POT BAN IS ABOUT POLITICS, NOT HEALTH

Re: "That Hippie Sacrament" (May 11), I was born in 1934, so had little
exposure to the hippie sacrament. But I do read history, and it confirms
that marijuana prohibition began as a way to hold down hippies, not
because marijuana is dangerous.

President Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, wrote in his diary on
April 28, 1969, that "[Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the
fact that the whole problem [welfare] is really the blacks. The key is
to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to ..."

Nixon signed the 1971 Controlled Substances Act, which included
marijuana on its most restrictive "schedule." Nixon's motive was
corroborated in 1995 by Nixon's other aide, John Ehrlichman, during an
interview with Dan Baum, author of Smoke and Mirrors, when he told
Baum,

"Look, we understood we couldn't make it illegal to be young or poor
or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common
pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were
making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue for the Nixon
White House that we couldn't resist it."

Marijuana prohibition began - and remains - about
power.

John Chase, Palm Harbor, Fla.