Tras El Grito - Johann Hari.epub Review

The "war" didn't start with a focus on health, but rather with a specific target. In 1939, Billie Holiday stood on a stage in New York and sang a powerful protest song about lynchings in the South.

: The story of how Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001, choosing to spend money on housing and jobs for addicts instead of prison—a move that saw addiction and overdose rates plummet. Tras el grito - Johann Hari.epub

: Immediately after her performance, Harry Anslinger —the head of the newly formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics—sent a message to Holiday: stop singing that song . The "war" didn't start with a focus on

: Hari highlights the work of scientist Bruce Alexander, who discovered that rats in a "happy" cage with friends and toys shunned drug-laced water , while isolated rats in bare cages became addicted. This led to Hari's famous conclusion that "the opposite of addiction is not sobriety; it's connection". : Immediately after her performance, Harry Anslinger —the

: A former Baltimore police officer who realized that arresting addicts only made their lives worse and deepened racial inequality, leading her to join the movement to end the drug war.

The book uses several other narratives to illustrate how the prohibition of drugs creates violence and deeper addiction: