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
Harry Anslinger helped criminalize drugs not just in the U.S., but across the whole world. This started when the city of Baltimore adopted all of the laws that Anslinger proposed but didn’t see any decline in drug use or crime. Anslinger decided that the explanation was clear: communism. He started telling Congress that the Chinese were shipping heroin to the U.S. to turn addicts into communists. Even though Bureau agents proved that this was false, Anslinger kept saying it because he knew that the government would throw money at anything that contributed to the fight against communism.
Readers familiar with the drug war’s global reach might have been wondering why Hari has focused on the U.S. thus far. But in this chapter, he explains that the U.S. imposed the drug war on the rest of the world. Rather than admit defeat and choose better policies, Anslinger convinced the government that his failed policies needed to expand even further in order to truly succeed. Ultimately, then, he managed to impose his personal biases and vendettas on the entire world, as a global policy consensus.
Themes
Next, Anslinger went to Geneva to tell the United Nations that the whole world needed to criminalize drugs. When other countries’ diplomats refused, he threatened to cut off U.S. trade and foreign aid, while ignoring their arguments. Ultimately, Anslinger convinced every other country to start criminalizing and punishing addicts.
Just as Anslinger used every power available to him to repress Billie Holiday, Edward Williams, and his other enemies in the drug war, he unapologetically coerced the rest of the world into following his will. While these other countries’ diplomats and leaders knew how damaging and ineffective Anslinger’s policies were, it didn’t matter—Anslinger had enough power to make them act against their own people’s interests.
Themes
Around the same time, Anslinger had a psychotic breakdown. His letters show his extreme paranoia: he thought he was fighting a global conspiracy of addicts. But for other politicians, he channeled this paranoia into a compelling idea: drugs were the simple solution to complex problems ranging from racial inequality to geopolitical tensions. Hari argues that Anslinger was just following the “natural human instinct to turn our fears into symbols, and destroy the symbols, in the hope that it will destroy the fear.”
Because Anslinger was so powerful, he managed to impose his beliefs on people around the world. Yet Hari sees a clear link between Anslinger’s delusions and the social psychology of marginalization in general. Namely, Anslinger saw that drugs are a particularly effective scapegoat. Meanwhile, people care more about feeling like they’re fighting problems than the reality of whether those problems actually get solved. Therefore, attacking drugs is an easy way to make people feel like they’re doing good, even if they aren’t.
Themes
Anslinger retired in the 1960s, after running the Bureau of Narcotics for more than three decades. Ironically, federal investigators concluded that the corrupt Bureau was actually the U.S.’s primary heroin supplier. Yet nobody in the government considered disbanding it. In 1970, Anslinger agreed to participate in a roundtable debate on drug laws with medical and legal experts. He was outmatched. The experts cited verified statistics and experimental evidence, while Anslinger simply invented one anecdote after another. Failing to rebut facts with his feelings, Anslinger eventually began comparing the experts to Hitler and saying that they would destroy the U.S. It was his final public appearance.
Anslinger’s war on drugs had the opposite of its intended effects in virtually every way. But on the TV program, instead of accepting this reality, he stuck to the story in his head and lashed out at the people who showed him the facts. This scene’s implications are particularly chilling because the Nixon administration significantly expanded the war on drugs starting in 1971. In other words, just a year after the drug war was publicly exposed as a failure, the government chose to ramp it up anyway. Hari’s message is clear: science and the facts have never driven drug policy—rather, politicians’ feelings and self-interest do.
Themes
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