The real reason Nixon started the war on drugs.

[brush]

5. Bullshit. The tactic at that time was to flood the AA community with with crack...

which was more addictive and destructive to black users and their families and community. And guess who was doing the flooding? Organized crime in conjunction with the government—research Oliver North and the Contras drugs (cocaine) for arms. Journalist Gary Webb exposed the whole ring for the San Jose Mercury in the 90s and had his career go up in smoke as the government tried to destroy him for shedding light on their drug running.

Powder was always available but the objective was to get people addicted, jailed with purposely longer sentences than powder cases (it's called blatant racism), and put away in prison, thus killing two birds at once of the Nixon agenda's enemies—drugs and black people.

Note: Black people have always known who the enemies were/are just as more recently with W Bush and trump.