On June 18, 1971, U.S. President Richard Nixon officially declared a 'war on drugs,' identifying drug abuse as 'public enemy number one.' He significantly increased federal funding for drug-control agencies and treatment efforts, launching a policy that would lead to mass incarceration and a global militarized approach to drug enforcement, centered in Washington, D.C., and shaping U.S. domestic and foreign policy for decades.

Nixon's declaration is a defining moment in the modern drug war, a subject that has inspired a vast body of critical and testimonial literature. Poets and writers from the African American and Latino communities, disproportionately affected by the war, have used their work to expose its racial and social injustices, while the Beat and counterculture poets rebelled against the very concept of a state-sponsored war on personal consciousness.