🇳🇱
That doesnt make sense. If it was done for attrition purposes the effects wouldnt benefit Nixon until well after he is out of office. If done simply as an excuse to target leaders, then those people werent drug users. Which means the drug charges were made up, which means there was no need to make drugs illegal to do it, you could have just as easily made up a similar heinous charge and used that to justify the arrest.
The logic here makes absolutely no sense.
@freemo @MelodyCooper Because you're looking at it from a legal perspective.
If you assign drugs to someone, and say the drugs are what made them bad, then going after those people to get the drugs gives you cover ('what, shouldn't we go after heroin? look at how bad it is? The black people aren't to blame, it's the heroin! Are you a racist?').
It's assigning emotional reaction, then using that as cover. Anything bad done by a hippy or a black person was drugs. You need to stop the drugs.
Dude the narrative itself is a lie, the idea that Nixon criminalized narcotics isnt true. It was already criminalized heavily and completely 44 years earlier.
Under Nixon he passed a law that actually made drugs **less** criminalized, causing simple possession to go from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Literally not only does the reasoning in the post not make sense, but the stated facts are bald faced lies too that can easily be checked.
@freemo
While I agree the "banned drugs" conclusion isn't supported by Erlichmann's quote (or legislative history (from what I understand,) the broader concept of "associating" certain drugs with those groups ostensibly provided cover for unbalanced enforcement of existing laws (persecution). "Plausible deniability" is par for the course in the Nixon administration, when it comes to racism, among other tactics/goals. @Oggie @MelodyCooper
If someone just made the general argument that the "war on drugs" has been used immorally to and disproportionately to attack and lock up peaceful minorities, then absolutely. As long as there is racism in a society there will always be unfair application of laws, particularly laws that outlaw nonviolent acts. So no doubt there.
Only thing i call BS on is the specific content of this post and the quote provided. The content of the quote is factually and logically wrong and clearly not a truthful interpretation of the genesis of drug laws.
@freemo @gnate @MelodyCooper
If the first line had instead been 'this is why we invented the comically racist mandatory minimum drug schedule classification', would that have suited you better?
That's what this is in reference to, I am fairly certain, and the controlled substances act business we're still dealing with fallout now from. That was from Nixon in 1970, and is when the deeply horrible systems got installed.
> If the first line had instead been 'this is why we invented the comically racist mandatory minimum drug schedule classification', would that have suited you better?
No
With that change the quote would still be factually and logically wrong. The phrase "and then criminalize both heavily" makes no sense since Nixon did not criminalize both heavily. The criminalization took place 44 years earlier and Nixon actually **reduced** the penalties not increased them.
Therefore even with that change its factually wrong,and logically wrong since the reason it claims nixon did a thing he didnt actually do cant possibly make logical sense.
> That's what this is in reference to, I am fairly certain, and the controlled substances act business we're still dealing with fallout now from. That was from Nixon in 1970, and is when the deeply horrible systems got installed.
Yes this is trying to reference the 1970 act, but again that act **reduced** the penalty on possession from a felony to a misdemeanor, it didnt make it more criminalized it made it less. Thus why literally no part of the original quote makes any sense logically or factually.
Help me out here, please.
Are Republican politicians from the Nixon era to blame for our never ending War on Drugs? I suspect that statement lacks nuance. Could you offer another statement (s) that better reflect what took place?
Sure, Nixon seemed largely worried about addiction, and thought that addiction running rampant was harming the country.. his top concern however was not the general population but the military in Vietnam at the time.
His actions also suggest he saw the addicts as mostly victims, this is seen by the fact that he significantly reduced penalties for possession and use. But his goal was still to eliminate the number of addicted people in the USA. So he started the DEA to try and cut the supply off to the users.
In short his tactic was reduced criminality, but increased enforcement, primarily within the military and internationally, but also to reduce the production and supply within the USA.
Most of his actions resulting from the drug policy during his administration were target at the military, enacting things like drug tests and consequences there.
@freemo
Hmm.
So the assertion that Nixon mostly did that work for political purposes, getting reelected by creating us v them, is just wrong? That was your point in this thread?
