By the time the drug war reaches 50 years, the US is still a well-known enemy; US & Canada

Fifty years ago, on June 17, 1971, US President Richard Nixon called a press conference with a shocking message to his countrymen: “America’s first great enemy, the United States, is a drug addict”. To defeat the enemy, he said, “it was necessary to create new, all evil”, which would be “global” in nature and require “more money” from Congress.

In fact, it was fortunate that Nixon also included a place in the “United States” – fearing that the Americans would forget the horrific communist threat that claimed their lives every minute and that, among other things, a large number of U.S. troops went to kill and kill Vietnam.

As it turned out, part of the claim that Nixon initiated the so-called “war on drugs” did not occur but the Vietnam War, which led to the epicenter of heroin violence and similar incidents of US war. It was not rocket science: if you are a poor American sent to kill and die for no other reason than to spy on them, you may have to flee for your life from drug abuse from this tragedy.

Nor did it help, in the fight against the “common enemy”, that the US had already started selling drugs worldwide for many years to date, plus – surprisingly – southeastern Asia. For example, in 1993 the New York Times reports that during the Vietnam War and the US assassination in Laos, products made from heroin laboratories in northern Laotian “were operated by CIA aircraft, Air America.” .

True, American fraud is as old as the world itself, but “the whole war on drugs” is only part of the deception. As the famous American historian Howard Zinn states in his book A People’s History of the United States, the CIA in the 1950’s “provided the drug LSD to unsuspecting Americans to test its effects: an American scientist, A drug addict and a CIA agent jumped out of a New York hotel window to his death ”.

And he was not the only scientist to be excused for thinking that it was the US government which was a well-known enemy.

Remember, for example, the description that sparked the brutal war that former Nixon adviser and Watergate co-founder John Ehrlichman gave to journalist Dan Baum. The Nixon White House, Ehrlichman said, “had two enemies: the anti-war left with black people … We knew we could not stop being war veterans or blacks, but by making people associate with hippie marijuana and black people with heroin , and then committing two crimes, we can confuse these areas.

And confused they did. Besides, what is the point of capitalism if it does not create a leading class with racism that makes the rich richer than the majority?

During one of the most devastating phases of the 1980s, the US Contra War in Nicaragua also took a turn for the worse, with the US supporting the sale and sale of drugs to wing-threatening terrorists threatening the country.

One of these: a crack plague that ravaged black communities in Los Angeles.

Talk about enemies in public.

The plague, in turn, helped to establish a law against drug abuse during Ronald Reagan’s administration, which imposed minor penalties on drug offenses and the wreckage of serious problems in poorer nations.

The law established a gap of between 100 and 1 in prisons for possession of drugs associated with black people – as opposed to cocaine powder, associated with rich whites.

Indeed, the imprisonment of poor black people in cash-generating prisons is a great way to earn money to “disrupt communities”.

In some countries, there is a growing number of people who have been affected by the “war on drugs” in the past. I remember in Colombia, where the US has thrown billions of right-wing governments under the influence of drug traffickers, who have used their royal aid to kill civilians, human rights activists, human rights activists, and anyone who stands in the way of the neoliberal government. .

And in Mexico, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the US-sponsored war in 2006. As it achieves its unfulfilled goals – in pursuit of U.S. drug trafficking and criminalization that makes their trafficking so profitable in the first place – the war said he won imitating Mexican cities as one of the world’s most violent places.

Back in the US, meanwhile, the drug war was once again given a chance by former President Donald Trump. While hopeful observers have seen the potential for change in Joe Biden’s new administration, Biden is also one of the leading drug manufacturers in the US – including in the 100: 1 case of cracking cocaine and cocaine.

Newsday’s article reminds us that, in 1991, Biden “complained” that the death penalty was not commonly used for drug traffickers.

But a mere presence in the US could result in a death sentence, due to a strong commitment to capitalism to deny its citizens health care and other rights to survival. In view of such oppression, it is not surprising that many people turn to drugs.

Now, the US military after 50 years is opioid epidemic Anger in the US, due to the deadly threats of the pharmaceutical industry, one cannot help but think that a war of this kind is being planned. Or more than that: the battle against the same drugs.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editor of Al Jazeera.