Nixon’s “War on Drugs” Was a Sham
Photograph Source: Nixon White House Photographs – Public Domain
The New York Times recently revealed that while Pres. Richard Nixon publicly referred to marijuana as “public enemy No. 1” he really felt it was “not particularly dangerous.”
Kurtis Hanna, a Minnesota cannabis lobbyist and advocate for drug legalization, discovered revealing tape recordings while researching marijuana at the Nixon Library archive. According to one source, he was startled by Nixon’s position on cannabis because it fundamentally differed from his public stance. “He was essentially saying the exact opposite of what I understood him to believe,” Hanna reflected. So surprised by his findings, he shared his discoveries with the Times.
Nixon’s anti-drug position underwrote his 1968 presidential run. At a campaign speech at the Anaheim, CA, convention center on September 16, 1968, he said marijuana and other drugs were “decimating a generation of young Americans” and, if elected, he would stop illicit drugs coming into the country.
Shortly after taking office, he convened a Special Presidential Task Force Relating to Narcotics, Marijuana, and Dangerous Drugs. On July 14, 1969, he sent a special message to Congress identifying drug abuse as “a serious national threat.” And on September 21st, he launched “Operation Intercept,” the first step in what would become the “war on drugs.”
In a 1971 conversation, Nixon declared: “I want a goddamn strong statement on marijuana.” At a press conference on June 17, 1971, he stated that drug misuse was “public enemy number one,” saying that “in order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.” That month, Nixon formally declared a “war on drugs,” insisting, “Drug abuse is the single most deadly social problem in America.” The Nixon administration provisionally placed marijuana as a Schedule I drug and appointed a commission to study the health risks. Nixon picked nine of the commission’s 13 members.
In an interview with Marijuana Moment, Hanna observes:
“President Nixon, the man who signed the bill into law to put marijuana in Schedule I, who kept it in Schedule I after the Shafer Commission report, and who created the Drug Enforcement Administration through administrative action didn’t believe marijuana was addictive or dangerous.”
He added, “Jack Herer declared in 1973, ‘The Emperor Wears No Clothes,’ in his book by the same name.” “Through the release of the audio I found, we now have definitive proof of the Emperor himself admitting in private that he knew he was naked.”
The panel was formally titled the “National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse,” and it found that while marijuana use might pose some health risks, the policy of criminalization was excessive and unnecessary. The commission recommended decriminalization of marijuana. As it argued:
“It [current policy] implies an overwhelming indictment of the behavior which we believe is not appropriate. The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only with the greatest reluctance.”
Hanna’s revelations reframe Nixon’s attitude toward marijuana and other drugs. Against his more public stand against marijuana, the private Nixon expressed a very different attitude. In a 1972 recording, Nixon can be heard telling a senior aide that he favored a “modification of penalties” as they discussed drug crimes, “but I don’t talk about it anymore.”
In a meeting with John Ehrlichman, the White House Council, he stated: “Let me tell you, I know nothing about marijuana.” And added, “I know that it’s not particularly dangerous, and most of the kids are for legalizing it. But on the other hand, it’s the wrong signal at this time.” He then noted:
“I have no problem that there should be an evaluation of penalties on it, and there should not be penalties that, you know, like in Texas that people get 10 years for marijuana. That’s wrong.”
In secret Oval Office tapes from March 1973, he stated, “The penalties should be commensurate with the crime.” Nixon argued that a 30-year sentence in a cannabis case he recently heard about was “ridiculous.”
In 2016, Harper’s Magazine published excerpts from a 22-year-old interview with Ehrlichman that revealed how the “war on drugs” was concocted as part of a broader “war” against Black activists and opposition to the Vietnam War. He admitted the following:
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] 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.”
This hypocrisy defined the “war on drugs” and shapes the changes in popular attitudes toward marijuana and state decriminalization efforts.
Today, 25 states have decriminalized recreational marijuana use and 48 of the 50 states allow for some form of medical weed.
On September 1, 2024, former president Donald Trump came out in support of a pending amendment to the Florida state constitution to decriminalize marijuana. “In Florida, like so many other States that have already given their approval, personal amounts of marijuana will be legalized for adults with Amendment 3,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site. He claims he never smoked marijuana.
“Whether people like it or not, this will happen through the approval of the Voters, so it should be done correctly.” He added, “We do not need to ruin lives & waste Taxpayer Dollars arresting adults with personal amounts of it on them, and no one should grieve a loved one because they died from fentanyl-laced marijuana.”
VP Kamala Harris once admitted, “And I inhaled,” giggling. “I did inhale. It was a long time ago,” she added, “I think it gives a lot of people joy. We need more joy in the world.” Vanity Fair notes that many recent political leaders have imbibed the once “evil weed,” including the two Bush brothers, Al Gore, Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich.
“The U.S. Attorney General is currently circulating a proposal to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III,” Justice Department Director of Public Affairs Xochitl Hinojosa said in a statement. If, as expected, this change is adopted, marijuana will move from a drug that has “a high potential for abuse and the potential to create severe psychological and/or physical dependence” to a drug “with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.”
When this happens, the “war on drugs” may finally be over. Sadly, the FBI reports that in 2022, police made at least 227,108 arrests for marijuana, down from the 872,721 arrests in 2007. One can only wonder as to the millions of arrests for marijuana possession and/or sales that have occurred since Nixon launched the fictitious “war on drugs” in 1971.
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