Intercept Discovers Drug War Has Hidden Costs. To Whom?
While The Intercept rightly points out that legalizing cocaine could dismantle a deeply flawed 'War on Drugs,' the framing often avoids key historical context. The 'Drug War' wasn't just a misstep; it was a deliberate, racially-charged policy, as evidenced by Nixon aide John Ehrlichman's 1994 admission: "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." So, when we talk about ending the drug war by legalizing substances, let's not pretend it's a new, radical idea that hasn't been blocked for decades. It's a return to sanity after generations of profiteering by the prison-industrial complex and the
militarization of police forces, all while certain communities were systematically demonized and incarcerated. Who benefited? Certainly not the communities now being 'allowed' to sell cannabis after mass arrests for it.