Hidden History: The DEA, Nixon’s Pills, and Black People

Posted on July 15, 2009 
Filed Under DEA, alcohol, heroin, history, opiates

The DEA, Nixon's Pills, and Black People

An assistant to Egil Krogh, a member of President Richard Nixon’s administration imprisoned in the Watergate scandal, explained, “If we hyped the drug problem into a national crisis, we knew that Congress would give us anything we asked for.” (Epstein, p. 140)

Nixon’s statistical deceit regarding heroin addict numbers is explained in Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America. (pp. 174-177) When Nixon later wanted to show his War on Drugs was working the addict population was magically sliced by 25%.

The cartooned quotes are from Dan Baum’s Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure. (pp. 13 & 21) Baum took the “blacks” quote from the diary of Nixon’s Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman.

Nixon’s generous use of drugs – prescribed and not prescribed (Dilantin) – and alcohol is detailed in Anthony Summers’ The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon.

Sources:

1. Robert Arthur, You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (2008).
2. Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure (1996).
3. Edward Jay Epstein, Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America (1977).
4. Anthony Summers, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon (2000).

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