Chasing the Scream Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus Chasing the Scream

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Zusammenfassung von Chasing the Scream

Name: Chasing the Scream
Rating: 4.6 (34 reviews)
Author: Johann Hari

Johann Hari

The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

4.6 (34 Bewertungen)

17 Min.

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What’s in it for me? Find out how the War on Drugs started, and why there’s been no victory.

Like the War on Poverty and the War on Terror, the War on Drugs originally sought to beat an "undeniably" evil foe – drugs. But like so many other costly wars, it turns out that the War on Drugs was waged against the wrong enemy.

Drugs have always been controversial, especially today because legalization and decriminalization are favored more and more across the globe.

These blinks explore the beginnings of the War on Drugs and its recent developments. They explain how we’ve reached a position where fighting against drugs is perhaps less advantageous than simply accepting them as part of life.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

why heroin addicts Billie Holiday and Judy Garland were treated so differently;
how cracking down on dealers leads to more gang power; and
why addiction has less to do with drugs than you might think.

The War on Drugs was born in America and pushed onto other countries.

The effort to curb illegal drug use and crack down on dealers, otherwise known as the War on Drugs, has come to seem so natural that we’re unfazed by stories about major drug busts in the news. Stacks of confiscated money and drugs and weapons: we barely bat an eye.

But the beginnings of this “war” were surprisingly different from how it is carried on today.

As late as the early twentieth century, those drugs we’ve come to categorize as illicit were actually freely available in some form throughout the world.

For example, you could leave the pharmacy with a bulging bag of medicine that incorporated drugs like heroin and cocaine. A refreshing sip of Coca-Cola contained ingredients extracted from the coca plant, the source of cocaine, and fashionable department stores in Britain even sold tins of heroin for high-society women.

That all changed, however, in 1914, when the United States began prohibiting the sale and use of drugs. But why the sudden change?

The outbreak of WWI, combined with rapid industrialization, drove Americans to seek an outlet for the anxiety and aggression caused by their fast-changing world.

Drugs – tangible objects that could be destroyed – seemed the perfect scapegoat for the less tangible ills of modernity, such as class tension, displacement and changing customs.

But the eventual hard-line, worldwide prohibition of drugs was due to the concentrated effort of one man: Harry Anslinger, first chief of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics, from 1930 to 1962, and primary proponent of the War on Drugs.

During his tenure as Bureau chief, Anslinger noticed that drugs kept flowing into the US even as he zealously cracked down on them. He suspected that communists were deliberately smuggling drugs into the country, hoping to use drug addiction as a means of undermining America’s military and economic strength.

So, in the 1950s, he took his case to the United Nations, where, by leveraging American geopolitical dominance, he successfully convinced the other member nations to adopt prohibition policies.

The War on Drugs was not originally meant to prevent addiction, but rather to suppress racial minorities.

Modern misconceptions about the War on Drugs cropped up from the very beginning.

Indeed, we’re often told that the purpose of the War on Drugs was and is to protect addicts from further self-destruction and to prevent others from getting addicted. This belief is strengthened by campaigns such as “Just Say No,” for example, which was prevalent during the 1980s and 1990s.

Ironically, the War on Drugs effectively created the modern drug-related crime industry.

When Harry Anslinger and his colleagues began their crusade against drug use, they expected that much of the drugs circulating on the streets would simply disappear.

As it turns out, however, when a popular product is criminalized, it doesn’t simply vanish. Instead, people seek out other, illegitimate ways to obtain it. This is especially true of drugs, which can cause intense physical and psychological cravings, driving addicts to try to obtain them at any cost.

Cracking down on drug dealers actually increases violence, rather than reducing it.

You would think that, the longer the War on Drugs raged on, the less drug-related crime there would be. But that’s not the case, because drug-related crime doesn’t work like other criminal activities.

If you arrest a large number of murderers, for example, you see an immediate correlation in homicide statistics. Similarly, if you arrest a large number of violent racists, you will see a drop in hate crimes. Drug dealing, in contrast, doesn’t actually subside when drug dealers are arrested.

Drugs can’t cause addiction without the help of individual susceptibility.

The inability of those waging the War on Drugs to understand their role in the cycle of violence is a major reason for the war’s failure, but it’s not the only one. Another reason is our misconception about the nature of addiction.

People erroneously believe that usage leads to addiction – that if we consistently use a drug, we’ll get addicted to it. But there’s compelling evidence to the contrary.

By decriminalizing the possession of drugs, governments can help addicts get the support they need.

Looking at the failures of the War on Drugs, we’re left wondering how to best combat addiction.

One good way to start would be to decriminalize drug possession. This would both lessen the stigma of addiction and allow addicts to seek the help they need.

Legalizing drugs increases tax revenue and weakens criminal organizations.

Over the past few years, the subject of decriminalization, whereby people can use (but not sell) drugs, has been a regular subject in global news. However, the most effective solution would be to legalize drugs outright.

By legalizing drugs, governments are better able to limit access to them than when they’re criminalized.

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Worum geht es in Chasing the Scream?

Chasing the Scream (2015) gives a riveting account of the first hundred years of the disastrously ineffective War on Drugs. Weaving together fascinating anecdotes, surprising statistics and passionate argumentation, Hari examines the history of the War on Drugs and explains why it’s time to rethink addiction, rehabilitation and drug enforcement.

Bestes Zitat aus Chasing the Scream

Fact: When Thailand refused to ban opium smoking because it was a longstanding tradition, Harry Anslingers team threatened to cut off American foreign aid until the country complied.

—Johann Hari

Wer Chasing the Scream lesen sollte

Anyone interested in drugs and drug enforcement
People who know someone struggling with drug addiction
Those considering moving to California just for the medical marijuana card

Über den Autor

Johann Hari is an author and journalist who has contributed to publications such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and The New Republic, among many others. He is also the author of God Save the Queen?, a humorous critique of the British monarchy.

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