Washington State government distributes funding in response to past racist policies [Video]

OLYMPIA, Wash. – When President Richard Nixon announced a new federal War on Drugs, it launched a new era of mass incarceration of Black and Hispanic Americans. Washington State is responding to the damaging impact of the War on Drugs with a new Community Reinvestment Project.

Nixon White House Counsel John Ehrlichman explained the reasoning for the new enforcement push in an interview with Harper’s Magazine.

“The Nixon White House…had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people…We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against [Vietnam] 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.

The impact of the War on Drugs had the effect desired by the Nixon Administration. Though the United States is home to under 5% of the global population, it houses about a quarter of all prisoners according to the World Prison Brief.There were …