Yea I am amazed this quote continually keeps coming up. As user GatorD42 pointed out when this was brought up before:
>...Baum claims Ehrlichman said that to him in 1994 while he was researching for a book he published in 1996 about the drug war. He didn't include the quote in that book, but instead published it in 2012 and again in 2016, after Ehrlichman had died (in 1999).
This is an amazing and explosive quote - if Baum had included it in his book in 1996 I am sure it would have garnered a great deal of attention for the book. Instead Baum did not include it in his book, but instead would wait for decades later when Ehrlichman was no longer around to dispute it.
At any rate, if the quote was actually said by Ehrlichman, it doesn't actually describe the drug polices of the Nixon administration. While Nixon is remembered for "war on drugs", the actual substance of his policies seem to be different than what people think it was:
>...I have been fortunate over the years to discuss the distorted memory of Nixon's drug policies with almost all of his key advisors as well as with historians. Their consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right wing that he hadn’t gone soft. So he laid on some of the toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a White House speech declaring a “war on drugs” and calling drugs “public enemy number one”. It worked so well as cover that many people remember that “tough” press event and forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief but…a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him).
>..."Enforcement must be coupled with a rational approach to the reclamation of the drug user himself," Nixon told Congress in 1971. "We must rehabilitate the drug user if we are to eliminate drug abuse and all the antisocial activities that flow from drug abuse."
>The numbers back this up. According to the federal government's budget numbers for anti-drug programs, the "demand" side of the war on drugs (treatment, education, and prevention) consistently got more funding during Nixon's time in office (1969 to 1974) than the "supply" side (law enforcement and interdiction).
>Historically, this is a commitment for treating drugs as a public health issue that the federal government has not replicated since the 1970s. (Although President Barack Obama's budget proposal would, for the first time in decades, put a majority of anti-drug spending on the demand side once again.) ...
You can try to rehabilitate nixon as much as you want, but even if he was a Nice Guy™, the facts are that the war on drugs was designed by racists (e.g. Harry Anslinger), and along with imprisoning many generations of people of color, it was weaponized specifically and pointedly against people who challenged the establishment.
> Yea I am amazed this quote continually keeps coming up.
People on the Internet are extremely pro-drug. People like to believe things that confirm their priors, and since nearly no one on the Internet is against marijuana legalization, the quote does normally go unchallenged.
I think that's a reductive reading - the war on drugs and in particular as it relates to marijuana has been under a lot of scrutiny. And public acceptance of marijuana is steadily growing.
This more suggests to me that a critical analysis of the criminalization of marijuana has tended toward a verdict of "folly" (in the best case scenario) or "targeted mode of oppression" (in the worst).
Reading that as implicitly pro-drug is simplistic in my view.
Having a smart phone and a Facebook account does not constitute being on the Internet. In many ways, AOL users were closer to being Internet users than most people are now.
To play devils advocate, if I don’t have a Facebook/Twitter/IG/Reddit account, and I am unaware of what’s going on and being discussed on social media, am I really “on the internet”?
I was really talking about people who never stray outside of the walled garden of Facebook. In the case of someone who never enters the walled garden, but partakes of the web, email, and other such applications, I would say they are on the Internet.
Understood. I was really asking because I have deactivated my Facebook account several months ago and had deactivated my IG. I re-activated IG, but I broke the habit of compulsively scrolling the feed and rarely open the app these days.
All that aside, now that I'm not really "on social media", I feel quite disconnected with the world sometimes. Unless I speak to them directly, it's hard to keep track of what any of my friends or acquaintances are doing in life: who's having kids? who's in a new relationship? who got married? who moved to the city? who had a major career change?
Granted, not everyone posts these kinds of details, in fact most of my feed in a network of ~850 persons was dominated by a handful of heavy posters/social media addicts. Even so, occasionally seeing something from someone I otherwise would not talk to was a small window into their lives and kept me slightly aware of things. Sometimes it's people commenting on news I wouldn't otherwise see, sometimes it's pictures of kids..
All that said, the compulsive scrolling action and concern over my own internet identity became a bit much for me, so I'm still inactive on FB.
>...Baum claims Ehrlichman said that to him in 1994 while he was researching for a book he published in 1996 about the drug war. He didn't include the quote in that book, but instead published it in 2012 and again in 2016, after Ehrlichman had died (in 1999).
This is an amazing and explosive quote - if Baum had included it in his book in 1996 I am sure it would have garnered a great deal of attention for the book. Instead Baum did not include it in his book, but instead would wait for decades later when Ehrlichman was no longer around to dispute it.
At any rate, if the quote was actually said by Ehrlichman, it doesn't actually describe the drug polices of the Nixon administration. While Nixon is remembered for "war on drugs", the actual substance of his policies seem to be different than what people think it was:
>...I have been fortunate over the years to discuss the distorted memory of Nixon's drug policies with almost all of his key advisors as well as with historians. Their consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right wing that he hadn’t gone soft. So he laid on some of the toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a White House speech declaring a “war on drugs” and calling drugs “public enemy number one”. It worked so well as cover that many people remember that “tough” press event and forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief but…a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him).
http://www.samefacts.com/2011/06/drug-policy/who-started-the...
>..."Enforcement must be coupled with a rational approach to the reclamation of the drug user himself," Nixon told Congress in 1971. "We must rehabilitate the drug user if we are to eliminate drug abuse and all the antisocial activities that flow from drug abuse."
>The numbers back this up. According to the federal government's budget numbers for anti-drug programs, the "demand" side of the war on drugs (treatment, education, and prevention) consistently got more funding during Nixon's time in office (1969 to 1974) than the "supply" side (law enforcement and interdiction).
>Historically, this is a commitment for treating drugs as a public health issue that the federal government has not replicated since the 1970s. (Although President Barack Obama's budget proposal would, for the first time in decades, put a majority of anti-drug spending on the demand side once again.) ...
https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs