Lucille
09-24-2015, 08:47 AM
http://www.backwoodshome.com/blogs/ClaireWolfe/2015/09/23/chasing-the-scream-the-book-to-end-the-drug-war/
This is a remarkable book. If it were widely read and heeded, the drug war would end tomorrow. Maybe yesterday.
As its subtitle says, it covers the global war on some drugs, from its birth in the mind of Harry Anslinger to the latest hopeful trends in decriminalization and legalization.
But this is no dry compendium of facts. Not even a non-dry compendium. Johann Hari is a gifted storyteller and he’s hit upon the method of building each chapter around individuals. The facts and statistics are there, but they’re interwoven with heartrending (sometimes maddening) personal stories, each one illuminating a different catastrophic aspect of the drug war.
He tells the stories of a young Zeta hitman and a mother from deadly Cuidad Juarez seeking justice for her Zeta-murdered daughter. We read about a heroin addict who led a rebellion to change the lives of addicts in Vancouver, BC, and a doctor and a nurse who were part of the change. We read about a street-level dealer in New York and the gutsy leaders of two countries (one a revolutionary liberal, one a staunch conservative) who ended the wars in their lands. We see addicts and those affected by them (Hari himself has addicted relatives and friends), and we see how the war harms even those who’ve never touched anything stronger than caffeine.
We begin by learning about the three people Hari “credits” as the founding fathers and mother of the drug war. One is Anslinger, of course. He comes across as more evil than we knew. Hari avoids terms like “evil,” so let’s just say Anslinger’s machinations were more far-reaching than even most students of history realize and his maniacal obsession against recreational chemicals influences everyone from the United Nations on down, even today.
You’ll be surprised to learn who the other two “founders” are, but it all makes sense as Hari tells it.
He conducted prodigious original research, traveling the world from Switzerland to Uruguay, and of course to Mexico and throughout the U.S., where it all began and where the war is still headquartered. He also dug deeply into books, studies, censored reports, and neglected papers (especially Anslinger’s).
[...]
Bottom line: When Hari is done, the drug war is dissected and indefensible. And solutions seem obvious, even though most of them are non-intuitive to generations raised in witch-hunting terror of drugs.
We’ve probably all read powerful anti-drug war writings. Mike Grey’s Drug Crazy: How We Got into This Mess and How We Can Get Out comes to mind, as do the works of Peter McWilliams, himself a tragic victim of the war on cannabis. But this latest may just be the greatest. I wish every politician, bureaucrat, enforcer, and influencer behind the war on some drugs would read this book from introduction to end notes.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1620408902/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1620408902&linkCode=as2&tag=livifree07-20&linkId=J5TCOVUH7GEQEHU5
It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned in the United States. On the eve of this centenary, journalist Johann Hari set off on an epic three-year, thirty-thousand-mile journey into the war on drugs. What he found is that more and more people all over the world have begun to recognize three startling truths: Drugs are not what we think they are. Addiction is not what we think it is. And the drug war has very different motives to the ones we have seen on our TV screens for so long.
In Chasing the Scream, Hari reveals his discoveries entirely through the stories of people across the world whose lives have been transformed by this war. They range from a transsexual crack dealer in Brooklyn searching for her mother, to a teenage hit-man in Mexico searching for a way out. It begins with Hari's discovery that at the birth of the drug war, Billie Holiday was stalked and killed by the man who launched this crusade--and it ends with the story of a brave doctor who has led his country to decriminalize every drug, from cannabis to crack, with remarkable results.
Chasing the Scream lays bare what we really have been chasing in our century of drug war--in our hunger for drugs, and in our attempt to destroy them. This book will challenge and change how you think about one of the most controversial--and consequential--questions of our time.
This is a remarkable book. If it were widely read and heeded, the drug war would end tomorrow. Maybe yesterday.
As its subtitle says, it covers the global war on some drugs, from its birth in the mind of Harry Anslinger to the latest hopeful trends in decriminalization and legalization.
But this is no dry compendium of facts. Not even a non-dry compendium. Johann Hari is a gifted storyteller and he’s hit upon the method of building each chapter around individuals. The facts and statistics are there, but they’re interwoven with heartrending (sometimes maddening) personal stories, each one illuminating a different catastrophic aspect of the drug war.
He tells the stories of a young Zeta hitman and a mother from deadly Cuidad Juarez seeking justice for her Zeta-murdered daughter. We read about a heroin addict who led a rebellion to change the lives of addicts in Vancouver, BC, and a doctor and a nurse who were part of the change. We read about a street-level dealer in New York and the gutsy leaders of two countries (one a revolutionary liberal, one a staunch conservative) who ended the wars in their lands. We see addicts and those affected by them (Hari himself has addicted relatives and friends), and we see how the war harms even those who’ve never touched anything stronger than caffeine.
We begin by learning about the three people Hari “credits” as the founding fathers and mother of the drug war. One is Anslinger, of course. He comes across as more evil than we knew. Hari avoids terms like “evil,” so let’s just say Anslinger’s machinations were more far-reaching than even most students of history realize and his maniacal obsession against recreational chemicals influences everyone from the United Nations on down, even today.
You’ll be surprised to learn who the other two “founders” are, but it all makes sense as Hari tells it.
He conducted prodigious original research, traveling the world from Switzerland to Uruguay, and of course to Mexico and throughout the U.S., where it all began and where the war is still headquartered. He also dug deeply into books, studies, censored reports, and neglected papers (especially Anslinger’s).
[...]
Bottom line: When Hari is done, the drug war is dissected and indefensible. And solutions seem obvious, even though most of them are non-intuitive to generations raised in witch-hunting terror of drugs.
We’ve probably all read powerful anti-drug war writings. Mike Grey’s Drug Crazy: How We Got into This Mess and How We Can Get Out comes to mind, as do the works of Peter McWilliams, himself a tragic victim of the war on cannabis. But this latest may just be the greatest. I wish every politician, bureaucrat, enforcer, and influencer behind the war on some drugs would read this book from introduction to end notes.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1620408902/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1620408902&linkCode=as2&tag=livifree07-20&linkId=J5TCOVUH7GEQEHU5
It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned in the United States. On the eve of this centenary, journalist Johann Hari set off on an epic three-year, thirty-thousand-mile journey into the war on drugs. What he found is that more and more people all over the world have begun to recognize three startling truths: Drugs are not what we think they are. Addiction is not what we think it is. And the drug war has very different motives to the ones we have seen on our TV screens for so long.
In Chasing the Scream, Hari reveals his discoveries entirely through the stories of people across the world whose lives have been transformed by this war. They range from a transsexual crack dealer in Brooklyn searching for her mother, to a teenage hit-man in Mexico searching for a way out. It begins with Hari's discovery that at the birth of the drug war, Billie Holiday was stalked and killed by the man who launched this crusade--and it ends with the story of a brave doctor who has led his country to decriminalize every drug, from cannabis to crack, with remarkable results.
Chasing the Scream lays bare what we really have been chasing in our century of drug war--in our hunger for drugs, and in our attempt to destroy them. This book will challenge and change how you think about one of the most controversial--and consequential--questions of our time.