Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs is a 2015 work of investigative nonfiction by British-Swiss author Johann Hari. Hari explores the so-called international war on drugs by looking deeply into its historical roots, its legal and social implications, and the possibility for reform. He examines addiction and the consequences of past and present drug laws across nine continents and 30,000 miles. A major focus is the criminalization and misinformation campaign against drugs in the United States. The book’s release coincided with the centennial anniversary of a landmark US drug law called the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, the first national attempt to regulate drugs on a federal level. Hari holds that this act instigated the war on drugs.

The book has five sections: “Mount Rushmore,” which examines three pivotal early figures in the war on drugs; “Ghosts,” which introduces two Americans, representing both sides of the law, that have fought to reform the drug war; “Angels,” which examines the role of Mexican cartels in the drug war; “The Temple,” which looks at theories of addiction; and “Peace,” which explores various international efforts to reform drug laws. Chasing the Scream was a New York Times best seller and became the inspiration for the 2021 feature film The United States vs. Billie Holliday.

Plot Summary

The first three sections feature the themes of race and public policy. In Part 1, “Mount Rushmore,” Hari explores the origins of the war on drugs. He focuses on the lives of Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics; Billie Holliday, the heroin-addicted star jazz vocalist whom Anslinger’s agents hounded; and Arnold Rothstein, the New York City crime boss of the 1920s who became America’s first real drug kingpin. Hari’s examination moves from past to present in Part 2, “Ghosts,” as he introduces two of the drug war’s opposing combatants who eventually ended up on the same side. Chino Hardin was a teenage drug dealer and gang leader in New York City. Leigh Maddox was a Baltimore police captain who spent years as a strong advocate of the drug war but eventually left the force because she realized that the drug war was only creating more dealers and more violence.

Hari focuses on American drug laws and the violence that the system of prohibition has created in Part 3, “Angels.” He visits the state of Arizona, where he examines the brutal punishment that even minor drug offenders receive. Hari then crosses the Mexican border to visit Ciudad Juárez. This dangerous region of Mexico is a major smuggling route into the US and is controlled by the extremely violent cartel known as the Zetas. Having provided the perspective of both an American drug dealer and an American cop in the previous section, Hari now reveals the perspective of a cartel member and an ordinary Mexican citizen whom the cartel terrorized. Rosalio Reta is a convicted murderer whom the Zetas trained to be a hitman at 15 years old. Marisela Escobedo is a nurse who was denied justice and was eventually murdered herself after a cartel member killed her daughter.

The themes of addiction and reform are central to Part 4, “The Temple,” and Part 5, “Peace.” Hari travels to the Downtown Eastside neighborhood of Vancouver, Canada to meet two medical professionals who transformed the understanding of addiction. Gabor Maté is a doctor who began working with addicts and developed the theory that previous trauma, rather than chemicals, is the primary cause of addiction. Bruce Alexander is a psychologist who conducted the “Rat Park” experiments, which proved that negative social factors and a lack of bonding can lead to addiction. Hari dedicates the final few chapters of Chasing the Scream to examining the success of drug law reform movements in several countries. In 1999, Switzerland began a program through which heroin addicts could obtain prescribed doses if they met certain criteria. Portugal in 2001 decriminalized all drugs, legalizing possession (but not sale)—and João Goulão, Portugal’s national drug coordinator, illuminates the drug trade’s complexity from a science and policy perspective yet with compassion for people who suffer needlessly. Uruguay in 2012 fully legalized marijuana, allowing pharmacies to sell it as a taxed product. In 2006, Colorado and Washington were the first US states to legalize marijuana.

Hari’s research process took him thousands of miles to countries with differing histories of drug use (and abuse), norms, and laws. He studied prominent and notorious figures—from government officials to users to traffickers—in the psychosocial tradition of drugs, and he expertly shows how drugs touch everyone. He interviewed several important living figures in drug law history, including well-known reform advocates, activists, politicians, and scientists as well as people in immediate contact with drug use and its impacts, including dealers, law enforcement officers, and addiction specialists. 

Hari avoids endorsing any theory or judgment about the drug world, aiming instead to construct an empirical survey that amplifies the voices of its many stakeholders. Hari concludes that based on evidence, the messages pushed by the war on drugs are sorely out of touch with reality. He hopes that empirical research and social activism will shift America and the rest of the world into a new sociological paradigm about drugs and end the destructive century-long war.