Hacker News Reader

Comment by joeax | Hacker News Reader

The War on Drugs and the Prohibition are two very separate things. While what you say is true about the Prohibition bringing disparate groups together (Church groups, women's' groups, big tobacco), the War on Drugs was an inherently racist tool invented by the Nixon administration to target hippies and blacks.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richa...

View on HN

They can be distinct historical events and still be driven by similar dynamics and precedent.

Nixon's war on drugs worked because it was making arguments that had been made before, and it worked because some people liked it for racial reasons, some liked it for religious reasons, and some overlapped.

Yeah, except that Nixon just gave it that name. Drug prohibition in the US started when Nixon was learning to walk.

This "drug prohibition is about racism" is all post hoc ergo propter hoc stuff.

I am not so sure about that:

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-myth-negro-cocaine-fie...

The War on Drugs is a specific program of racist vilification. I did not make any claim about prohibition.

No it wasn't. The War on Drugs was an attempt to take disparate anti-drug efforts and combine them into a more coherent whole. It was no different from the War on Poverty.

Were there people attempting to use drug policy to attack other people they didn't like? I've no doubt. But that wasn't the purpose of the War on Drugs and it would never have come into existence if it were.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com