AHC/WI: More rational anti-drug campaign in 1980s USA

This ad, from what I assume to be the Ford or Carter years, is relatively balanced and non-sensationalist in its treatment of the subject matter, eg. the pusher is at one point allowed to get in the last word(about schizophrenia from amphetamines being temporary), and the anti-drug character isn't allowed to say anything more ominous about marijuana than that the jury is still out on the question of its effects. Also, the ad takes the time to address each drug separately, rather than just bad-mouthing a vaguely defined product known as "drugs".

Fast-forward a decade, to the era of Nancy Reagan and the Partnership For a Drug Free America, and we've got incoherent metaphors about frying eggs, insinuations about marijuana making people infertile or shutting down brain function, plus of course the undifferentiated use of the words "drugs" in phrases like "Drugs Kill". Apart from the dubious facts and logic, a lot of this stuff was just begging to be mocked by its target audience. Which, of course, it was, as were the showboating drug-tests taken by politicians and celebrities.

So, is there any way the anti-drug campaigns of that era could have been conducted with a little more thoughtfulness, subtlety, and truthfulness? Or was it just inevitable that it was all going to descend into over-the-top histrionics and moralizing?

I'm thinking here also of the more recent Montana Meth Project, which I think is generally considered to be a credible and accurate treatment of its subject matter, probably because it sticks pretty close to the documented reality of the drug itself. As opposed to Mrs, Reagan showing up on Diff'rent Strokes and telling Sam "I recently heard about a little boy who smoked marijuana, and he hurt his sister very badly." (Okay, that might have happened somewhere, but it's hardly the norm, and IIRC she didn't have a source for the story.)
 
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Perhaps a stronger pro side to keep them honest?
Maybe have John Ehrlichman give his interview about the drug war being just a political ploy earlier.
 
Perhaps a stronger pro side to keep them honest?

Of course, the devil is in the details. How do you GET a stronger pro side in the first place? And it's a little chicken-and-egg as well, since the question becomes: Was the pro side weak because of the drug war, or was it the weakness of the pro side that allowed the drug war to flourish as it did?

Maybe if other states had legalized marijuana, like Colorado now in OTL, making it into a big money-printing business, that might have cooled down at least the anti-weed part of the War. But you might need an earlier medical-marijuana movement for that to happen.

I'm not sure what to make of the Ehrlichmann interview. Apparently, his kids deny he said that, but they're probably not gonna admit that their old man was that cold-blooded and cynical. My guess is that even if he had said that stuff earlier, the people who wanted to dismiss it would just write it off. Even Republicans would probably just say "This is a man whose crimes brought this nation to its darkest moment in history. Are you going to believe what he says about etc etc?"
 
Is it possible to get the business side of the Republican party to realize the money that could be made and break from the 'law and order' side? The problem is money is made from the 'law and order' side too.
Business Republican seem like they'd be obvious to get a lot of money making stuff legalized, unfortunately they usually seem to just be 'moral' Republicans that happen to own businesses.

Ecstasy was invented in 1912, get it used for therapy earlier than the 70s.
 

CECBC

Banned
An effective (and really evil) anti-drug campaign would be for the government to purposefully release "normal" drugs like pot, coke, ecstasy, etc laced with horrifying research chemicals onto the market. That way the media can honestly report how a guy smoked a joint and ended up doing something terrifying as a result.

To get that you'd need a very ruthless, corrupt sort of politician that saw drugs as such a big threat that they needed to do evil "for the greater good" of the country.
 
An effective (and really evil) anti-drug campaign would be for the government to purposefully release "normal" drugs like pot, coke, ecstasy, etc laced with horrifying research chemicals onto the market. That way the media can honestly report how a guy smoked a joint and ended up doing something terrifying as a result.

To get that you'd need a very ruthless, corrupt sort of politician that saw drugs as such a big threat that they needed to do evil "for the greater good" of the country.
So, like we did with denatured alcohol during Prohibition?
 
To get that you'd need a very ruthless, corrupt sort of politician that saw drugs as such a big threat that they needed to do evil "for the greater good" of the country.

An old deranged Nixon elected in 1980?

