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
A year into his research, Hari starts feeling that people like Leigh Maddox and Chino Hardin are trying and failing to imitate the drug war’s “founding fathers,” Harry Anslinger and Arnold Rothstein. But Hari knows that others have taken Anslinger and Rothstein’s “darkest impulses” much further. He decides to interview them in Arizona, Texas, and “the deadliest city in the world” (Ciudad Juárez).
Maddox and Hardin were willing to work with Hari because they started questioning their place in the drug war, decided to leave it, and began working to reform it. But Hari has pointed out that the drug war rewards whoever commits the most violence, while practically ignoring anyone who isn’t willing to hurt or kill others. Namely, the cruelest drug dealers and cops keep profiting from the drug war, while people like Hardin and Maddox have to make a living elsewhere. Thus, to fully understand the drug war’s cycle of violence, Hari has to learn about the people at the cutting edge of its cruelty.
Themes
In Arizona, women prisoners are forced to wear T-shirts with phrases like “I WAS A DRUG ADDICT,” sing chants about their crimes, and work in a chain gang all day under the scorching desert sun. The day Hari visits them, they are picking up trash in front of political signs for Joe Arpaio, the sheriff who invented their punishment. Many of the women are in their teens and early twenties; the work is humiliating, and the heat is dangerous.
The conditions in Arpaio’s prisons are an example of how the U.S. legal system treats drug addicts as valueless and subhuman. Arpaio isn’t just indifferent to his prisoners’ dignity—rather, he makes a public spectacle out of denying them dignity. Of course, this policy’s implication is clear: Arpaio believes that the public will reward him for treating addicts with the maximum possible cruelty. Needless to say, this idea isn’t based on facts or evidence—instead, it’s based on the same tendency to scapegoat drugs for social problems that Hari described in his chapters on Harry Anslinger.
Themes
Joe Arpaio views Harry Anslinger as a hero, because he used to work for him. Arpaio even proudly calls his Tent City jail a “concentration camp.” When Hari visits, he learns that the tents are freezing in winter and up to 140°F in summer. The prisoners only get to eat “slop”—a rotten meat paste—and can’t even hug their own children when they visit. Hari meets a 20-year-old man, imprisoned for underage drinking, who has diabetes but is being denied his insulin. When Hari returns the next day, the prisoners refuse to speak—one passes him a note explaining that anyone who talks to him will be sent to “the Hole” (solitary confinement).
Arpaio is the clearest inheritor of Anslinger’s legacy, both because of their professional connection and because he has taken Anslinger’s strategy of inflicting maximum pain and suffering on drug users to an extreme. Arpaio’s “concentration camp” comment indicates that he has intentionally built prisons resembling those of famously repressive societies throughout history, such as the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. (There’s also an actual historical connection between these policies: the Nazis’ racial policies were based on the U.S. segregation policies that Anslinger helped enforce through the drug war.) Put differently, the U.S. has explicitly modeled its drug policy on the greatest human rights abuses in history.
Themes
Surprisingly, the officers agree to show Hari the Hole: a building of tiny, windowless isolation cells with no windows except a tiny slit in the door. The prisoners scream hysterically for help, and everything stinks of feces. A prisoner attempted suicide last night. But this kind of treatment is standard in the U.S. The prison psychologist tells Hari that most of the prisoners became addicted to drugs because of family trauma. While they boil in the desert, Arpaio has converted the air-conditioned county jail into an animal shelter.
The conditions in Arpaio’s prisons continue to get worse and worse, and readers may be shocked to learn that this kind of cruelty is both legal and accepted in the U.S. Indeed, even the prison psychologist recognizes that Arpaio’s tactics are counterproductive: addiction is a response to deep psychological pain, and inflicting more pain on people does nothing to keep them away from drugs. Thus, Hari’s research again suggests that the U.S. government’s drug policy is deliberately callous and sadistic: it chooses to ignore the medical evidence about addiction and inflict needless violence on vulnerable people instead.
