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The War on Drugs begins.

1971

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After labeling drugs as "public enemy number one," Nixon declares a "War on Drugs."

One of his top aides, John Ehrlichman, will later admit: “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... 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" (Drug Policy Alliance).