The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people.
EXPLANATION:
Ehrlichman told journalist Dan Baum in 1994. "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, 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."
The accusation was shocking, characterizing the war on drugs as a racist, politically motivated crusade.
But Ehrlichman's claim is likely an oversimplification, according to historians who have studied the period and Nixon's drug policies in particular. There's no doubt Nixon was racist, and historians told me that race could have (played one role in Nixon's drug war. But there are also signs that Nixon wasn't solely motivated by politics or race: For one, he personally despised drugs — to the point that it's not surprising he would want to rid the world of them. And there's evidence that Ehrlichman felt bitter and betrayed by Nixon after he spent time in prison over the Watergate scandal, so he may have lied.
More importantly, Nixon's drug policies did not focus on the kind of criminalization that Ehrlichman described. Instead, Nixon's drug war was largely a public health crusade — one that would be reshaped into the modern, punitive drug war we know today by later administrations, particularly President Ronald Reagan.
None of that means that the drug war hasn't disproportionately hurt black Americans. It clearly has. But the lessons of Nixon's drug policies may not be so much that he was a racist, power-hungry politician — although, again, he was — but rather that even well-meaning policies can have big, terrible unintended consequences.
Hope it helps! And please give me brainliest pleasse?
