DdC

It was forty years ago June 17th…
The “War on Drugs” from Nixon’s White House Tapes

June 17th Marked 40 Years Of Failure


`Hmmm, this smells like damn good coffee!`

Call off the Global WOD
These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”

These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.
Jimmy Carter weighs in, NY Times:

Nixon lied to schedule Ganja #1



Losing the war on drugs

More drug war slams

Pentagon Using Drug Wars as Excuse to Build Bases in Latin America
Sunday 5 June 2011

The drug war as a Trojan horse
for continuing U.S. military exercises… wherever.

The global drug war and the Nixon connection by Paul Rosenberg at Al Jazeera

Ask real cops what they think! LEAP | Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Or these



Ganja//Hemp
It's just too damn versatile. A threat to Fossil Fools, Booze and Big Pharma. Stop the pretending you care about the kids. Putting them in for profit foster cells and their parents in prison isn't caring. It's $72,000.00 tax dollars per head per year for the Koch Brothers private prison cages.


njweedman

IS IT REALLY A WAR ON DRUGS?
Experts point to several factors for explanation, but it's clear that a large number of people are imprisoned for drug-related crimes. Officially declared the "War on Drugs" by President Richard Nixon in 1971, this has become the longest and most costly war in American history.

US MA: Is The War On Drugs A Failure?

More Reasons To End The Drug War
US IA: EDU: OPED: Mon, 06 Jun 2011
The commission found that for three categories of drugs -- opiates, cocaine, and cannabis -- consumption increased by 34.5 percent, 27 percent, and 8.5 percent, respectively, between 1998 and 2008. A 2010 survey conducted by Monitoring the Future noted an increase in marijuana consumption among high-school-age students. This directly contradicts the notion that making drugs illegal will make youth less likely to consume them. Despite one's position on the criminalization of drug consumption, there is no denying that the drug war's attempts to limit access and consumption have clearly failed,



40th Anniversary of the “War on Drugs”
Marking the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs" on June 17, 1971, today LEAP released a report detailing the ongoing carnage of this unwinnable war.

Please visit Cops Say Legalize Drugs.com to read the report and find out what happened when LEAP's cops attempted to hand-deliver a copy to Obama administration drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, himself a former police chief.

And please, if you haven't done so already, stand with LEAP by taking a moment to send an email to President Obama telling him 40 years is enough!

Thank you,
Major Neill Franklin (Ret.)
Executive Director

War On Drugs = $1 Trillion Wasted!
Ethan Nadelmann, DPA" actionfeedback@drugp olicy.org June 15, 2011
Two days from now marks the 40th anniversary of Nixon's declaration of the war on drugs – a war that's destroyed countless lives and cost the American public more than $1 trillion.

We're fed up with these disastrous policies – Congress MUST finally end this shockingly wasteful, counterproductive war. To make sure they get the message, we've designed a trillion dollar bill to symbolize this staggering waste of money.



If Ganja was as bad as fewer and fewer keep saying. Would they really need...

SCAPEGOATING - Blaming social problems on a cultural, racial, or behaviorial group. PREJUDICE - Selling the public on the idea that all members of the targeted group are 'bad' people. LIES -'Facts', which cannot be verified, and pseudo scientific studies are used as propaganda against the targeted group. History is rewritten. NO PUBLIC DEBATE - "These people have no right to have their viewpoiunt aired." and " Anyone who disagrees or questions us must be one of them!" DEHUMANIZATION - Characterizing all members of a targeted group as subhuman and typically capable of monstrous deeds and/or crimes. PROTECT OUR CHILDREN -"They corrupt, seduce and or destroy our children." CIVIL LIBERTIES SACRIFICED -"We must give up some of our freedoms, liberties, and rights in order to combat this menace to society." LEGAL DESCRIMINATION - Laws criminalize members of targeted group and they may be denied jobs, the right to own property and/or be restricted as to where they may live or go. INFORMERS - Citizens are urged to 'turn in' friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members. SECRET POLICE - Non-uniformed police squads set up to wage war on targeted groups utilizing deception, infiltration, espionage and entrapment. CONFISCATION OF PROPERTY - Property and assets are seized from people who are members of targeted group. Property may be divided between the informer and the state. REMOVAL FROM SOCIETY - Prisons, rehabilitation camps, 'hospitals', executions and genocide...Zero Tolerance


Nixon made Elvis a “Federal Agent-at-Large" in the then Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

Nixon’s 40 Year War On Drugs… Drugs Won

Nixon the narc

Linkletter's daughter was the perfect symbol for Nixon's campaign against psychedelic drugs. In the words of her father, "Diane was not a hippie. She was not a drug addict... she was a well-educated, intelligent girl from a family that has traditionally been a Christian family and has been straight." Linkletter claimed that his daughter "had no personal problems" and blamed her death entirely on LSD.

AL: "There's a great difference between alcohol and marijuana."
RN: "What is it?"
AL: "The worst that you can have when you're in with other alcoholics is more to drink, so you'll throw up more and get sicker and be drunker."
RN: "And that also is a great, great incentive, uh..."
AL: "But when you are with druggers, you can go from marijuana, to say heroin. Big difference."
RN: "I see."

Later on in the same conversation, Nixon finally seems to grasp the strange double-think between drinking to "have fun" and toking to "get high."

AL: When people smoke marijuana, they smoke it to get high, in every case. When most people drink, they drink to be sociable. You don't see people..."
RN: "That's right, that's right."
AL: "They sit down with a marijuana cigarette to get high..."
RN: "A person does not drink to get drunk."
AL: "That's right."
RN: "A person drinks to have fun."

The Hypocritical Summer of Ted Nugent
Too moral for hippies and pot? Nugent–a Draft Dodger–fathered SEVEN kids with FIVE different women, fought against paying child support for years.



Nixon's administration saw the genesis of many extreme "anti-drug" campaigns which continue to this day. At the same conference where Linkletter was made part of Nixon's drug war team, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare officially handed over the power to schedule and classify drugs to the Justice Department. The trend of putting drug policy control into the hands of cops instead of doctors continued, and today all federal drug-enforcement power lies with the Justice Department.

The drug policy expertise of Richard Nixon and Art Linkletter



Moving Toward Another Police State

Since President Nixon declared war on drugs 40 years ago, there has been a steady slaughter of innocent citizens due to mistaken drug raids conducted by heavily armed gangs of police amped up on adrenaline.

He was left to bleed to death, as police refused to call paramedics until an hour after the shooting. His gun was found to be set on safety. He had not fired a round. No illegal drugs were found in his house.

And, now thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling, police can conduct such home invasions without the need of a search warrant. Yes, now if the drug Gestapo smells or believes it smells marijuana emanating from your home, it can bust down your door and ransack your house looking for banned drugs.

Don't resist. Not only might police pump you full of lead, but also many states have now made it a crime for citizens to resist police home invasions, even when the police have the wrong address.



How Cops Turn 'Stop and Frisk' Into 'Stop and Arrest'

Justice-reform advocates want young black and brown men to avoid being tricked by police into emptying their pockets.

What does it take to reverse our incarceration nation?

Obama gets more heat for drug war failure



The value of anniversaries by Pete Guither
I just finished spending a year organizing events related to the 40th Anniversary of an organization that’s important to me. The fact that it was the 40th was really a random milestone, but it was an excuse to celebrate, to remember, to connect with people, and to bring attention to the wonderful work that is being done today.

In a similar manner, the events revolving around today’s “40th Anniversary” of the war on drugs have very little to do with the significance of 40 years. After all, it’s really the 40th anniversary of one speech in the war on drugs. The drug war can’t really be contained in one set of dates.

The event of the 40th, however, has given us an opportunity — the opportunity to remember the atrocities, to gather together those who have suffered, to call attention to the failures and the societal destruction, to lead a charge toward a more sane future.

It’s been so wonderful to see the plethora of articles and voices, all calling for an end to the war on drugs in some way.

Let’s enjoy the moment and let it give us fresh strength for the job ahead.

Here’s come coverage round-up.

Incarceration factsby (Pete Guither)
The ACLU has a good series of graphics on our incarceration nation.

Here are a couple of them:



As someone who works in higher education and has seen the reductions in tax support while prisons keep opening, this graphic has a huge impact (our particular university used to get around 70% of it’s budget from the state; now it’s closer to 24%).

I see the potential of these students and know that an investment in education is far more valuable to us (which is why I also personally contribute to a scholarship fund) than an investment in more incarceration.


This one’s just ridiculous. How can anyone think that this is healthy?

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deadhead94

The "war on drugs" has being going on since at least the 1920's. It just didn't have a catchy name until Nixon.

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DdC

Even longer than that when the early Christian Catholic church banned it because the young novices were finding God without the Priests. Not good for business. Plus the Monk's made the wine so it was competition kept off the market same as today...
What Nexxon did was more diabolical. He lumped in Hemp and RxGanja. Never outlawed by the 1937 Tax Act. He also rejected his own Commission's recommendations to decriminalize. Same corporatism as the 1920's removing ethanol. Same Fascism the church signed a concordance with. Not the first time the masses got fed up with the losing Ganjawar. Maybe this time we won't be diverted. But I doubt it with the Corporate Media and the Kochaine Bros Private Prison profit.

Catholic Church on Cannabis
Catholic Church Calls on World Governments to Reject Drug Legalization,
But Says Repression Cannot Be Sole Response.

Kochaine A.L.E.C. Drug Detention Centers



A Call To Shift Policy On Marijuana
US NY: Dwyer, Jim New York Times 14 Jun 2011

Side Effects Of Arrests For Marijuana
US NY: Dwyer, Jim New York Times 16 Jun 2011

America Needs Strategy To Exit Its Longest War
US CA: OPED: Gutwillig, Stephen Los Angeles Daily News 16 Jun 2011

The Failed War On Drugs Is What's Packing
US CA: OPED: Abrahamson, Daniel San Jose Mercury News 16 Jun 2011

Marijuana: the law vs. 12 million people
Life magazine Oct 31, 1969. 25-35



We've Wasted 40 Years On The Futile War On Drugs
US WA: Column: Pitts, Leonard Jr. The News Tribune 15 Jun 2011

A 40-Year War, For What?
US TX: Column: Tribune, Clarence Page. Chicago Dallas Morning News 16 Jun 2011

Call Off The Global Drug War
US NY: OPED: Carter, Jimmy New York Times 17 Jun 2011

Why I Turned Against the Drug War
By Norm Stamper, YES! Magazine June 12, 2011
It’s not hard to explain why I morphed from drug warrior to drug policy reformer. For more than three decades, I watched the drug war destroy values that, as a cop, I swore to uphold. I observed unnecessary suffering, justice gone wrong, and widespread corruption within policing. I witnessed the physical deterioration of whole neighborhoods—street s, homes, and schools made less safe.

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The Rev

The Rev

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