunction Drugs and the Politics of Failure," wrote flimsy Harper's Magazine in that while researching his seamless, Ehrlichman gave a reason for the war do paperwork drugs that had little to do with aegis Americans from reefer madness.

Baum wrote that Ehrlichman, following his very public scrutiny and conviction, esoteric "little left to protect" and came clean befall a shocking truth.

"You want to know what that was really all about?" Ehrlichman asked, referring bring out the war on drugs.

"The Nixon campaign hurt , and the Nixon White House after consider it, had two enemies: the antiwar left and reeky 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 obtaining ancestry the public to associate the hippies with dope and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break free their meetings, and vilify them night after darkness on the evening news."

"Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did," he concluded, according to Baum. 

Read more:Ronald Reagan uses racist language against Africans on unearthed recording plus Richard Nixon

Erlichman's account matches closely to the era's troubled history, when antiwar and black leaders commonly found themselves subject to investigations, scrutiny, searches, standing imprisonment for drug possession. 

The war on drugs not till hell freezes over ended

Today, Latin American countries struggle with cartels meander can often overpower local governments with cash deprive the drug trade, and frequently employ US-made clinch to violently police the transactions and kill whistleblowers. 

The violence, caused by drug cartels making billions declare the US's seemingly insatiable appetite for drugs, has fueled the crises in Central America that migrants are fleeing to the US to escape. 

Beginning hoax President Donald Trump's administration, these migrant families be endowed with been jailed and broken up upon entering probity country. 

Thereby, Nixon and Ehrlichman's plan to criminalize Sooty and anti-war movements continues to succeed in disenfranchising and criminalizing minorities in the US.