Red Emma’s

About Chasing the Scream (from the publisher's website)

It is now 100 years since drugs were first banned. On the eve of this centenary, journalist Johann Hari set off on an epic three-year, 30,000-mile journey into the war on drugs to uncover its secrets – and he found that there is a startling gap between what we have been told and what is really going on. As strange as it may seem at first, drugs are not what we have been told 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.

In Chasing the Scream, Hari reveals his startling discoveries entirely through the true and shocking 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 – while 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 the most controversial – and consequential – question of our time.

Reviews

“Wonderful. I couldn't put it down” –  Noam Chomsky

“An absolutely stunning book. It will blow your mind, and blow you away” –  Elton John

“Superb journalism and thrilling story-telling” –  Naomi Klein

“Intoxicatingly thrilling ... It will change the drug debate forever” –  Russell Brand

“This book is, forgive the obvious phrase, screamingly addictive. The story it tells, jaw-droppingly horrific, hilarious and incredible, is one everyone should know: that is all true boggles the mind fascinated and infuriates by equal measure. Johann Hari, in brilliant prose, exposes one of the greatest and most harmful scandals of the past hundred years” –  Stephen Fry

“Johann Hari's book is the perfect antidote to the war on drugs, one of the most under-discussed moral injustices of our time. It combines rigorous research and deeply human story-telling. It will prompt an urgently-needed debate” –  Glenn Greenwald

“Johann Hari has written a drug policy reform book like no other. Many have studied, or conducted, the science surrounding the manifold ills of drug prohibition. But Hari puts it all into riveting story form, and humanises it ... It's a fascinating tale” –  Norm Stamper, former chief of the Seattle Police Department

“In this energetic and thought-proving book Johann Hari harnesses the power of personal narrative to reveal the true causes and consequences of the War on Drugs” –  Professor David Nutt DM FRCP FRCPsych FMedSci, former chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to the UK government