In a 'Harpers' interview just released,

John Ehrlichman (posthumously) admitted Nixon's War on Drugs, began in 1971, was political, to criminalize the administration's two greatest enemies. The anti-war left and black people. Ehrlichman said. 'We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them, night after night, on the evening news.'
More than $1 trillion later, Nixon's War has devastated more lives than drugs ever could have.
Just one of the reasons I can't stand the jerks(R)?
BTW, pot remains a Schedule I drug, like heroin, in rightwingnut states, where cartels and lawyers get rich.