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Hannah
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, and protect his territory through violence. This reflects the way that prohibition creates distorted incentives for people involved in the drug trade: because they can’t protect their business through legal means, they use violence and terror instead, and whoever is willing to be the most violent gets rewarded with a competitive advantage in the drug market. Eventually, Hardin started smoking crack to deal with the stress and fear that plagued him. Thus, Hari argues that Hardin “drugged himself into psychosis” in order to deal with the level of violence that he had to commit and suffer if he wanted to succeed in the illegal drug trade. And Hardin’s upbringing also demonstrates how the drug war’s pointless violence can shatter lives and families, creating cycles of trauma that fuel further addiction. Chino’s grandmother and mother Deborah were also addicts. Deborah became pregnant with Chino when a police officer raped her during an arrest, and much later, she also died at the hands of the police, who beat her viciously during a different arrest. After resolving not to turn into his mother, Hardin eventually quit drugs, started researching the history of U.S. drug laws, and became an anti-drug-war activist. His transformation reinforces Hari’s thesis that drug addicts need to connect with a community and broader sense of purpose in order to overcome their addictions.
Chino Hardin Quotes in Chasing the Scream
The Chasing the Scream quotes below are all either spoken by Chino Hardin or refer to Chino Hardin . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
For Chino, the war on drugs was not a metaphor. It was a battlefield onto which he woke and on which he slept.
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“That one act of human compassion…I went into her cell and started talking to her. And all my shit stopped.”
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There will always be some people who are violent and disturbed and sadistic—but human beings respond to incentives. In Chino’s neighborhood, the financial incentives for a kid like him were to step up the violence and the sadism—because if he did, he would have a piece of one of the biggest and most profitable industries in America, and if he didn’t, he would be shut out and left in poverty.
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Chapter 16
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In his office, Goulão told me there were two dimensions to Portugal’s drug revolution. The panel didn’t simply lift the legal penalties and leave people to it. They took the big, lumbering machinery of the drug war and turned it into an equally big, active machine to establish a drug peace. “The big effect of decriminalization,” he said, “was to make it possible to develop all the other policies.” In the United States, 90 percent of the money spent on drug policy goes to policing and punishment, with 10 percent going to treatment and prevention. In Portugal, the ratio is the exact opposite.
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Chapter 18
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With legalization, the fevered poetry of the drug war has turned into the flat prose of the drug peace. Drugs have been turned into a topic as banal as selling fish, or tires, or lightbulbs.
As Barbara speaks, all the killing—from Arnold Rothstein to Chino’s gang to the Zetas—is being replaced by contracts. All the guns are being replaced by subordinate clauses. All the grief is being replaced by regulators and taxes and bureaucrats with clipboards.
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I am bored at last, and I realize a tear of relief is running down my cheek.
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Chino Hardin Quotes in Chasing the Scream
The Chasing the Scream quotes below are all either spoken by Chino Hardin or refer to Chino Hardin . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
For Chino, the war on drugs was not a metaphor. It was a battlefield onto which he woke and on which he slept.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“That one act of human compassion…I went into her cell and started talking to her. And all my shit stopped.”
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
There will always be some people who are violent and disturbed and sadistic—but human beings respond to incentives. In Chino’s neighborhood, the financial incentives for a kid like him were to step up the violence and the sadism—because if he did, he would have a piece of one of the biggest and most profitable industries in America, and if he didn’t, he would be shut out and left in poverty.
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Chapter 16
Quotes
In his office, Goulão told me there were two dimensions to Portugal’s drug revolution. The panel didn’t simply lift the legal penalties and leave people to it. They took the big, lumbering machinery of the drug war and turned it into an equally big, active machine to establish a drug peace. “The big effect of decriminalization,” he said, “was to make it possible to develop all the other policies.” In the United States, 90 percent of the money spent on drug policy goes to policing and punishment, with 10 percent going to treatment and prevention. In Portugal, the ratio is the exact opposite.
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Chapter 18
Quotes
With legalization, the fevered poetry of the drug war has turned into the flat prose of the drug peace. Drugs have been turned into a topic as banal as selling fish, or tires, or lightbulbs.
As Barbara speaks, all the killing—from Arnold Rothstein to Chino’s gang to the Zetas—is being replaced by contracts. All the guns are being replaced by subordinate clauses. All the grief is being replaced by regulators and taxes and bureaucrats with clipboards.
[…]
I am bored at last, and I realize a tear of relief is running down my cheek.
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