5 ms·

It's actually very straightforward Ehrlichman told Baum. "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public

It's actually very straightforward Ehrlichman told Baum. "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."

jollybean 4y ago
It's even simpler: Heroin is really a terrible thing and should have been criminalized much earlier, and weed is an 'on the fence' substance which was made illegal in most of the Western world, not just the USA (inc. Vietnam, Brazil, Japan, Soviet Union etc.), thereby throwing to the wind your ridiculous conspiracy theories, and suggesting it was a broad civilizational issue that we are adjusting over time.
- exq 4y ago
  I don't know anything about Vietnam or Brazil, but the Japanese had cultivated hemp for thousands of years and it only became illegal in 1948 during the US occupation.
- exq 4y ago
  If weed is an "on the fence" substance, alcohol should be illegal.