Video: 'President Nixon Declares Drug Abuse "Public Enemy Number One"'

(Thursday, June 17, 1971, 11:00 a.m. EDT) — President Richard Nixon today began the “War on Drugs,” declaring that “America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.”

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Nixon said that drug abuse had “assumed the dimensions of a national emergency” and asked Congress for $155 million more for a campaign of rehabilitation, research, education, enforcement and international control of drug traffic.

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In June 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a critical report on the War on Drugs, declaring: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and years after President Nixon launched the US government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed.”