Myth: Nixon and Republicans Started the War on Drugs in the 70s

Originally posted on Quora October 11, 2022

This myth, usually peddled by braindead leftoids and partisan hacks in the Jackass Party, is so devoid of reality and filled with revisionist history that it leap frogs over almost 60 prior years of drug criminalization and anti-cannabis propaganda leading up to the 1971 Controlled Substance Act that although signed into law by Nixon (R) was passed by a majority Democrat House and Senate. While there were a handful of holdouts, the overwhelming majority of Democrats in both the House (187) and the Senate (49) voted for the Controlled Substances Act that created the DEA and kicked started the modern war on drugs. As early as 1914, a majority Democrat House and Senate passed, and Woodrow Wilson (D) signed into law, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, that criminalized the distribution and use of cocaine and opium products except by registered companies and persons. The first federal effort to criminalize cannabis was pushed by Harry J Anslinger (D), who was the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (a prototype of the DEA) for 30 years and successfully campaigned for the passage of the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act and the 1957 Narcotics Control Act both passed by a majority Democrat House and Senate and Signed into Law by FDR (D) and Eisenhower (R) respectively. So while Nixon coined the phrase, the groundwork for the war on drugs had already been laid by two Democrat and 1 Republican Admin, three majority Democrat congresses, and a life long Democrat bureaucrat who ran a prototype of the existing DEA and ATF. It was Bill Clinton (D) who signed the 1994 Crime Bill into law, also passed by a majority Democrat Congress, which not only enacted the decade long “assault rifle” ban but also expanded the death penalty to offenses like large scale drug trafficking, reintroduced mandatory minimum sentences and the three strike laws and funneled billions into the construction of new prisons. The 1994 Crime Bill was sponsored by the dementia patient currently occupying the oval office (D) who among other things also created harsher sentences for freebase cocaine use and possession compared to the hydrochloride salt. All of this information is publicly available at our fingertips; continued repetition of the myth that Nixon (or Reagan) and Republicans are solely responsible for the war on drugs can only be attributed to willful ignorance or belligerent stupidity.