One of Nixon's advisors:

> “You understand what I’m saying? 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.”

The initial war on drugs had nothing to do with the drugs themselves. But then successive governments had to keep running with it because letting the foot off the gas would let the opposition portray them as weak on drug abuse and crime. And then commercial interests got mixed into it too.

Research has proven that mushrooms and LSD are societally and personally the least damaging drug you can take. The top spots go to usual suspects like heroin and crack, and the subtop is alcohol and tobacco.