Nixon Invented War On Drugs To Attack Black People And Leftists

John Ehrlichman was one of the henchmen for Richard Nixon. He was sent to prison for his role in the Watergate conspiracy. He was also part of a much broader conspiracy, which has only recently come to light. Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

"Former aides to President Richard Nixon disavowed a recently published, provocative quote from a colleague about the racial motivation behind the war on drugs, and suggested that the colleague was being sarcastic.

The statement — attributed to Nixon’s chief domestic adviser, John Ehrlichman — alleged that the administration’s drug war was meant to cripple black communities and the “antiwar left.”

Journalist Dan Baum wrote in the April cover story for Harper’s that Ehrlichman told him in 1994 that the Nixon campaign and Nixon White House considered those two groups to be their enemies. “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,” Ehrlichman reportedly said.

But three former Nixon aides say the quote just doesn’t sound like Ehrlichman, and if he did say it, he was mistaken.”*

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