Weird aspects of the screwed-up “war on drugs” — July 2015 article in The Atlantic

The “war on drugs” has been dysfunctional and counter-productive for many years.  It was escalated when Nixon tried to attack the “hippie” and anti-war movements and also to create public animosity toward African Americans by causing the public to fear them as drug dealers.  Other politicians also provoked a “tough-on-crime” mania in order to attack their demographic and political opponents and in order to ingratiate themselves with voters who were easy to exploit through fear, racism, ignorance, and simplistic solutions to complex problems.

This article in the July 2015 issue of The Atlantic magazine is informative:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/07/chapo-mexico-drug-war/398927/
About GlenAnderson 1499 Articles
Since the late 1960s Glen Anderson has devoted his life to working as a volunteer for peace, nonviolence, social justice, and progressive political issues. He has worked through many existing organizations and started several. Over the years he has worked especially for such wide-ranging goals as making peace with Vietnam, eliminating nuclear weapons, converting from a military economy to a peacetime economy, abolishing the death penalty, promoting nonviolence at all levels throughout society, and helping people organize and strategize for grassroots movements to solve many kinds of problems. He writes, speaks, and conducts training workshops on a wide variety of topics. Since 1987 he has produced and hosted a one-hour cable TV interview program on many kinds of issues. Since 2017 he has blogged at https://parallaxperspectives.org He lives in Lacey near Olympia WA. You can reach him at (360) 491-9093 glen@parallaxperspectives.org