The war on drugs
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 9 May 2019
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The first 'war on drugs' was launched by US President Richard Nixon in 1971. He described drug abuse as a 'national emergency' and asked Congress for nearly four hundred million dollars to tackle the problem. Claire Bowes has been speaking to one of Nixon's policy advisors, Jeffrey Donfeld, about an approach to drugs which he describes as more 'find them and help them' than 'find them and lock them up'. And how he convinced the President to roll out a nationwide programme of methadone treatment for heroin addicts.
Photo: US President Richard Nixon (BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. You're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Claire Bowes. |
| 0:47.0 | In the summer of 1971, the US President Richard Nixon announced a worldwide program |
| 0:57.7 | to eradicate illegal drug use. |
| 1:00.3 | It became known as the War on Drugs. |
| 1:03.0 | In 2019 I spoke to Jeffrey Donfeld |
| 1:07.0 | who worked in Nixon's White House |
| 1:09.0 | trying to find a way to help addicts to give up heroin. |
| 1:14.0 | America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. |
| 1:21.0 | Richard Nixon was a Republican. In his third year in office he declared a |
| 1:26.6 | national emergency over drugs and asked Congress to agree to provide a total of $371 million to spend on programs to |
| 1:36.9 | control drug abuse in America. |
| 1:39.2 | In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offenses. |
| 1:47.0 | I've asked the Congress to provide the legislative authority and the funds to fuel this kind of an offensive. |
| 1:54.7 | This will be a worldwide offensive dealing with the problems of sources of supply as well as Americans |
| 2:00.2 | who may be stationed abroad wherever they are in the world. |
| 2:04.0 | The war was to be fought on three fronts. |
| 2:07.5 | One was an attempt to stop the supply of drugs from countries such as Thailand, Burma, |
... |
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