Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Chasing the Scream, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Drug Legalization and U.S. Policy
Addiction and Human Connection
Prohibition and the Cycle of Violence
Stories and Human Psychology
Summary
Analysis
When Hari arrives in New York and begins interviewing experts, he learns that the war on drugs didn’t start with President Nixon or Reagan in the 1970s or 1980s. Instead, it started decades before, with a man named Harry Anslinger. Hari visits Penn State University to look through Anslinger’s archives, and he learns about how three key figures became part of the war on drugs. The first is Anslinger himself. In 1904, when Anslinger was 12, his neighbor began screaming uncontrollably. He rushed to bring her medicine from the pharmacy. She recovered, but her screams convinced Anslinger that drugs turn a certain subset of the population into hysterical, vicious degenerates.
Hari began his research with a misconception that most of his readers are likely to share: he thought that modern U.S. drug policy started in the 1970s, most likely because President Nixon coined the term “war on drugs” in 1971. But in reality, Nixon was just building on Harry Anslinger’s longstanding policies. Meanwhile, Anslinger’s childhood encounter with his neighbor shows how personal experiences deeply shape people’s perspectives on drug abuse—often far more than the actual scientific evidence about drugs. When these people gain political power, their experiences can lead them to transform structures that affect millions of other people’s lives.
Themes
The second key figure is Arnold Rothstein. After nearly murdering his own brother as a toddler, Rothstein entered the illegal drug trade and grew up to become a vicious killer. The third key figure, Billie Holiday, spent her childhood helping clean a local brothel because the madam agreed to pay her by letting her listen to jazz records. But Holiday also suffered abuse there, and she turned to heroin to deal with the pain.
If Anslinger represents the politicians and law enforcement officers who lead the war on drugs, then Rothstein represents the violent gangsters who profit from it. Meanwhile, Holiday represents the addicts who use drugs to deal with their own pain and suffering, then get drawn into the crossfire between the Anslingers and Rothsteins of the world. This pattern has held remarkably consistent over the years—most of the people Hari meets on his journey are living out the legacy of either Anslinger, Rothstein, or Holiday.
Themes
Hari notes that drugs like heroin and cocaine were widely available in the U.S. until 1914, when the government addressed Americans’ collective anxieties about drugs by outlawing and destroying them through the Harrison Act. In 1939, Billie Holiday famously began singing “Strange Fruit,” a haunting song about lynching that helped launch the civil rights movement. Then, Harry Anslinger’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics started harassing her—and eventually helped to kill her.
Drug prohibition is not an inevitable or natural policy choice—rather, there was a time before it. During this time, cocaine and heroin were legally available but clearly didn’t cause widespread addiction or unrest. Moreover, Hari’s research suggests that the U.S. didn’t truly outlaw drugs because of evidence that they’re harmful—instead, drugs were merely the government’s excuse to use law enforcement to repress racial minorities (especially Black people). As Hari will later explain, the Harrison Act was the result of a manufactured racist panic about Black “cocaine fiends,” while Anslinger sought to arrest Billie Holiday because he feared that her public activism would help topple Jim Crow (racial segregation) laws in the South.
Themes
When Anslinger took over the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the old Department of Prohibition, he had a tiny office and virtually no power. He used the Bureau to pursue his lifelong dream: to “eradicate all drugs, everywhere.” In just three decades, he transformed the agency and launched the war on drugs.
Anslinger shows how power-hungry people can often set policy according to their own biases and priorities. The public may think that official policies are designed and vetted by trustworthy experts who know what they're doing, but Hari continuously warns his readers against falling into this assumption. In the war on drugs, it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Themes
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As a teenager, Harry Anslinger supervised a team of Sicilian railroad workers who frequently whispered about the “Black Hand” (a Mafia extortion racket). When one of the workers got shot, he explained the racket to Anslinger, who swore revenge against the Mafia and started obsessively researching it—even though most Americans, including law enforcement, didn’t even think it was real.
Anslinger’s experience with the Mafia explains why he brought a personal vendetta against organized crime to his work at the Bureau of Narcotics. It also shows how he obsessively held and pursued grudges. Meanwhile, U.S. law enforcement’s consensus that the Mafia didn’t exist shows how disconnected official policy can be from reality. Needless to say, Hari thinks that the drug war is another example of this same phenomenon.
Themes
During World War I, Anslinger worked as a diplomat in Europe. Part of his job was to send heroin-addicted sailors home—and this made him hate drugs even more. At the end of the war, he also had to deliver a secret message to the German Emperor—but he arrived too late, and he long blamed himself for Germany’s postwar instability. All around him, he saw European cities reduced to rubble and starving people reduced to political violence. Later, during Prohibition, Anslinger worked in the Bahamas, fighting a war on alcohol smugglers. Then, Anslinger married into a wealthy, well-connected family that got him his job at the helm of the struggling Bureau of Narcotics.
Anslinger’s experiences during the war shaped his approach to drugs at the Bureau of Narcotics. Already convinced that drugs ruin people’s lives, Anslinger didn’t bother to ask whether heroin actually caused the soldiers’ problems—rather, he just viewed their problems as further evidence that drugs needed to be eliminated. Meanwhile, his error with the German Emperor convinced him that he could change the course of history if he acted decisively enough, and his travels through Europe gave him a clear sense of how deeply modern societies can fall into disarray. He came to view the drug war as a way to save the U.S. in lieu of saving Europe. Finally, his path to government—through his marriage—shows that modern societies don’t necessarily allocate power to the most capable or deserving people. Again, Anslinger’s life story shows that it’s dangerous to assume that people in power are rational or competent.
Themes
To get more resources for the Bureau, Anslinger decided to wage war on marijuana, which was disproportionately used by Black and Mexican people. Despite having clear scientific evidence that marijuana use isn’t harmful, Anslinger started telling the public that marijuana causes insanity and violence. Countless doctors approached him to explain that he was wrong, but he dismissed and threatened them. He directed the press to report on Victor Lacata, a man who murdered his family after allegedly smoking marijuana. In reality, Lacata had a lifelong history of serious psychosis, and his doctors never even noted marijuana use.
Anslinger openly used racist lies and fearmongering for his own political gain. Even though his agency was supposed to reduce drug addiction and violence, in reality, the problem worsened as the Bureau got more power and resources. This shows how power can create perverse incentives: Anslinger actually benefited when drug addiction and violence got worse. It also shows how power can trump science: Anslinger’s racist propaganda became the common wisdom about marijuana. Modern readers might be familiar with the scientific research showing that marijuana isn’t seriously harmful, but they are unlikely to know that this research has existed since before marijuana was even outlawed.
Themes
Yet Anslinger’s plan worked: the public was frightened, and the government started pouring money into the Bureau of Narcotics. Anslinger’s campaign was also based around racism: he publicly claimed that marijuana would make Black men attack white women. Meanwhile, he aggressively attacked his critics—he fired an agent who complained about his use of racial slurs, and he concocted false criminal allegations against scientists who disagreed with him.
Anslinger ran the Bureau like a dictator: he used the law to accumulate power and crush his opponents, not to actually benefit the people he was supposed to protect and serve. Worse, he got away with it, and his racism and political self-interest became the foundation for the drug policies that still exist today. Indeed, there’s a clear, direct link between the racist foundations of the drug war in Anslinger’s time and the racist way it’s still fought today. Again, Anslinger’s story wholly disproves the common assumption that drug policy has anything to do with the actual science about drugs.
Themes
Anslinger was also fixated on Billie Holiday. (When investigating this connection, Hari manages to meet Holiday’s godson and get access to her unpublished writings.) Unsurprisingly, Anslinger hated jazz—not only was it about improvisation and cultural mixture, but its greatest proponents were Black marijuana smokers. Anslinger tried to get them all arrested, but he couldn’t assemble enough evidence, so he went after one specific person instead: Billie Holiday.
Anslinger’s crusade against Holiday shows how he used the war on drugs as a tool to pursue unrelated priorities that the government couldn’t openly announce—like maintaining white people’s political and cultural supremacy in the U.S. He went after Billie Holiday in order to turn her into a symbol of sin and criminality. He hoped that this would counter jazz’s growing cultural power, which posed a challenge to segregation and white domination.
Themes
Billie Holiday grew up poor in segregated Baltimore. When she was 10, a neighbor raped her—she screamed and the police came, but they arrested her. They sent her to a brutal reform school, and she escaped and went to New York, where she started working alongside her mother as a prostitute. It was the only available work; she was only 14 and was nearly starving to death. Her vicious pimp Louis McKay beat her mercilessly, and she was sent back to prison. After getting out, she started drinking and doing drugs to numb her pain. She also started singing in Harlem bars. She became increasingly successful, but she was pressured into marrying McKay, who abused her and stole most of her money.
In addition to reflecting many of the injustices that Black Americans faced in the early 20th century, Billie Holiday’s extremely traumatic early life also helps explain why she turned to drugs and alcohol. (Indeed, the connection between her personal life and her music is well-known.) Holiday’s screams, like Anslinger’s neighbor’s, symbolizes this connection between drugs and deep psychological pain. The key question is whether drugs cause pain or are a response to them. (Holiday’s experience suggests that it’s the latter.)
