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Nixon And The Scheduling Of Marijuana


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Richard Nixon should be remembered as one of the (many) truly evil leaders of the 20th century - a mass murderer for intentionally scuttling a Vietnam peace deal so that he could get elected president. 

 

But let's also not forget how much suffering he caused over the last 50 years for getting cannabis onto Schedule 1. 

 

 

 

Turning back to the early 1970s, it should be no surprise then to discover that the Nixon tapes, which recorded private conversations in the Presidential Oval Office, capture Nixon himself associating cannabis and other psychoactive substance use with anti-war protesters, Jews, psychiatrists, homosexuals, and passivity, all of whom and which he despised. In Nixon’s view, use of cannabis and other drugs was simply “dope” use and a sign of moral social decay. During the 17-month period between when Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act on October 27th, 1970, to March 22nd, 1972 when the Congressionally mandated Presidential Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse issued its report and policy recommendations, Nixon sought to find ways to sabotage the marijuana policy review process. These interventions helped to ensure there would be political momentum to continue to maintain a policy of criminalization of cannabis use, even when the Presidential panel would go on to recommend the opposite.

 

 

Full article here.

Edited by zachw
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To whit:

 

"Look, we understood we couldn't make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue...that we couldn't resist it."

- John Ehrlichman, White House counsel to President Nixon on the rationale of the War on Drugs.

 

And,

 

"[Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks" Haldeman, his Chief of Staff wrote, "The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to." - See more at: http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2012/09/nixons-drug-war-re-inventing-jim-crow-targeting-counter-culture#.dpuf

 

'nuff said...

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