Yeah the whole point of the war on drugs for the most part was to punish people who wanted to see things differently. There are only a few scheduled drugs that are actually harmful. If alcohol were discovered today it would certainly be scheduled because its side effects and potential for addiction are far worse than EG todays normal dosage of MDMA or LSD. The whole notion of jailing drug users actually made their lives far worse than the drugs themselves ever did. And the aggressive prosecution created openings for the modern drug cartels by eliminating competition.
Nope, much earlier. MKULTRA, the secret CIA program to administer LSD to do mind control and other stupid shit, started in the 50ies under the Dulles bothers already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
They also did lots of public advertising for LSD via popular figures like Timothy Leary, besides frying a lot of innocent brains with it.
I know that perfectly well, hence the scare quotes. I was referencing the term used by the person I replied to in order the draw a parallel between the two.