Themes
Harry Anslinger hired the Black agent Jimmy Fletcher to bust Billie Holiday. Fletcher found that, while Holiday was using drugs, she also desperately wanted to quit. They became friends and stayed close—even after Fletcher admitted he was an agent, raided Holiday’s apartment, and didn’t find any drugs. In fact, he fell in love with her. But Anslinger still managed to get to Holiday. When Holiday finally broke up with Louis McKay, he furiously contacted Anslinger and agreed to help plant drugs on her and bust her. She went on trial and then to prison for a year. But worst of all, the government took away her performer’s license, banning her from singing. She also struggled to form new friendships because she feared—rightly—that many of the people around her were undercover agents.
Holiday’s real life didn’t fit the narrative that Anslinger wanted to impose on her. Anslinger treated her as a remorseless criminal who simply broke the law for fun. But in reality, she was a lifelong victim of severe violence who was struggling to overcome the drug addiction she used to cope with that violence. Thus, Anslinger turned Holiday’s suffering into an excuse for imposing even more suffering on her. This is an early example of a timeless pattern in the drug war: prohibition laws only worsen the pain, shame, and isolation that drive addicts to use drugs in the first place.
Themes
But Harry Anslinger didn’t mind when white celebrities had drug problems—instead, he personally met with them and agreed to keep their secrets to protect their reputations. This was the point: the drug war was never originally about fighting addiction, as it claims to be today. Instead, it was about responding to white people’s racist fears and sustaining their political power over non-white people.
In addition to showing that the drug war has always been a strategy for maintaining white people’s domination over other races, Anslinger’s racist double standard clarifies that he also knew the truth about drugs and addiction. Contrary to his public messaging, he didn’t think that his white celebrity friends would turn into violent maniacs after taking drugs, because he knew that drugs didn’t truly cause those effects. In fact, he was fully aware that people could be addicted to drugs and still live ordinary, productive lives—even when they faced significant public scrutiny.
Themes
This pattern started much earlier. For instance, the Harrison Act was partially a response to a series of sensationalistic articles about “negro cocaine ‘fiends’” who allegedly became violent and extra-powerful when they consumed the drug. For the white public, it was easier to blame Black people’s discontentment with U.S. politics on cocaine than on segregation. In the 1800s, white people’s fear about economic competition from Chinese immigrants led to the outrageous myth that these immigrants were leading white girls into “opium dens” to rape them and hook them on drugs. White mobs massacred Chinese people, and then the government banned opium.
Drugs have long been a convenient, sensational excuse for racist violence, in part because most people know little about them. Thus, by linking drug policy to racism, Anslinger was actually continuing a long American tradition. The rhetoric that Hari cites here shows that the political elite wasn’t deceiving the public into supporting racist drug policies—rather, politicians won public support for these policies by explicitly marketing them as racist. In later chapters, Hari will show that this is still very much the case today.
Themes
Hari returns to Harry Anslinger and Billie Holiday. To pursue Holiday, Anslinger hired the sadistic agent George White, who bragged about murdering suspects in cold blood. White planted drugs in Holiday’s hotel room and arrested her, but she protested that she was sober and would submit to medical tests to prove it. This time, at trial, the jury found her not guilty. But she was still devastated.
White’s behavior shows that Anslinger saw law enforcement not as a force for the common good, but rather as a powerful tool for advancing his own specific political agenda at any cost. While the courts ultimately served justice for Holiday, Anslinger still managed to humiliate and exhaust her through the legal process. This shows that law enforcement doesn’t need to actually find drugs in order to use the drug war as a tool for repressing the people they wish to target.
Themes
A few years later, Holiday collapsed from a combination of malnourishment, cirrhosis, and heart and respiratory disease. But Anslinger’s agents visited her in the hospital, planted heroin on her once again, and arrested her. She was chained to her hospital bed for weeks and banned from taking visitors. She recognized the absurdity of criminalizing addiction—and yet she also felt like she was a sinner, destined for hell. She died in her hospital bed, under police custody. Yet Hari concludes by noting that, despite its horrifying consequences, he understands Anslinger’s impulse to save the world by destroying addiction.
Anslinger’s vicious tactics again underline Hari’s argument that the war on drugs was originally conceived as a tool for injustice. Anslinger wanted to punish Holiday as much as he possibly could—just like many nations still do to their addicts today. In fact, this passage serves as an important metaphor for the drug war as a whole: laws continue to punish sick, suffering drug users because they’re based on the misconception that addiction can be crushed through force. But in reality, force does little to draw addicts away from drugs—instead, it only multiplies their suffering. Still, Holiday’s internal conflict—like Hari’s, which he described in the introduction—shows that drug addicts and their loved ones face the same conflict as Anslinger. Namely, they wonder if they can heal addiction through love or only destroy it through repression.
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