If this approximately six hour program can be summed up it’s the three words that are constantly bandied about by interviewees to establish a narrative about the war on drugs: “irony,” “inadvertent,” and “backfired.”
1.) MKUltra causes the counter-cultural revolution.
2.) Nixon’s initiation of the war on drugs is a war on blacks and hippies.
3.) American paranoia about Soviet influence in our hemisphere leads to the Colombian/Mexican cartels
4.) CIA is responsible for the heroin and crack-cocaine ‘epidemic’ and other evils.
5.) 9/11 and the War on Terror is just a natural extension to the war on drugs.
Obviously, this is a special about drugs, but in attempting to envelop almost the entirety of 50 years of domestic and foreign policy as a ‘drug thing’ without a semblance of context the people who put this together stepped outside their wheelhouse and the whole thing looks ridiculous.
It comes off as flippant and Oliver Stone-like in its hand-waving dismissal of the national security, strategic, and domestic aims of the United States. They might as well come out and say the purpose of this program was to establish a foundation for the legalization of all drugs in the United States, absent any other suggestions made in the program.