A new article in Harper’s quotes Nixon’s domestic czar John Ehrlichman as saying the War on Drugs was a front to punish political enemies.
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. 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. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
It certainly sounds like something Nixon would do.
His political skill was rooted in an uncanny ability to say one thing, do another, and survive the consequences. The man behind the Southern Strategy ordered massive desegregation of Southern schools, for example. Only one of history’s great red-baiters could go to China. Ehrlichman’s claim seems like a classic Nixonian dodge.
But anyone with a basic knowledge of the tapes knows that Nixon’s War on Drugs was an earnest, if catastrophic, personal failing.
Nixon was the squarest man who ever lived. He kept his suit jacket on while working alone, and was embarrassed in the early 1990’s when his aide Monica Crowley caught him watching The Honeymooners. Strength and focus were the touchstones of his life, so he was naturally terrified of drugs and drug users.
Most of us know the greatest hits. From May 13, 1971:
Dope? Do you think the Russians allow dope? Hell no . . . You see, homosexuality, dope, immorality in general: these are the enemies of strong societies. That’s why the Communists and left-wingers are pushing the stuff, they’re trying to destroy us.
Nixon says that Attorney General John Mitchell and advisor Daniel Patrick Moynihan disagreed with him, but, “goddamn it, we have got to stand up to these people.”
From June 2, 1971:
NIXON: Why in the name of God do these people take this stuff?
EHRLICHMAN: For the same reason they drink. It’s a, they’re bored, it’s a, it’s a diversion.
NIXON: Drinking is a different thing in a sense. Uh, [Art] Linkletter’s point I think is well-taken, he says, “A person may drink to have a good time – “
EHRLICHMAN: Mm-hmn.
NIXON: “ – but a person does not drink simply for the purpose of getting high.” You take drugs for the purpose of getting high.
EHRLICHMAN: Yup. Yup.
NIXON: There is a difference.
This is not the cold, calculating Nixon we expect. It’s a bewildered old man.
Finally, from May 26, 1971, the lines that are immortal in dorm rooms around the world:
You know, it’s a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it’s because most of them are psychiatrists.
Anyone on the lookout for a cabal of dissipated Jewish psychiatrists isn’t thinking politically.
As late as 1991, Nixon wished his administration had cracked down harder on casual drug use. It was not enough to “bomb the Colombian drug plantations and clean out the ghetto crack houses,” he said. The “elite” user must be targeted. He must not be allowed to “unwind in whatever manner he pleases.”
Spoken like a true believer.
What, then, is behind Ehrlichman’s charge?
Ehrlichman never said Nixon approved a racially-motivated drug strategy, but his use of “we” implies he did. Commentary on the Harper’s story, and other places the quote has appeared, takes Nixon’s involvement for granted.
This was likely Ehrlichman’s point.
Nixon was famously bored by domestic policy, and he gave Ehrlichman, a Stanford-trained lawyer, nearly free reign in conducting it. It was all but Ehrlichman’s job to act alone and credit the boss.
It seems that Ehrlichman, where possible, massaged political benefits from Nixon’s general anti-drug attitude, which he disagreed with.
Ehrlichman was never a zealot for Nixon in the manner of his colleague Bob Haldeman, and he never forgave Nixon for not pardoning him.
The charge that Nixon was motivated by race appears to be a “modified limited hangout”—Ehrlichman coined the phrase—designed to make Nixon look worse than he already does.
Nixon’s War on Drugs, later extended by Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, continues to devastate Americans in all walks of life, including disproportionate numbers of black people. It's a shameful legacy.
But Nixon's error wasn't prejudice. It was paranoia. He was totally unable to, as he might say, "be cold" about drugs. It's important to remember this as we try to craft fair, realistic, and compassionate drug policy today.
Justin Sherin is a playwright who gives voice to Richard Nixon in columns on Mashable and in the Twitter account @dick_nixon.
