Description
A half century before President Trump sent the National Guard to federalize DC’s police troops, President Nixon declared the city a “national experiment” in crime reduction. This law enforcement effort transformed in 1971, however, when heroin became “public enemy number one,” and Nixon switched gears, launching a massive public health campaign against addiction and drug use. This lecture will explore a little-known moment in America’s war on drugs, when rising rates of crime and heroin addiction transformed the nation’s capital into the site of a radical healthcare experiment—and what happened after that experiment collapsed.
