Propaganda Wars: Why the Black community needs to re-examine its relationship with weed

“Wait – you smoke weed?! I’m so surprised. I didn’t think you were that type.”

Really? Are we still judging people about weed in 2018? Fam, it’s time we ended the war on marijuana…once and for all.

Because the truth is the little green buds you see as a hobby for low-class “thugs” with no ambition, represents one of the biggest examples of how corrupt politicians have very directly (and effectively) destroyed our communities while convincing us to blame each other.

But before I get into all that, let’s take a quick trip back to the 1980’s – which now that I think about it, is the last time we let a television personality run our country.

Nancy Raegan lied to all of us

Back in the 80’s, Nancy Reagan launched the “Just Say No” campaign which would eventually became her signature issue and a defining legacy for both her husband and herself.

In those days, many impressionable children (myself included) grew up with the image of a perfectly coifed First Lady staring solemnly into the camera as she repeated the catchy three-word phrase through our television sets and into our psyches.

During that same time the D.A.R.E programs – which were founded by Police Chief (and extremist) Daryl Gates, who believed that “casual drug users should be taken out and shot” – were implemented in schools across the nation, in spite of their glaring failure rates.

And ta-da!

Just like that a whole generation was spoon-fed overgeneralized, misleading, anti-marijuana, propaganda that would set the stage for decades of (unchecked) racially biased drug arrests focused on the Black community.

But before we get into how the Reagans convinced ya’ll to judge your otherwise law abiding cousins for peacefully smoking a joint (as opposed to the more socially acceptable practice of getting drunk at happy hour to the detriment of your liver) let’s rewind even further back and talk about to how and why this “war” initially started.

The War on Drugs was always a smoke screen

In 1971 President Richard Nixon officially started what is now coined “the war on drugs”, and two years later created the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

While on the surface this may seem like a very well meaning and presidential course of action, one of the main architects of Nixon’s drug policy, Attorney General John Mitchell, would later come clean and admit that war on drugs was always meant to be an attack on liberal “hippies” and black people.

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan 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,” Ehrlichman said.

“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.”

So there you have it – direct from the horses mouth.

The “war on drugs” was quite LITERALLY meant to take down black people from day one.

While white Americans were being told to fear scary drugged out Black people, the real bad guy in this was free to go unchecked.

And by “bad guys” I mean the Nixon era C.I.A.

This is not a conspiracy theory.

Because the current C.I.A. (thanks to the investigative work of some incredibly brave – albeit flawed journalists) was eventually forced to admit that for more than a decade it protected its Nicaraguan allies from being prosecuted for smuggling cocaine into the U.S.

In plain english this means: the US government has confirmed that it knowingly turned a blind eye while drugs were pumped into black neighborhoods, therefore making it complicit in creating the crack-cocaine epidemic that has ravaged urban communities for generations.

This has all been proven now. But back in the 80’s when when the Reagans were in office, and inherited the blueprint for this sinister plot from Nixon – they still had an image to uphold.

And exactly how do you convince the public not to connect the dots and realize you let hard drugs destroy millions of lives because you were more concerned with America’s efforts to overthrow Fidel Castro?

Easy!

Just roll out a smear campaign against marijuana; the easily accessible, wonder drug with a host of health benefits that was popular amongst stressed out blacks and liberals who couldn’t afford insurance and instead turned to an inexpensive alternative to all the pricey pharmaceuticals on the market.

Yeah thats a great idea!

And you know what be even better? What about getting the demure, harmless looking First Lady to become the poster child for this smoke screen so that kids and parents all over the nation will be fooled into thinking marijuana is the real issue.

You know… as opposed to all that crack the government’s cronies were allowed to sell on the streets?

It was an evil plan straight out of a blockbuster film, except this time, the villains ended up getting away with it.

If you’ve ever gone to California and driven past the drug addicted homeless community on Skid Row, please know that in that moment you are staring at the legacy of your countries complete failure to protect black people from their crooked allies.

Ricky Ross (the drug kingpen – not the rapper) was able to take his South Central-based crack businesses national thanks to his access to a cheap supply of coke from Nicaraguan suppliers who were being protected by the U.S government.

That’s some foul ish right?

I often use the term “systemic racism” as a generalization, but this is a very specific example of how that system stacks the deck against black people.

And then poses disingenuous questions like, “Why are all those inner city negroes strung out on drugs?” as if they had nothing to do with it.

But anyways…. history lesson over. Let’s go back to Nancy Reagan and what happened after she convinced us to see poor innocent weed as the enemy.

Ripping black families apart when law at a time

Once Nancy successfully rebranded marijuana as “the gateway drug”, that then gave her husband Ronald the momentum he needed to pass oppressive drug laws that hyper focused on specific communities.

I feel like by this point in the story you can take a wild guess which communities got the brunt of this punishment.

In 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, establishing mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and grouped cannabis with drugs like heroin.

On what planet do weed and heroine ever belong in the same sentence?

That’s like grouping Tylenol with Meth.

That same year, Reagan’s Executive Order 12564 also authorized drug testing for all Federal employees – even though the president’s own counsel later acknowledged that federal courts had ruled mass testing programs unconstitutional.

But the constitutional rights of federal employees be damned because again, this country’s corrupt “war on drugs” was deemed more important than the rights of it’s citizens.

And as for all those people living in urban communities plagued by unchecked, government-affiliated drug dealers? You’d think as some sort of restitution they’d be treated as victims and be provided with assistance to get clean right?

Well, unfortunately that sort of reasonable response is only reserved for white communities where things like “the opioid epidemic ” make the cover of Time Magazine and we’re asked to show compassion for white citizens who fell prey to addiction.

In the 80’s though, black folks were further victimized by laws literally drafted up to scoop them off the streets and hide any evidence of the C.I.As illegal activities.

These laws included things like crack sentencing guidelines that meant that someone possessing just 5 grams worth of crack (the size of two sugar packets) received an automatic 5 years in prison.

And just like that for decades our prisons became filled with low-level drug users; further cementing the narrative that black people have some sort of moral shortcoming that makes them more prone to being incarcerated.

But we don’t have a moral shortcoming folks – the system did this by design.

And the biggest irony of all this is that while black families continued to be torn apart over dime bags, Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s own daughter developed a cocaine problem, yet somehow managed to maintain her freedom.

So yeah, on 4/20 (or any other day of the year), if you see someone lighting up a joint and minding their business – check yourself before rushing to judgment.

After reading this article you might even find yourself asking for a puff too.

Follow writer Blue Telusma on Instagram at @bluecentric