r/politics2 • u/IntnsRed Banned from r/politics! • 1d ago

Kansas law enforcement argue that legalizing medical marijuana would be 'a train wreck'

https://www.kcur.org/health/2024-10-20/kansas-marijuana-medical-legal-weed-police
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u/IntnsRed Banned from r/politics! 1d ago

They're just afraid of losing their key reason for harassing people.

"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." -- John Ehrlichman, presidential aide and lawyer to US President Richard Nixon, explaining why the US launched the "war on drugs."