The Intercept has a story about a History Channel special today:
Richard Stratton, a marijuana smuggler turned writer and television producer, explains, “Most Americans would be utterly shocked if they knew the depth of involvement that the Central Intelligence Agency has had in the international drug trade.”
Next New York University professor Christian Parenti tells viewers, “The CIA is from its very beginning collaborating with mafiosas who are involved in the drug trade because these mafiosas will serve the larger agenda of fighting communism.”
For the next eight hours, the series sprints through history that’s largely the greatest hits of the U.S. government’s partnership with heroin, hallucinogen and cocaine dealers. That these greatest hits can fill up most of four two-hour episodes demonstrates how extraordinarily deep and ugly the story is. — The Intercept
The article needles Chuck Grassley (who constantly complains about the History Channel for not showing enough History). They note that he has been a reliable drug warrior, but has recently come around to criminal justice reform.
As per Jon Schwarz, the documentary will cover this infamous quote about the Nixon administration as well:
A Former Nixon Aide Admitted the 'War on Drugs' Was Designed to Screw Over Blacks and Hippies
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying?" [Nixon aide John] Ehrlichman told Baum. "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. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." — Vice
And since it's father's day, let's remember all the dad's who've been hurt by our vindictive, misguided, misapplied policies on drugs.
Cross-posted from NotMeUs.org | @subirgrewal