Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (61 page)

I try now to picture Harry as the first dose of opiates washes through his system and it makes him still and calm. What does he think in that moment? Does he think of Henry Smith Williams and Billie Holiday and his order to his agents to “shoot first” when they saw drugs? Does he think of the scream he heard all those years before as a little boy in a farmhouse in Altoona, and of all the people he had made scream since in an attempt to scrub this sensation from the human condition—or does he, for a moment, with the drugs in his hand, hear, at last, the dying of the scream?

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A Note on Narrative Techniques

Around the start of each chapter, as you might have noticed, I explain to the reader how I know the information I am about to present.

In the case of the historical chapters, I learned it from a mixture of primary and secondary sources, which are laid out in the endnotes, along with a small number of interviews with historians and with the few remaining people who were present during the events I narrate.

In the case of the chapters about people who have lived more recently, I have drawn primarily on extensive interviews with the subjects, and with people who know them. For the quotes that were spoken directly to me, you can hear the audio on the book’s website, at www.chasingthescream.com.

In many sections, I describe what a person was thinking and feeling. These are based on the accounts they gave in their interviews with me, or in additional accounts—such as court records, or interviews given to other writers, or in their own writing. All of these sources are laid out in the endnotes.

After my chapters were written, I read or showed the relevant chapters to the people whose lives I was chronicling at any length, to ensure that all my statements were faithful to their recollections; all these fact-checking conversations are recorded. In many cases, they offered clarifications and further information, and these were then incorporated into the text.

I went through this process with Chino Hardin, Leigh Maddox, Gabor Maté, Liz Evans, Bruce Alexander, Bud Osborn, John Marks, Ruth Dreifuss, João Goulão, Sergio Rodrigues, Danny Kushlick, Steve Rolles, Mason Tvert, Brian Vicente, Tonia Winchester, and Alison Holcomb. The only living subjects of the book who are described at length and have not been read or shown all the material about them in this way are Rosalio Reta, for reasons explained in the endnotes for that chapter, and José Mujica, who had a country to run so couldn’t spare the time.

I did my best to independently verify all accounts I was told with the documentary record and other witnesses wherever possible. I did not pay or otherwise compensate any of my sources, beyond occasionally buying them lunch.

As indicated in the text, there are two places where I changed the names of people to protect their identities: one of the addicts in Vancouver, referred to as Hannah, and one of the addicts in the clinic in Switzerland, referred to as Jean. In the first case, I did this because Liz Evans wanted to maintain the privacy of her former client, who has now died but might have been recognizable from this description to her family. In the second case, I did this because “Jean” was confessing to criminal acts and could have faced investigation or prosecution if this had been put into the public domain. The audio of both was provided to the publishers of this book. No other details have been in any way altered anywhere in this text.

Acknowledgments

I was dependent on a large number of people to write this book. I thank most of all everyone who agreed to be interviewed by me, especially the subjects of the book, who often shared very painful memories. They were remarkably open, because they believe it is important that people know the cost of this war, and I am grateful to them.

There are six people in particular I discussed this book with for years, and it was shaped and reshaped by their many questions and insights: Alex Higgins (not the snooker player), Rob Blackhurst, Stephen Grosz, Matt Hill, Alex Ferreira, and Alison MacDonald. I am very much in their debt.

Anton Mueller at Bloomsbury was a remarkably sensitive and clever editor and made this a radically better book. I’m also grateful at Bloomsbury to George Gibson, Bill Swainson, and Imogen Corke.

I am indebted to my wonderful agents—Peter Robinson in London and Richard Pine in New York.

In London, Danny Kushlick and Steve Rolles have been my guides through this subject for a decade now. They consistently produce the best research in the world on drug prohibition. In Ciudad Juárez and northern Mexico, my guide, translator, and friend was Julian Cardona, a remarkable journalist and a remarkable person. I am also grateful to Sandra Rodriguez of
El Diario
in Juárez. In El Paso, Sandra, Carlos, and Alejandra Spektor were invaluable in connecting me with the victims of the Mexican drug war as part of the brilliant organization they have cofounded, Mexicanos en Exilio. I am also grateful for translation there to Josie Font.

In Phoenix, Arizona, I couldn’t have gotten by without the extraordinary Peggy Plews, who fights a daily heroic struggle in defense of the rights of prisoners in Arizona and is constantly exposing atrocities against them, along with Donna Leone Hamm, Stephen Lemons, and Mike Mann. Their work exposing the war on drug addicts in their state goes on. In Baltimore, Donny Andrews was my guide, while in Las Vegas, Dr. Rob Hunter explained gambling addiction to me and kindly let me sit in on a meeting of his Gamblers Anonymous group. In New York City, Rachel Schubert, Christopher Rogers, Antonia Cedrone, Carlos Saavedra, and Gentian Mullaj helped me a great deal. Everyone at the brilliant Drug Policy Alliance was really helpful, especially Tony Newman and Ethan Nadelmann.

In Vancouver, I am grateful to everyone at the Portland Hotel Society, and especially Liz Evans. In Washington, D.C., Jasmine and Billie Tyler were invaluable guides and are wonderful people. In Uruguay, Alex Ferreira was my brilliant guide. I was also helped by Hannah Hetzer, Geoffrey Ramsey, and Will Carless. Dario Moreno translated my interview with the president. In Stanford, Charlie Keeden did some digging in the George White archives for me.

