British Journalist thinks The World Owes Latin America an Apology for the So-Called ‘War on Drugs’

The following is a republication of the interview by Estefanía Sepúlveda Portilla (ESP) for the Chilean media collective Pousta and was originally published on their website under a Creative Commons 4.0 licence. In this republication, the interview will be released in two parts.

British journalist Johann Hari (JH) decided one day to take a critical look at the theme of drug addiction, for reasons more personal than journalistic. In his investigation, he discovered that the so-called “War on Drugs” — the global policy driven by the United States and later forcibly exported by Mexico and the rest of Latin America tackling the problem of drugs, weapons and prisons — had been going on for 100 years.

The studies and the scientific evidence do not support the strategy, but this has not put the brakes on international policies. Meanwhile, the problem becomes more and more complex and spreads to various countries throughout the region, with no end in sight. A total contradiction, no matter how you look at it. With a passion for journalism and the fire of an issue that affected him personally, Johann embarked on a three-year-long journey that spanned 15 countries in his search for answers.

The end result is his book “Chasing the Scream“, which analyzes and questions the perceptions that have been used to defend the continued conflict. According to Hari, in his first statement during the interview:

"One of the reasons I investigated this topic for so long was because my first memory as a child was of trying to wake up my uncle, who I thought was sleeping, and I couldn't. Later I discovered there were drug addiction problems in my family."

Then, he continued explaining the background of his work: “When I started I was a bit arrogant, I thought I knew a lot about all this, but I realized that I didn't even know the most basic questions on the topic,” he recalls. “These were,” he says, counting on his fingers via Skype, “Why did we start a war 100 years ago against addicts and drug consumers? Why did we continue if it was a disaster? What alternatives to this strategy exist? What is it that turns people into drug addicts?”

Johann launches these four questions himself, before we can ask anything. Before we even finished translating them mentally, he continues talking: