Pubdate: Sun, 22 Mar 2015
Source: Sunday Star-Times (New Zealand)
Copyright: 2015 Sunday Star-Times
Contact:  http://www.sundaystartimes.co.nz
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1064
Author: David Herkt

JUST ASK WHY

CHASING THE SCREAM: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, 
Johann Hari, Bloomsbury Circus $27

Johann Hari's new book is a clear-eyed look at the war on drugs, 
writes David Herkt.

MOST OF us know the war against drugs has been a comprehensive 
failure. Many of the negative effects of drug use are due to its 
criminalisation. In Portugal, Switzerland, and Uruguay, which have 
removed some of the legal consequences of drug use, we see countries 
that haven't collapsed into chaos, but have, in fact, a decreasing 
social problem.

Johann Hari's Chasing the Scream is an observational survey of drug 
use in the UK, US, South America and Europe.

Drug prohibition began with Harry Anslinger, the ambitious head of 
the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1920s America. Faced with a 
reduction in budget, Anslinger ramped up hysteria levels to create a 
problem that didn't exist and secure increasing funds for the 
organisation he would head for 32 years.

In Anslinger's version, marijuana was a drug that caused insanity, 
rape, and murder. Hari describes how he targeted the American black 
community in particular, focusing on highprofile users including 
singer Billie Holiday. His account of how Anslinger's agents hounded 
and planted drugs on Holiday is just the first of the book's great 
tragedies. Even on her deathbed she wasn't safe from perjury and 
harassment by Anslinger's agents.

Hari's international emphasis means that examples can be usefully 
compared. He travels to Mexico, where the influence of American drug 
policy has nurtured the world's first narcoeconomy. The human effects 
of this brutal private war between competing cartels is harrowing. 
Against this, Hari discovers initiatives in Switzerland and Portugal 
where drugs are decriminalised, and even supplied, leading to better 
health, lower crime, and fewer social costs.

The personalities and places of Chasing the Scream are memorable. 
There is the insanity of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's personal mission in 
Maricopa County, Texas, where he has created a virtual 
concentration-camp, filled with orange jumpsuited inmates. Possession 
of a single joint earns time in a cage under blistering desert sun. 
On the other hand, Uruguay's last president, Jose Mujica, legalised 
marijuana in 2014 and presides over a nation without any of the 
consequences of the same drug war. Marijuana is grown, taxed, and 
purchased at pharmacies with a valid ID.

The book is scrupulously noted and recordings of its interviews 
available online, a consequence of the 2011 discovery that Hari had 
taken quotes from previously published profiles of his subjects and 
used them in his own articles. Chasing the Scream is a humbled and 
honest comeback. It is a rational, well-argued book, filled with 
enlightening examples that make a well-worn subject new.
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