Nixon and the Weaponization of the War on Drugs in the United States

MARIJUANA IN AMERICA
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Date The war on drugs in the United States has persistently triggered divisive discourses due to its racial inclinations since it started in 1971. Pearl presents statistics demonstrating that a particular demographic remains disproportionately affected by emerging policies and anti-drug laws, casting doubts on the intentions of the policymakers in the nation. The popular claim is that the individuals and institutions responsible for formulating regulations conspire to target cannabis to control marginalized communities, including African Americans and Latinos. This tendency closely aligns with the expressed viewpoints by President Nixon while championing for war on drugs in the country that flagged minorities as the heart of the problem. Thus, Nixon played a role in shaping the weaponization of the war on drugs leading to the rise of racially-inclined policies that promoted mass minority incarcerations.             Patterns reveal that policymakers and laws within the United States have gradually become strict and targeted in ways that covertly perpetrate discriminative practices. One of the worrying aspects of the war against marijuana in the nation is that rather than affecting all races in the country equally, minorities bore the greatest wrath of these laws. For instance, Alexander indicates that minorities constitute significantly more individuals arrested and sentenced to jail than their white counterparts. Statistics illustrate that by the 1990s, punitive laws targeting the possession of marijuana, which has minimal health complications compared to alcohol or tobacco, had contributed to over 80% rise in related arrests. Such figures reveal how cruel the laws stirred by President Nixon while castigating Marijuana intake in his tapes as a cause of national destruction became. The progressive change of laws and policies led the Supreme Court to make a groundbreaking ruling in Terry v. Ohio in 1968, leading to the stop-and-frisk rule that has since gained momentum as the tool for incarcerating more African Americans and other minorities for flimsy marijuana and drug-related crimes. This law has become weaponized for profiling, leading to ballooning arrests. Alexander confirms that, as a consequence, “nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than this ongoing war.” Such trends highlight the unintentional yet concealed use of cannabis-related rules for controlling minorities.             Nixon’s early campaigns against the legalization of marijuana and the contextualization of its impacts on American society paved the way for punitive measures and laws leading to increased incarcerations. In his tapes, the president parallels the effects of such a drug with the ones experienced by the Romans in Rome and the Catholic Church several centuries ago after an increase in homosexuality. Associating marijuana possession and use with a practice that fundamentally disrupts the social and moral order prompted the aggressive approach by later lawmakers and anti-drug efforts. For instance, the president provided an example of how to deal with such, stating, “God damn it, they root them out, they don’t let them around at all,” while illustrating how Russians dealt with homosexuals. Although the primary intention by Nixon might have been to streamline American society and create a healthier future, the ramifications indicate that specific communities are more affected than others. Girdusky clarifies that despite confessions by entities such as John Ehrlichman that “the 37th president started the war on drugs to suppress his political enemies, namely blacks and anti-war activists before the 1972 election,” these allegations have received vehement objections by Pat Buchanan that they are misleading and malicious on Nixon’s reputation. However, despite these clarifications, the stern approach that the president approached the problems shaped the ferociou...