Drug Biography

In 1971 ,President Richard Nixon declared drug users public enemy number one. Young, white, middle-class kids were openly using recreational drugs, and long-held stigmas about drug use were shrinking, especially in the Bay Area. Public perception typically connected drugs with protest culture and the social rebellion of the '60s and '70s. To then-president Richard Nixon, and many others, it was a sign of society coming apart at the seams.

Nixon began a grand campaign to strike back. He wanted nothing less than a full-scale “war on drugs” that would be waged against the dealers and users of drugs at home, as well as the cultivators and suppliers abroad. It would be carried out through aggressive policing and military intervention. And it would set a trend for decades to come.