The Blue Ribbon Report Ricard Nixon chose to Bury has cost tax payers over 100 billion
in arrests.
"After Richard Nixon flattened the Democrates as Soft on crime in the ’68 election, the President-elect faced a dilemma. There’s not much the White House can do to impact crime. The thugs people are aftraid of-burglars, robbers, rapists, murderes-are the business of state courts. Then somebody mentioned drugs.
In a textbook example of fear manipulation, Nixon warned the counry that a plague of unimaginable proportions was about to engulf the nation. “The problem has assumed the dimensions of a national emergency,” he said. To fighet the pushers on their own terms he would need emergency poseres-preventive detention, unorthodox strike forces, more freedom to search, wire tap, and arrest.
For scientific support, he appointed former Republican Pennsylvania Govenor Ray Shafer to head a National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. he told Gov. Shafer to treat marijuana just like heroin despite the “obvious differences between marijuana and other durgs. He was even more direct with chief of staff Bob Haderman. “I want a Godamn strong statement about marijuana...that just tears the ass out of them.
But after months of testimony from academics, medical experts, lawmen, and health professionals, the facts overwhelmed the myths. The report was devastating: “Marijuana use, in and of itself, is neither causative of, nor directly associated with crime... It found no basis for the gateway theory. Alcohol, it said, was probably a greater danger, and the report concluded that personal use of marijuana should no longer be a crime."
http://www.csdp.org/publicservice/nixon06.htm
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