The War on Drugs comes from a lie that Nixon's campaign used to demonize leftist political movements: anti-war Liberals and the Black Power movement. Ehrlichman, one of his officials, later admitted this.

Those who campaign for this drug-addicted war fight tooth and nail against measures such as pill-testing and safe injection spaces, that would prevent most of the war's civilian casualties, because those measures would supposedly "legitimize" the drugs. Then they cite the casualties, that continue because they prevent these measures, as the reason to prohibit them.