David Farber: The War on Drugs turns 50 today. It’s time to make peace.
As declarations of war go, it was pretty low key. On June 17, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon held a news briefing in the West Wing of the White House. In his usual dark suit and striped tie, speaking comfortably from notes, the president branded Americans’ rising tide of drug abuse “public enemy number one.” He continued: “In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive. … This will be a worldwide offensive. … It will be government-wide … and it will be nationwide.” To fund this new war, Nixon declared, he would ask Congress to appropriate a minimum of $350 million. (In 1969, when Nixon first took the oath of office, the nation’s entire federal drug budget was just $81 million.) Fifty years later, the United States has expended approximately one trillion dollars waging war on illegal drugs.