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

This chapter moves from discussing the historical roots of the war on drugs to seeking out first-hand experience from someone involved in the drug trade. Hari introduces Chino Hardin, a transsexual drug dealer in New York City who at age 14 rose to be the leader of a gang known as the Souls of Mischief. The reputation for violence that was a necessity for Rothstein in the 1930s became even more of a necessity for modern drug dealers like Hardin because, as Hari explains, “[T]here has come to be an Arnold Rothstein on every block in every poor neighborhood in America” (63). However, drug-related violence is not at all what many assume it is. Hari argues that violence caused by those using drugs makes up only a tiny part of it. Rather, most of that violence is “to establish, protect, and defend drug territory in an illegal market, and to build a name for being consistently terrifying so nobody tries to take your property or turf” (66).

Hari describes Hardin as having been conceived on one of the drug war’s battlefields and “a child of the drug war in the purest sense” (67). His mother was a drug addict, and his father was a New York City police officer.