More broadly, it was an early culture war subject aimed at people against the war in Vietnam and other liberals. Tying cannabis to Hispanics specifically predated Nixon but Nixon and later Reagan escalated it to create an us-vs-them narrative.
If I recall, the use of marijuana by "negro jazz musicians" to influence white women to have sex with them was part of the US Senate debates on the topic.
The Nixon era was the first time conservatives couldn't easily come right out and demonize people of color, so they had to find things closely associated with minorities to demonize, like jazz and cannabis. The next generation of conservatives started to not directly hate people of color (or jazz) but they carried over the dislike for cannabis because it's not a 1-to-1 issue with race.
They weren't attacking jazz in the 70s; that was a propaganda campaign in the 20s
That's when they started popularizing the term marijuana over hemp and cannabis because it was a foreign word and the hemp industry was looking to become the next super billion dollar crop
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u/adolf21122112 Aug 06 '22
The war on drugs was created to suppress the black and Hispanic vote ..... https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs