In the span of a few years, the scene went from loving "Flower Children" to speed freaks, junkies and con men all strung-out and looking for an easy buck.
Another example is the Black protesters who wanted equal rights. Realizing that these folks were serious about wanting change, what happened? The controllers began shipping heroin out of the Golden Triangle in the early 70's and pumping it into the inner cities, right where the protesters lived. Soon we had our first big wave of heroin use in the United States in the early-to-mid 1970's, and the Cause quietly faded away. And do people really think it was all just "coincidence"?
Of course drugs weren't the only factor in the demise of these movements, but it was a definate contributor.
Another example concerns the English Punk Rock movement of the mid-late 1970's. At that time the economic situation in Great Britain was abysmal. Scores of angry teenagers were politically mobilized by a new musical craze - Punk Rock. Through the Sex Pistols, Clash, Generation X, Siousxie Sioux and the Banshees and others, this movement actually became dangerous to the English Elite.
To counter it, Johnny Thunders, ex-New York Dolls guitarist and quite possibly the most notorious junkie in rock'n'roll history (which is saying alot) and Nancy Spungen (Sid Vicious's girlfriend who was stabbed to death under suspicious circumstances) traveled to England. Thunders joined the Sex Pistols for a total death drag tour, while Nancy set her sights on (and landed) poor old Sid. Within months, as Johnny Thunders bragged, every Punk Rocker in England was a junkie.
Johnny and Nancy, neither of whom had two pennies to rub together, somehow still managed to have unlimited access to smack and turned everyone onto it whom they met. Kinda makes you wonder how they were able to afford it all huh? Within less than two years, the Pistols disbanded, Nancy and Sid were dead, and Punk Rock fizzled into New Wave Music, which was safer, more sanitary, and much more focused on money than revolution.
It's a perfect Hegelian Dialectic at work:
Thesis: dangerous, political Punk Rock.
Anti-thesis: destructive, readily available heroin.
Synthesis: antiseptic, less threatening New Wave music.