Such was always the intent of the War On (some) Drugs.
Maybe it’s an unfortunate side effect of it, but the real reason that we have a War on Drugs is that Richard Nixon viewed black people as his enemies. Richard Nixon’s Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, kept a diary with Nixon quotes. Here’s the money quote: “[Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.” Voila, the war on (some) drugs, as you put it, was born.