[1969-1973] Ronald Reagan/Spiro Agnew (Republican) > Starts the war on drugs
[1973-1977] Ronald Reagan/Edward Brooke (Republican) > Appoints a divisive VP that divides the republicans.
[1977-1981] George McGovern/Birch Bayh (Democratic) > The liberal bogey men, prompts a backlash
[1981-1989] Richard Nixon/John Connally (Republican) > Trickier Dick in the eighties, ramps up the war on drugs
 
Paraquat pot

I remember reading about this in Mad Magazine, of all places, at the time it was an issue. According to the wikipedia article, the pesticide wasn't harmful, but anti-drug campaigners spread the word that it was, to deter weed usage.
 
An old deranged Nixon elected in 1980?

[1969-1973] Ronald Reagan/Spiro Agnew (Republican) > Starts the war on drugs
[1973-1977] Ronald Reagan/Edward Brooke (Republican) > Appoints a divisive VP that divides the republicans.
[1977-1981] George McGovern/Birch Bayh (Democratic) > The liberal bogey men, prompts a backlash
[1981-1989] Richard Nixon/John Connally (Republican) > Trickier Dick in the eighties, ramps up the war on drugs

This might actually dovetail with the "rational campaign" scenario of my OP.

Say a guy like Liddy comes up with some harebrained scheme a la Post #5. He doesn't actually have to implement it full-scale, maybe just hire some creeps to circulate PCP-laced weed throughout some tony East Coast suburbs, so that a bunch of kids go psychotic and end up hospitalized all on the same weekend, thus prompting(in Liddy's mind anyway) a national reaction against marijuana, with increased support for a federal crakdown.

The false-flag is exposed, but not before a few kids have already ended up in psych wards with some pretty serious mental-health issues, some long term. There is a public backlash AGAINST the excesses of the drug war, with politicians and average citizens less willing to entertain the hysteria and hyperbole of its most fervent adherents. The campaign still goes ahead, but with tighter oversight in terms of what it's allowed to present as fact to the general public.
 
Perhaps the simplest option would be to somehow avoid Ronald Reagan getting elected in 1980. Was his nomination inevitable at the time?
 
Perhaps the simplest option would be to somehow avoid Ronald Reagan getting elected in 1980. Was his nomination inevitable at the time?

Much as many people(myself included) like to demonize Mr. and Mrs. Reagan as the instigators of the 80s Drug Wars, certain Democrats played a pretty substantial role as well...

How did it come about that mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses were passed in 1986?

In 1986, the Democrats in Congress saw a political opportunity to outflank Republicans by "getting tough on drugs" after basketball star Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. In the 1984 election the Republicans had successfully accused Democrats of being soft on crime. The most important Democratic political leader, House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill, was from Boston, MA. The Boston Celtics had signed Bias. During the July 4 congressional recess, O'Neill's constituents were so consumed with anger and dismay about Bias' death, O'Neill realized how powerful an anti-drug campaign would be.

Whether O'Neill and company would have been so fired up about the crusade without Reagan setting the pace is an open question. If the impetus really was sentiment in Boston, then that might have had a dynamic of its own, apart from what the GOP was doing.

link
 
Need to get rid of the crime wave. Even independent of drug related crime, there was a massive increase in crime in late 60s, 70s and 80s that only started decline in the mid 90s. The perception was that Drugs=crime and the crack epidemic with the Bloods and Crips fed into that perception. "Soft on crime" was the easiest way to lose re-election in the 80s.
 
Need to get rid of the crime wave. Even independent of drug related crime, there was a massive increase in crime in late 60s, 70s and 80s that only started decline in the mid 90s. The perception was that Drugs=crime and the crack epidemic with the Bloods and Crips fed into that perception. "Soft on crime" was the easiest way to lose re-election in the 80s.

Preventing leaded gasoline might help with that.
 
Did nobody care that it was drugs illegal=crime?

The crime wave that hit the US was in many cases independent of drugs - homicides, robberies, sexual assaults that were not affected by drugs. Also, there was a pretty nasty heroin epidemic that hit in the 70s. Add in the spread amphetamine and LSD in the late 60s and early 70s and people were more concerned with keeping drugs from their kids than providing treatment for those that tried them. Finally, the crack epidemic was brutal. It's pretty hard to convince someone to legalize crack when their daughter is whoring her emaciated self to get a fix. At least its hard until other options are exhausted.
 
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