Themes
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Arpaio’s Tent City may seem unusually cruel, but actually, it’s typical of how the U.S. treats addicts. In fact, more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than Western Europeans are for all offenses—proportionally, the U.S. imprisons more people than any society in the history of humankind. In U.S. prisons, abuse, torture, and rape are routine. However, most countries treat addicts the same way. In fact, they imitate Arpaio’s cruelty.
Hari’s message is clear: the war on drugs has infected the very foundations of the U.S. legal system. The nation as a whole has replicated Anslinger’s approach to addiction by building a legal system designed to inflict maximum suffering on drug users—but only if they come from vulnerable communities (which, practically, means poor communities and communities of color). Moreover, the U.S. has spread this norm around the world. Arpaio’s Tent City may be a particularly extreme and memorable case study, but it's a useful tool for understanding the war on drugs as a whole.
Themes
A prison reform activist tells Hari about “a woman who was cooked in a cage,” and he visits the archives to investigate. He learns that a mentally ill, formerly drug-addicted woman (Marcia Powell) attempted suicide in an Arizona prison. To punish her for seeking attention, the guards locked her in an empty cage in the desert. She screamed about the heat all afternoon, then eventually collapsed, dead. Guards watched her for hours, mocking her. Three of them were fired, but none faced legal consequences for her death. She was nearly buried in an anonymous grave at the prison, until a charity helped contact her family.
Marcia Powell’s story shows how dehumanization—depriving people of their identities and voices—is a key part of the U.S.’s drug policy. In fact, the guards’ attitude toward Powell reflects of the nation’s attitude toward addicts in general: when they use drugs to deal with trauma, the government traumatizes them further. But when they plead for help, like Powell did when she was burning to death, the government punishes them for speaking. The fact that none of the guards faced legal consequences underlines the fact that such grave human rights abuses are essentially legal and accepted in the U.S., when they’re directed against drug users.
Themes
Hari goes to Missouri to meet Marcia Powell’s ex-boyfriend, Richard Husman, who tells him Powell’s life story. Her adoptive family evicted her at age 13, leaving her to sleep on the beach and do sex work. Then, she joined the Hells Angels motorcycle gang—she helped them transport drugs in exchange for protection and a place to live. In Arizona, child protective services took away her first baby because of her addiction, and her boyfriend committed suicide. Then, she met Husman and quit drugs. They had a son and built an ordinary, stable life in Missouri.
Husman’s story highlights two significant truths about Powell’s life: first, she turned to drugs in order to cope with serious childhood trauma (which was, in part, the result of government failure). Second, she managed to overcome addiction on her own by forming a family. Both of these facts strongly support the scientific theory of addiction that Hari explains in the second half of his book: people turn to drugs in order to deal with trauma and isolation, and that they can overcome addiction by forming stable, loving connections with others.
Themes
But when Powell returned to Arizona to try regaining custody of her daughter, she was arrested on an old warrant for possessing 1.5 grams of marijuana (two joints). Her sentence was a year of house arrest. During this time, she relapsed into addiction and paranoia. Husman points out that, if Powell just had the proper medical help, she could have easily beaten her addiction. But instead, she got caught up in the criminal justice system and never came out. Later, Husman’s stepson murdered his whole family—including his and Powell’s son. Husman doesn’t know if Powell learned about this before her death. If it weren’t for the marijuana warrant in Arizona, Husman says, he and Powell would probably be back in the Midwest, raising a happy family.
Just like the drug trade continuously drew Chino Hardin back into a cycle of escalating violence, the Arizona government’s extreme policies constantly brought Marcia Powell back into a deepening cycle of addiction and trauma. Hari clearly agrees with Husman: Powell’s death was completely unnecessary and avoidable, and she would still be alive if officials had made better, evidence-based choices about how to treat drug users. Powell’s story further shows how Anslinger’s drug war continues to haunt drug Americans today.
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