Chasing the Scream Character Analysis

Johann Hari

The author of Chasing the Scream is a British journalist whose work has focused primarily on psychology and global politics. He chose to write this book because of several close personal encounters with addiction: his… read analysis of Johann Hari

Bruce Alexander

Bruce Alexander is a professor and addiction researcher who spent decades working in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. As a young psychologist, he began offering counseling to drug addicts, and he realized that drug addiction depends… read analysis of Bruce Alexander

Angel

Angel was a young man who got caught up in Ciudad Juárez’s drug violence. Sergio Barraza coerced Angel into helping transport Rubi Fraire’s body, and then Angel contacted Rubi’s mother, Marisela Escobedo, to… read analysis of Angel

Harry Anslinger

Harry Anslinger was the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962 and, according to Hari, the primary architect of the war on drugs. In addition to aggressively prosecuting drug… read analysis of Harry Anslinger

Joe Arpaio

Joe Arpaio was the notorious, controversial sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County (the Phoenix metropolitan area) from 1993 to 2017. He is well-known for his longstanding pattern of serious police misconduct and his extreme anti-immigration policies… read analysis of Joe Arpaio

Ruth Dreifuss

Ruth Dreifuss is Switzerland’s former president and home affairs minister. Taking inspiration from John Marks’s heroin prescription program in the U.K., Dreifuss pioneered Switzerland’s innovative, highly effective system of heroin and methadone clinics. These… read analysis of Ruth Dreifuss

Robert DuPont

DuPont is a prominent psychiatrist and drug war advocate who was the founding director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is by far the world’s major funder of addiction research. Despite his powerful… read analysis of Robert DuPont

Marisela Escobedo

Marisela Escobedo was a mother, nurse, businesswoman, and activist from Ciudad Juárez. In 2008, Escobedo’s 16-year-old daughter Rubi Fraire was murdered by her boyfriend, the Zeta Cartel member Sergio Barraza. The police refused to… read analysis of Marisela Escobedo

Liz Evans

Liz Evans is a nurse from Vancouver who started the Portland Hotel Society, an organization that gives drug addicts free, stable housing and treatment—even if they continue to use drugs. Hari argues that policymakers and… read analysis of Liz Evans

João Figueira

Figueira is the policeman who runs Portugal’s top drug control agency. During Portugal’s era of drug prohibition, Figueira strongly opposed decriminalization: he thought that repression, marginalization, and force were the only ways to reduce drug… read analysis of João Figueira

Rubi Fraire

Rubi Fraire was a young woman from Ciudad Juárez who was murdered by her boyfriend, Zeta Cartel member Sergio Barraza, at the age of 16. Fraire’s mother, Maria Escobedo, dedicated her life to… read analysis of Rubi Fraire

Antonio Gago

Antonio Gago is a Portuguese man who, like Sergio Rodrigues, overcame serious heroin addiction through the nation’s pioneering treatment programs. He now performs outreach to help current addicts find resources and treatment. Gago’s transformation… read analysis of Antonio Gago

João Goulão

João Goulão is the doctor who spearheaded Portugal’s radical drug decriminalization policy. After participating in the resistance movement that launched Portugal’s 1974 democratic revolution, he became a doctor in the southern Algarve region, where tourism… read analysis of João Goulão

Hannah

“Hannah” is the pseudonym that Hari uses for a drug addict and sex worker who lived at Liz Evans’s Portland Hotel housing center in Downtown Eastside for many years. Like thousands of other indigenous… read analysis of Hannah

Chino Hardin

Chino Hardin is a transgender drug reform activist and former crack dealer whom Hari repeatedly interviews over the course of his research. Hardin tells Hari about how he learned to earn respect, build a reputation… read analysis of Chino Hardin

Deborah Hardin

Deborah was Chino Hardin’s troubled, drug-addicted mother. Deborah’s mother was also an addict, and she abandoned Deborah during her childhood. Instead, Deborah was raised by a more distant relative, Lucille Hardin. After she… read analysis of Deborah Hardin

Hari’s Relative

When Hari began researching Chasing the Scream, one of his close relatives was addicted to drugs. This was one of his primary motivations for writing the book. By the time Hari finished his research… read analysis of Hari’s Relative

Hari’s Ex-Boyfriend

Johann Hari’s ex-boyfriend has struggled with cocaine and heroin addiction for many years, and his addiction was one of the main reasons that Hari decided to research the war on drugs for this book… read analysis of Hari’s Ex-Boyfriend

Carl Hart

Carl Hart is a neuroscientist who studies drug use and addiction at his Columbia University laboratory. He tells Hari that, because the U.S. government controls most funding for drug research, most scientists are afraid to… read analysis of Carl Hart

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday was a world-famous Black jazz singer and activist. She remains widely known for the anti-lynching protest song “Strange Fruit” and classic jazz standards like “All of Me.” As a child, she suffered extreme… read analysis of Billie Holiday

Richard Husman

Richard Husman is a railroad worker and biker who dated Marcia Powell for several years before her death in one of Joe Arpaio’s Arizona prisons. Husman blames Arizona’s extremely harsh drug laws for Powell’s… read analysis of Richard Husman

Danny Kushlick and Steve Rolles

Danny Kushlick and Steve Rolles are the English activists and drug policy experts who founded the Transform Drugs Policy Institute and helped president José Mujica design Uruguay’s legal marijuana system. They advocate legalization as “a… read analysis of Danny Kushlick and Steve Rolles

Leigh Maddox

Leigh Maddox is a lawyer and former police captain from Baltimore. After a drug gang murdered her childhood best friend Lisa, Maddox decided to join the police in the hopes of fighting drug crime… read analysis of Leigh Maddox

