Chasing The Scream Hari Summary

“And at every level, there is a war on drugs, a war for drugs, and a culture of terror, all created by prohibition.”(Hari 84)
Before reading the book, Chasing the Scream, by Johann Hari, I did not know much about drug prohibition. What I did know was that drugs were bad and if you were caught with them illegally you would get put in jail. I grew up not really having drugs be a topic of conversation. Drugs and drug use were not really a part of my lifestyle. In school we learned about drugs but they never really taught us where to go or how to get help if we did have a problem. The only thing that we would be told is this, “If you or your friends have a problem, tell someone, an adult or peer.” When you’re growing up, regardless of what you …show more content…
Johann Hari traveled through the countries recognizing that the story of a small time street dealer, like that of Chino Harden, is a very small part of crime and violence that has been a result of having the illegal drug trade. Johann Hari was able to put the drug trade into a layered phrase that breaks down the drug trade. He wrote “… Beyond Chino Hardin, there is another layer of gangsters controlling the neighborhood. Beyond them is a network of smugglers who transported the drugs from the U.S. border to New York. Beyond them is a mule who carried them across the border. Beyond them is a gang controlling the production in Columbia, or Afghanistan. Beyond them is a farmer growing opium or cocoa.” (Hari 84). At every level there is a war surrounding drugs. The people who are at the higher levels of the trade make enough profit to become untouched. People like Chino Hardin, who are trying to live their lives the only way they know how, are the first to get …show more content…
The government has decided to take the little guy off the streets throw them away and call them criminals. They have taken little action to resolve the war on drugs. Instead of taking care of the ones who are producing the illegal drugs, they are only making the war worse by locking up those who consume them. Whether people are consuming drugs illegally to sell or buy, that’s not the problem. The problem is that the government isn’t doing anything to help those who are struggling in low-income communities. The government is only enforcing the use of drugs by making it harder for people to live comfortably in America. I think that if the government spent less time focusing on criminalizing every minority they see on the street, and spent more time focusing on how they can help minorities get by in the American system. If the government is so worried about drugs in America then they should help to monitor the use of drugs instead of prohibit them. While the government monitors drug use in America, they can spend the time coming up with a solution to help the common American live a more reasonable lifestyle. A way that the America could help monitor drug use, and keep it off the streets, is to have some sort of establishment where people can go be around other people doing the same thing. That way no one has to worry about what they are doing, and they are less vulnerable to being locked in jail. The whole point