I also thank many other people who read this book and commented on it in ways that made it better, or helped me in some other way: Patrick Strudwick, Jessica Smerin, Josepha Jacobson, Adam Thirlwell, Russell Brand, Lizzie Davidson, Noam Chomsky, Sarah Punshon, Daniel Bye, Tom Angell, Evgeny Lebedev, Ammie al-Whatey, Rachel Seifert, Glenn Greenwald, Arianna Huffington, Eugene Jarecki, Sarah Morrison, Jeremy Heimans, Alnoor Lahda, Ali Weiner, Jack Bootle, Alex Romain, Ronan McCrea, Matthew Bloch, Greg Sanderson, Josh Cullimore, Anna Powell-Smith, David Pearson, Dorothy Byrne, Rupert Everett, Peter Marshall, Chris Wilkinson, Owen Jones, Damon Barrett, Matthew Todd, Stephen Fry, Matt Getz, Deborah Orr, Sally-Ann Larson, Zoe Ross, Joss Garman, Ben Stewart, Anna Moschovakis, Dennis Hardman, Simon Wills, my parents, Violet and Eduard Hari, my brother and sister, Steven and Elisa, and my sister-in-law, Nicola.

Harm Reduction International covered the costs of my trip to the World Federation Against Drugs convention in Stockholm, Sweden, in return for a short report on what I saw: thank you, Mike Trace, for facilitating this.
Le Monde Diplomatique
sent me on assignment to Uruguay, and I drew on some of the same material in my report for them and my article about President Mujica: thank you, Renaud Lambert and Serge Halimi, for making this possible. Airbnb and Greyhound buses made it possible for me to afford to stay in so many different places. Amanda Fielding and the Beckley Foundation shared much of their cutting-edge scientific research with me.

The two best biographers of Billie Holiday, Julia Blackburn and Donald Henderson Clarke, were very generous in sharing their insights and lessons, and Julia’s archive was invaluable. Billie Holiday’s godson, Bevan Dufty, was extremely kind with his help and sharing his mother’s notes and insights. My classicist friends Caroline Higgins and Natalie Haynes went over the section about the Eleusinian Mysteries and corrected some errors.

Many scientists and doctors with specialties in this field made the time to talk to me and explain several key facts. I am grateful in particular to David Nutt, Sophie Macken, Carl Hart, Raquel Peyraube, Paul Enck, Sunil Aggarwal, Scott Kellogg, Daniele Piomelli, Lance Dodes, Ambros Uchtenhagen, Barbara Broers, Richard DeGrandpre, Dylan Evans, Howard Becker, and Fabrizio Benedetti. Several people did excellent work on the text: Joe Daniels as fact checker, Emily DeHuff as copy editor, Laura Phillips on production, Alan J. Kaufman and Kirsty Howarth as lawyers, and Stuart Rodger in transcribing many of the interviews.

All errors are mine alone. If you spot any, please e-mail me at [email protected] and I will post them on the website and have them corrected in any future editions. On the first of each month, for a year after this book is published, I will post questions from readers and go through them, and I will go through any requests for corrections and lay out my thinking on whether they are correct.

To save the best for last—I am especially indebted to Elton John, David Furnish, and Andrew Sullivan, the fairy godfathers of gays everywhere; Jemima Khan, Naomi Klein, and Eve Ensler, the fairy godmothers of lefties everywhere; and Barbara Bateman, my own personal fairy godmother. I couldn’t have done this without you.

Notes

Any quote not listed here was said directly to the author and can be heard on the book’s website: www.chasingthescream.com/audio

Introduction

1
This has been independently verified by the publisher of this book through contact with my ex-boyfriend and through the public writings of my relative.

2
This account of my own drug use has been independently verified by the publisher of this book with the doctor who treated me all through this period and after.

3
 
Shortly before this, I was involved in a journalistic controversy. I want to stress that this controversy—and things I did that were wrong—had nothing to do with this drug use. I did these things wrong both before and during the period I used these drugs; so there is no relationship between the two.

4
 
This was one of several reasons I went to New York that summer; it is the only one relevant to this book.

5
 
They were: the United States, Canada, Britain, Mexico, Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden, Uruguay, and Vietnam.

Chapter 1: The Black Hand

1
Anslinger archives, box 1, file 10, “Address by Commissioner of Narcotics before the National Conference on Crime.”

2
This view of Anslinger as a “moral entrepreneur” who pioneers the drug war as a way to keep his department and bureaucracy alive was first articulated by the sociologist Howard Becker in his classic book
Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance
. I subsequently interviewed Becker. My reading of the Anslinger archives confirmed to me that Becker was right, and remarkably prescient.

3
Harry Anslinger,
The Murderers: The Shocking Story of the Narcotics Gang
, 17–18; Jill Jonnes,
Hep-Cats, Narcs and Pipe-Dreams: A History of America’s Romance With Illegal Drugs
, 91

4
Anslinger,
The Murderers
.

5
Ibid.

6
 
Larry Sloman,
Reefer Madness
, 258.

7
David Pietrusza,
Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series
, 17.

8
Nick Tosches,
King of the Jews
, 32. Leo Katcher,
The Big Bankroll: The Life and Times of Arnold Rothstein
, 18–19.

9
John White,
Billie Holiday
, 18–19.

10
Billie Holiday interview with Mike Wallace, November 8, 1956—as found in
Julia Blackburn archives
, Box 18, Linda Kuehl notes VIII.

11
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2010/12/can_we_imagine_a_britain_where.html, accessed December 9, 2012. See also Marek Kohn,
Dope Girls
, 33.

12
This description is based on the images of her that appear in episode 5 of Ken Burns’s series
Jazz
.

13
Julia Blackburn,
With Billie
, 112.

14
The history of this song is beautifully described in David Margolick,
Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights
.

15
John White,
Billie Holiday
, 24–25.