Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

Whereas Part 1 of Chasing the Scream deals with the historical roots of the war on drugs, Part 2 focuses on its modern-day warriors. Each of the three chapters introduces an important contemporary figure in the drug war from each side: a drug dealer, a police officer, and an ordinary citizen. Hari uses the metaphor of war and warfare deliberately throughout Part 2 to convey how both sides—law enforcement and gangs involved in the drug trade—view it this way. Chapter 5 examines the day-to-day operations of a drug-dealing street gang and the culture of violence necessary to constantly battle other gangs for control of its turf. Chapter 6 looks at how a police force operates in a highly trafficked drug area and the racially biased policies that it often enforces. Chapter 7 details the death of a child struck by a stray bullet in a Baltimore turf war and provides a brief anecdote about how the culture of terror affects innocent bystanders caught in the middle of this war.

Hari introduces Chino Hardin, a transsexual drug deal and gang leader, in Chapter 5, “Souls of Mischief.” Hardin—whose mother was a serious crack addict and whose father was a corrupt New York City police officer—entered the gang and drug-dealing world in his early teens and was jailed for the first time at age 13. The chapter provides a deep biographical outline of Hardin, but Hari places his life in the much wider context of the drug war that began nearly a century before he was born. For years, Hardin sold drugs, became addicted himself, and committed violent crimes to build the reputation he needed. Hardin explains this paradigm as one in which “you got to be violent to not have violence done to you” (64). Throughout the chapter, Hari compares the reputation for violence that Rothstein had in the 1930s with the reputation that drug gangs have today, explaining that the major difference is that “there was once only one Arnold Rothstein in New York City. In the seven decades of escalating warfare ever since, there has come to be an Arnold Rothstein on every block in every poor neighborhood in America” (63).

In addition, Hari compares the violence that alcohol prohibition caused in the 1920s with the violence that drug prohibition has caused. One of the main arguments against the drug war is that total prohibition led to the violence we have seen, just as alcohol prohibition led to the violence back then. Hari points out that “just as the war on alcohol created armed gangs fighting to control the booze trade, the war on drugs has created armed gangs fighting and killing to control the drug trade” (66). Hari cites a Harvard University study that supports this dynamic. The study shows that “the murder rate has dramatically increased twice in U.S. history—and both times were during periods when prohibition was dramatically stepped up. The first is from 1920 to 1933, when alcohol was criminalized. The second is from 1970 to 1990, when the prohibition of drugs was dramatically escalated” (81).

Chapter 6 touches on the book’s minor themes of race and public policy as well as the overarching theme of reform. As in the previous chapter, Hari speaks with someone from the drug war’s front lines. Having heard from a player on the criminal side, Hari now introduces a law enforcement professional. For many years, as a police officer and later as a captain giving orders, Leigh Maddox strongly believed in the war on drugs. She went after drug offenders hard, even instructing her officers to “get the maximum possible arrests” (86). However, her feelings changed after she began noticing something peculiar, something that other officers around the world also noticed. Her epiphany arose because “whenever her force arrested gang members, it appeared to actually cause an increase in violence, especially homicides” (91). Maddox explains that the reason was that when the guy at the top is busted, “now, nobody is in charge, and [so the gangs] battle it out to see who’s going to be in charge” (91). In other words, according to Hari, “every crackdown triggers a turf war” (91).

Maddox also realized that the policies she was enforcing were inherently racist. Despite studies showing that a higher percentage of whites than African Americans deal drugs, those from the latter group are far more likely to be arrested for it. Similarly, Maddox was troubled by the collateral consequences of marijuana arrests. As Hari points out, those arrested for marijuana-related offenses are often considered second-class citizens and therefore endure collateral consequences such as being “virtually unemployable for the rest of [their] life” (95-96). Introducing the theme of reform, Hari explains that Maddox quit the police force and became a lawyer. Not only did she join the organization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), which aimed to reform drug laws and policy, but she opened Just Advice, a low-cost legal clinic in Baltimore that aimed to help drug offenders get their records expunged.