Margaret

Margaret was a Canadian drug addict and one of Bud Osborn’s friends in Downtown Eastside. Most of her family was also addicted to drugs. When she told Bud Osborn about her cousin overdosing… read analysis of Margaret

John Marks

John Marks is an English doctor who treated drug addicts by prescribing them heroin for many years, until the U.S. persuaded the U.K. government to shut down his program. Still, Marks saw how the program… read analysis of John Marks

Gabor Maté

Gabor Maté is a prominent addiction doctor who has worked in Downtown Eastside Vancouver for several decades. He was born to a Hungarian Jewish family during the Holocaust, and learning about his family’s experiences showed… read analysis of Gabor Maté

Louis McKay

Louis McKay was Billie Holiday’s abusive husband. A mobster who started out as her pimp when she was only a teenager, McKay eventually pressured her into marrying him. When she left him, he colluded… read analysis of Louis McKay

José Mujica

José Mujica was the president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. During the nation’s brutal U.S.-backed military dictatorship, he was imprisoned and tortured for twelve years. As president, he insisted on donating his salary to… read analysis of José Mujica

Bud Osborn

Bud Osborn was an influential Vancouver-based poet and drug activist who founded the organization VANDU and spearheaded the campaign to build North America’s first safe injection site in Downtown Eastside. After a severely traumatic… read analysis of Bud Osborn

Philip Owen

Philip Owen was the conservative mayor of Vancouver from 1993 to 2002. He originally opposed Bud Osborn and VANDU’s proposals to lighten punishments and provide public services for drug addicts. However, after meeting with… read analysis of Philip Owen

Marcia Powell

Marcia Powell was a drug addict and sex worker who died of heat exposure in one of Joe Arpaio’s Arizona jails after spending several hours in an unprotected outdoor cage in the scorching hot… read analysis of Marcia Powell

Rosalio Reta

Rosalio Reta is a former Zeta Cartel hitman whom Hari visits at the Texas prison where he is currently serving a 70-year sentence for several murders. Reta grew up in Laredo, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico… read analysis of Rosalio Reta

Sergio Rodrigues

Sergio Rodrigues is a Portuguese man who managed to transform his life due to his country’s innovative drug policies. After spending more than a decade living on the streets, addicted to heroin and cocaine, he… read analysis of Sergio Rodrigues

Arnold Rothstein

Arnold Rothstein was a brutal New York mobster who made a fortune through bootlegging, gambling, and sports match fixing during Prohibition before taking over the city’s lucrative illegal drug trade after Harry Anslinger’s Bureau… read analysis of Arnold Rothstein

Miguel Treviño

Miguel Treviño was one of the Zeta Cartel’s leaders. Until his arrest in 2013, he was extremely powerful and widely feared, particularly because he was known for torturing and massacring innocent people. He recruited… read analysis of Miguel Treviño

Mason Tvert

Mason Tvert is the Colorado activist who led his state’s campaign to legalize marijuana. Whereas Tonia Winchester focused her campaign in Washington on the harms of drug prohibition, Tvert focused his on the scientific evidence… read analysis of Mason Tvert

Henry Smith Williams

Henry Smith Williams was a prominent American doctor, writer, and anti-drug prohibition activist. During his early life, Williams looked down on addicts, much like Harry Anslinger; but he changed his mind after Anslinger arrested… read analysis of Henry Smith Williams

Edward Williams

Edward Williams was a respected American doctor and expert on opiate addiction who defied Harry Anslinger in the 1930s by continuing to prescribe heroin to treat his patients. Anslinger successfully got Williams arrested and convicted… read analysis of Edward Williams

Tonia Winchester

Tonia Winchester is the former prosecutor who led Washington state’s successful marijuana legalization campaign along the fellow lawyer Alison Holcomb. She focused on the harms of drug prohibition, which sustains racial inequality and ruins young… read analysis of Tonia Winchester

Minor Characters

Sergio Barraza

Sergio Barraza is the young Zeta Cartel member who murdered his girlfriend Rubi Fraire, but got away with the crime because of the cartel’s power over the local government. He was killed in a police shootout a few years after the murder of Rubi’s mother, the activist Maria Escobedo.

Lucille Hardin

Lucille Hardin is the distant relative who raised both Deborah and Chino Hardin in New York.

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper was the governor of Colorado when the state legalized marijuana in 2012. Initially, Hickenlooper opposed the policy—even though he made his own personal fortune brewing and selling beer. Later, he changed his mind and enthusiastically helped implement marijuana legalization.

Judith Lovi

Judith Lovi was Gabor Maté’s mother. During the Holocaust, she was forced into the Budapest ghetto, and many of her family members were murdered. However, she managed to escape with Gabor and reunite with her husband before emigrating to Vancouver.

Juan Manuel Olguín

Juan Manuel Olguín is a young man from Ciudad Juárez who, along with several friends from his church, dresses as an angel and publicly protests the city’s extreme drug-related violence.

Patricia Osborn

Patricia Osborn was Bud Osborn’s mother, who fell into alcoholism, poverty, and mental illness after her husband returned from World War II traumatized and committed suicide.

Ronald K. Siegel

Ronald K. Siegel was a prominent American psychologist who studied drug use in humans and nonhuman animals. Hari’s eleventh chapter focuses on Siegel’s research on animals, which suggests that virtually all living creatures have evolved to naturally use psychoactive substances.

Tiffany Smith

Tiffany Smith was a six-year-old girl who was killed during a drug-related gang shootout while playing on the street in Baltimore. Her death shows how the war on drugs inflicts senseless violence on innocent people.

Lisa Taylor

Lisa Taylor was Leigh Maddox’s childhood best friend, who was raped and murdered by a drug gang in her first year of college. Maddox joined the police force in order to help avenge Lisa’s death.

Chasing the Scream Characters