Chasing The Scream Hari Summary

In the book, Chasing the Scream, Johann Hari, British Journalist claims that there is drug problem that is happening in the world, but focuses it mainly in the United States. Hari describes the history of the many policies that have attempted to stop this pandemic. He also explains how the war on drugs is also a race war, where law enforcement is only attacking minorities. He also shares stories of those who went through the usage of drugs and other contraband substances. Hari lets these folks describe in their own words with their experience with drugs and addicts. As the writer, Hari shares how he retrieved the evidence to prove his claim that something has to be done about the war on drugs. When he’s the reader, he imagines from the different

perspective they might have. In the text, Hari is incontinence with the information that he provides to his readers as well with the details and with his persuasive writing style and the use of exploratory research has in some measure convinced me that the war on drugs should come to an end.

In the early 20th century, drugs were freely available throughout the world. The crime rate has increased in cities across the United States. Violent criminals have engaged on each other for territory rights to sell their products. The products that are mainly sold on the streets are marijuana, opium, cocaine, crack, and psychedelics. Then in 1930, the Treasury Department created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Hari introduced to us a man named Harry Anslinger who became the first commissioner of the department. Ever since he encountered the effects of drugs as a kid when he encountered his neighbor who was in distress for consuming for getting drugs. He was later convinced that “ there was a group of people walking among us who may look and sound normal, but who could at any moment

become emotional, hysterical, degenerate, mentally deficient and vicious.” (8) Anslinger was also a man of prejudice, another reason why he started the war on drugs was that of racism and fear. Harry claimed that the effect of marijuana would make “blacks unleash their lust for white women.” (17) Racism was one of the key points that were included in Anslinger's war on drugs. The prohibition era had no positive effects in protecting the citizens throughout the country but instead, it began a racist and anti-scientific effort to be harmful to minorities and unprivileged. Hari is telling us that it is time for us to help people who are addicts and should start treating addiction as a health issue. As prohibition has been repealed before, today we no longer see violent criminals like Al Capone and his rival gangs fighting over the supply of alcohol. But hopefully, in the future, our government can consider the same for heroin, marijuana, cocaine, and every other drug in the world that produces so many violence in the hands of prohibition.
Johann Hari has had history that plagiarism in recent projects. He was indicted in disguising himself as a “fan” in order to defend himself and his reputation because of the negative reviews that was published on Wikipedia. In the year 2008, Hari received the Orwell Prize, for his outstanding “political journalism” (Mookin), but was forced to return the award after it was reported that he formulated information, and has fabricated data in order to persuade his audience. It is quite concerning in how he would express and talk about a serious topic about the war on drugs. The war on drugs, like any war on contrabands, is a total failure. Hari discusses the origins and ongoing nature of this war. And then discusses possible alternatives of either with a positive or negative outcome. There was a lot of interesting information in this book, and Hari is good at writing a compelling narrative. But I was deeply frustrated with a sense that Hari was using the facts that would work for his actual claim on the war on drugs but is still leaving out massaging those that didn't comprehend. A pattern of the endnotes told a different story than what was in the back end of the book, and knowing damn well a good amount of the readers are not going to fact check the information that Hari provided for them. The problem is that the reader isn't really presented with the counterargument. When he gives counter-arguments, Hari gives us those arguments, but sometimes it even seems to be arguing with himself, and it seems like he's always in control of the argument.
Personally, I believe that the war on drugs has failed.

Hari’s inconsistent biased information neglects the possibility of the negative outcome if governments around the world decide to decriminalize all of the make major contraband drugs. Study after study that Hari has done has shown, is that incarcerating addicts does not rehabilitate them but instead increases the risk in making in repeating the same mistake again, and criminalizing drugs does not make these substances disappear, instead, it makes them more dangerous. Hari exaggerates more on the information that he has researched in the text instead of explaining the importance of what he has shared to the readers. He explains how and why addicts become addicted to their substances is that of the lack of “bonding” that he or she in their environment. Hari argues that this is why some people can use drugs and alcohol and not become addicted while others cannot. To the people who have a connection to their environment don’t become addicts. Those who don’t have that connection to their environment is part of the small percentage of the population that is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Hari does not provide the science within the text that examines the whole meaning of addiction. In a blog post written by Dr.Derek Simon, a neuroscientist and graduate from University of Michigan with a PhD, who is studying neurobiological basis for drug addiction at Rockefeller University, writes that “Hari’s argument makes no mention of the

vast amount of concrete basic research that has identified real molecular changes that occur in the brain as a result of drug use and the subsequent effects on behavior that these molecular changes have. There is no mention of neurons, or dopamine, or neurotransmitters … or many other of basic concepts in the neuroscience of addiction in his book” (Simon).
As a drug user himself, Johann Hari wrote Chasing the Scream with a decent amount of bias in legalizing drugs. In the text he focuses more on his ability to persuade his readers through emotional means with the use of pathos. With the vast research he has conducted through articles and data he intentionally placed statistics with very little details in a way in which he would avoid the complications in his key arguments. If Hari did not have a controversial history that involves him with plagiarism, fabrication in important information, and the legitimacy, which are key points in informative journalism, then his arguments that he states in the book would be more believable.