Reddit reviews Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure

Haldeman's personal diary, 1994 article in the New York Times.

Ehrlichman's 1995 interview with author Dan Baum, author of "Smoke and Mirrors: The war on drugs and the politics of failure".

How does this article quote Dan Baum, but not name the entire book he wrote on the topic, Smoke and Mirrors. The Washington Post still hosts the first chapter of the book which is a good synopsis of the the whole thing.

Nixon didn't give a shit about "criminalizing negroes (to use the term of the day) or hippies" per se. Rather, the boogeyman of "drugs" triggered images of hippies and black Americans in the minds of the voters that the Nixon campaign wanted to sway to them away from the more progressive Democratic candidate.

Akin to the famous Lee Atwater quote, they didn't want to scream, "N@@@er! N@@@er! N@@@er!", rather they used the specter of "the dangers of drugs" to call up images of inner city street hustlers (aka black men) and hippies in the minds of the white suburban voters they wanted to scare into voting for the conservative candidate.

The ploy worked astoundingly well, unfortunately. But once Nixon won, he found that drug laws were overwhelmingly in the hands of the states, not the federal government, so he pulled some "big government" shit and made the "war on drugs" a federal issue, including the creation of the DEA.

And it's been stupidly downhill from there.

I believe it is a quote from this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Smoke-Mirrors-Drugs-Politics-Failure/dp/0316084468

I wish I knew the page number for you, but I do not have the time to pull it up.

Sleepyslim gets upvoted for knowing his history. If you want a good account of the Drug War from ~1977 to ~2000, read this book.

It is supposed to be from this book, I can't confirm that the statement is from Ehrlichman's interview with Baum, but this is the quoted source.

John Ehrlichman, during an interview with Dan Baum
http://www.amazon.com/Smoke-Mirrors-Drugs-Politics-Failure/dp/0316084468#

I knew the first laws criminalizing marijuana were race based - against Mexican migrant works - but to find out that the whole scheduling system was put into place to suppress Black folks - that's fucked up, if it's true.

If you are interested in why this is even being considered an issue I invite you to read Smoke and Mirrors. I thought I was knowledgeable about the topic before reading this book.

for those that need proof of what jareth says, read smoke and mirrors by dan baum.

basically, carter relaxed the enforcement nixon had put in place to persecute his enemies... but the reefer propaganda had taken hold, and when atlanta housewives saw their little jimmy smoking doobies, they freaked out... same as the old biddies during prohibition.

> I think it has nothing or little to do with race and more to do with entitlement programs which have replaced fathers in many minority households

This is a well played out right wing myth. First, whites are the biggest beneficiaries of so called "entitlement" programs (welfare, food stamps, medicaid, etc.). Second, you know what really causes black fathers to not be home with their families? Prisons. The criminal justice system has disproportionately affected African Americans, and you can't be at home with your kids when you are behind bars.

>Is it systematic racism? I doubt it,

Yes. It is. There has been copious research and writing on this issue, covering systemic racism in all aspects of criminal justice (from street level policing, to prosecutors, judges, mandatory minimums, and the big one -the war on drugs).

>have higher use of drugs

This is also demonstrably false.
http://www.narconon.org/blog/drug-use/does-race-gender-or-ethnicity-determine-drug-use/

>there is no question that some minorities are vastly over represented in prisons and are vastly more likely to commit crimes.

This is also not true. Yes, they are over represented in prisons, but not because they commit the most crime, but because they are arrested and convicted the most. This again is largely due to systemic racism in the criminal justice system. (FYI, I am a former law enforcement officer and currently an attorney, so I am not just pulling this information out of thin air).

I appreciate the quality of this dialogue (in that we are both being respectful and listening to each other - quite uncommon on redditt). However, I get the impression you are presenting common misconceptions often perpetuated by cable news in this country. I highly recommend digging in a little more deeply on these subjects.

Some recommendations for further reading on this subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Smoke-Mirrors-Drugs-Politics-Failure/dp/0316084468

https://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americas/dp/1610394577

Smoke and Mirrors. Read it.