Chasing the Scream Themes

In Chasing the Scream, journalist Johann Hari travels around the world to understand the war on drugs. He learns about its origins in the 1930s U.S., interviews people affected by it—ranging from drug dealers and cartel hitmen to addicts and the doctors who treat them—and looks at innovative solutions that, unlike the drug war, have successfully reduced drug addiction and drug-related violence. Hari concludes that the war on drugs has profoundly failed. Criminalizing…

The public tends to think of all drug users as addicts, Johann Hari notes in Chasing the Scream, but in reality, just 10 percent are. The other 90 percent are recreational users who don’t get addicted—and who arguably gain more from drugs than they lose. The public’s misconception stems from the common but disproven assumption that drugs themselves are the primary cause of drug addiction. While drugs are certainly addictive, leading researchers have shown…

While Chasing the Scream focuses primarily on global drug policies and their worldwide effects, Johann Hari also tries to show how these policies operate on an individual level. Not only can drug use and drug policy make or break individual lives, but they’re also fundamentally driven by individual, often imperfect decisions. For instance, addicts take drugs that they know will harm them in the long term, and governments continue to arrest and incarcerate drug users…