Is it fair to associate the outcomes that his policies delivered to his sponsoring them? Or, again, insufficiently nuanced?
No. The point of the reply was
1) To show the objective facts stated in the quote are the literal opposite of what actually happened.
2) Show the quote is fake both as a result of #1 and the fact that it has been exposed as such (other links in the thread).
3) that what people inferred these actual imply, with regard to Nixon's intent makes no sense since the actions didnt occur in the first place and is a gross misrepresentation
4) That Nixon explicitly lessened the criminality of drugs didnt increase it
The above 4 points were the point of my post. The fact that that may be used, by a reasonable person, to infer the points you said may be perfectly reasonable, but was not my intent. My intent is to make sure the facts are clearly stated, what conclusions you draw from the facts is still up to you to make and debate freely.
> Is it fair to associate the outcomes that his policies delivered to his sponsoring them? Or, again, insufficiently nuanced?
Id need more nuance to know what policy and what outcome you mean. The outcome of his policies, for example, is that people who used to be arrested and getting very serious charges for simple possession now got simple misdemeanors. He reduced the consequences and criminality of processioning and consuming drugs. Yes he very much is to blame this reduction in criminality.
@freemo
Thank you. I’m continually surprised by my ignorance and the ease with which I accept as fact things I read and watch….
The outcomes I was referring to relate to those delivered by decades of the “war on drugs.” In particular, the narco traffickers and the induced migration of those fleeing the resulting violence not to mention the focus on enforcement and incarceration rather than treatment and prevention.
1/2
> Thank you. I’m continually surprised by my ignorance and the ease with which I accept as fact things I read and watch….
For what its worth before seeing this post I beleive the typical narrative of Nixon being the bad guy who started the war on drugs too.
What got me was when i was reading this i went "wait a second, they made it sound like he made heroin illegal, coulda swore it was already illegal"... I looked it up and sure enough it was made illegal 44 years earlier.
So then, beleiving my original assumptions must be true I went "Well surely he at least made it more illegal".. so i looked up his exactly policy and read it and read his quotes. To my shock he actually passed laws that specifically reduced criminality, making pocession a misdemeanor for all drugs which used to be a felony.
After that I went and researched the quote and found it to be utterly fake. and well... we arrived at my post :)
> The outcomes I was referring to relate to those delivered by decades of the “war on drugs.” In particular, the narco traffickers and the induced migration of those fleeing the resulting violence not to mention the focus on enforcement and incarceration rather than treatment and prevention.
The war on drugs certainly started with Nixon **indirectly** with the formation of the DEA. Nixon wanted less criminality, but actual enforcement. He thought drug abuse was a true ill to society as far as I could tell, so he did want to eliminate it, but he didnt want everyone to just wind up in jail. He largely wanted to target,it seems, the dealers and producers and leave the users out of it as far as severe punishments go. This was absolutely an improvement from the felony charges people used to get.
The problem is the DEA took on a life of its own, after Nixon it grew, became more pervasive, and the penalties started to increase again.
So one can argue that Nixon started a chain of events that ultimately led to the drug war and its abuse on the people. But when Nixon started it it wasnt like that, and as I said it actually was a lessening of charges.
I mean, he may have done some good things, I agree.. but umm... watergate :)
@freemo @JoeStewart Watergate seems so small compared to January 6th.
I mean Jan 6th was bigger. But the difference is Jan 6th was something a bunch of radical people did, watergate is something a president directly did that was illegal.
@freemo @JoeStewart Technically he got others to do it and they weren't that good. That's why one shouldn't cheap out on contractors trying to protect the nation from a Commie plot.
@freemo @JoeStewart I read Junky and Pimp. People were worried about getting their cars seized in the 1930s for having dope on them. And there was a very lively drug trade back then, if the books can be believed. The WOD was well under way in the 50s when Junky was written, complete with undercover cops, buy-busts, the whole works. The only major difference was the Feds rather than state and local were leading it.
@freemo @JoeStewart Former President Nixon was just too ahead of his time. Compared to the recent presidents, he did nothing wrong. There was the relationship with China that he improved and the EPA being started.
Nixon's presidency was one of the most important and misunderstood.