Then (1987), Storming Heaven
The Anslinger Theory: Was the Drug War Racist?
Jay Stevens documented Anslinger's racially targeted enforcement of drug laws, particularly against Billie Holiday and Black jazz musicians. The drug war served to control specific communities alongside its stated public health rationale.
Confirmed by Science
John Ehrlichman's 2016 admission (to journalist Dan Baum, published in Harper's) that the Nixon administration's drug war was explicitly designed to criminalize anti-war protesters and Black people is the most direct confirmation. Ehrlichman: '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.' The account rests on Baum's notes alone, and Ehrlichman's family and several former Nixon aides dispute it. The American Civil Liberties Union has documented that Black people are 3.73 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana despite similar use rates. The racial targeting Stevens documented was policy, not practice.
Sources
- Stevens, Storming Heaven (1987)
- Ehrlichman in Baum, Harper's Magazine (2016)
- ACLU, A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests (2020)