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

Reform is an overarching theme throughout Chasing the Scream. A broad term, reform typically means to make changes within an institution or practice. In the book, reform applies solely to laws surrounding drug regulation. The first example is in Chapters 5 and 6, in which two combatants on the drug war’s front lines both shift their focus to activism to fight for changes in the law. Chino Hardin was a drug dealer and gang leader but later began organizing a community of activists to apply pressure for the closure of child prisons like the one where he was incarcerated years before. Leigh Maddox was a Baltimore police captain who enthusiastically supported the drug war but quit the force after realizing that marijuana laws are racially biased and the current system of prohibition only leads to additional violence and more drug dealers on the streets. Hari argues that she “began to see that her work in fact kept them in business and made them more deadly” (93). After quitting police work, Maddox became an attorney and now works to have marijuana arrests expunged from offenders’ records.

The theme of reform is central throughout the final few chapters of Chasing the Scream.