The Legalization Of Illegal Drugs - 1262 Words

Before President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse as America’s number one public enemy in 1971, the United States already had a long history of combating the use of illegal drugs. The first of its kind was the legislation that passed in San Francisco in 1875. This newly passed legislation banned the smoking of opium. However, this legislation seemed to be racially motivated. San Francisco citizens believed that Chinese men who resided in the community, and who were highly regarded as opium smokers, would lure women into opium dens and take advantage of them. In 1909, the United States Congress passed a federal ban on opium. Afterwards, the government began to target cocaine as well. Much like opium, the use of cocaine was also racially†¦show more content†¦Since 1971, one trillion dollars have been poured into the War on Drugs. While this is more than enough money to provide the resources necessary to at least put a dent in the supply and demand for drugs, it has pro duced relatively no positive results. Instead, it has produced racial disparities throughout the entire country. Although white people abuse drugs at a rate that significantly higher than the abuse rates of African Americans, African Americans are arrested at a rate that is ten times higher than that of their white counterparts (Gupta). Many have begun to question if this war is against drugs, or people of color. It seems as if everybody is aware of the racial bias except the elected officials. In March of 2016, a twenty-two year old interview with President Nixon’s domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman was discovered. In the interview, he said that Nixon created the War on Drugs as a way to politically fight African Americans and hippies (Lobianco). In the interview, Ehrlichman states, â€Å"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† (LoBianco).