Johann Hari reflects on personal trauma involving a drug-addicted relative and decides to investigate the global war on drugs.

Harry Anslinger is appointed the first commissioner of the newly formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

Anslinger launches a propaganda campaign using racial fear to add marijuana to the federal list of banned substances.

Billie Holliday begins performing Strange Fruit, an anti-lynching song, and becomes a top target for Anslinger's agents.

Holliday is arrested for drug possession and sentenced to a year in a West Virginia federal prison.

Holliday dies in a hospital bed while handcuffed to a guard after Anslinger cuts off her methadone treatment.

Anslinger uses Cold War fears of communist infiltration to pressure other nations into adopting drug prohibition policies.

Arnold Rothstein is shot and killed in a Manhattan hotel, triggering a violent struggle for control of the drug trade.

Hari visits Tent City jail in Arizona, where female inmates are forced to wear T-shirts labeling them as drug addicts.

Rosalio Reta is recruited by the Zetas cartel and spends six months being trained as a teenage hitman.

Marisela Escobedo is shot and killed outside the state capitol building after publicly demanding justice for her daughter's murder.

Bruce Alexander's Rat Park experiments demonstrate that environment and social bonding, not just chemicals, drive addiction.

Bud Osborn founds the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users to prevent the epidemic of overdose deaths in the Downtown Eastside.

Swiss President Ruth Dreifuss launches a program allowing heroin addicts to receive legal prescriptions and access to therapy.

Voters in Colorado and Washington both approve marijuana legalization by comfortable ten-point margins.

The war on drugs began with Harry Anslinger, who used racial fear to expand drug prohibition and relentlessly pursued jazz singer Billie Holliday until her death. Anslinger's crusade spread beyond America when he threatened foreign nations with economic consequences if they refused to adopt his prohibitionist policies. Crime boss Arnold Rothstein thrived under prohibition, and his murder set off decades of violent competition for control of the illegal drug trade. In Arizona and Mexico, Hari witnesses how that violence continues, from shaming jails to cartel hitmen and murdered activists demanding justice. Scientists in Vancouver reveal that addiction stems from environment and trauma rather than chemicals alone, overturning the assumptions the drug war was built on. Reform movements in Switzerland and the United States begin dismantling the century-old war with evidence that compassion and regulation work far better than punishment.

The headline events of a century-long war on drugs.

As a child, Hari discovers a drug-addicted relative unconscious and is unable to wake them, creating lasting guilt and confusion.

As a young Narcotics Bureau agent, Harry Anslinger confronts the Mafia's extortion racket targeting Sicilian railroad workers.

Doctor Edward Williams is arrested alongside roughly 20,000 other physicians charged with illegally prescribing heroin to patients.

Henry Williams publishes a prediction that continuing drug prohibition will produce a five-billion-dollar criminal smuggling industry.

Arnold Rothstein builds a criminal empire by fixing the 1919 World Series and controlling New York City's illegal gambling trade.

Chino Hardin rises at age fourteen to lead the street gang known as the Souls of Mischief.

Chino Hardin steps away from dealing and gang life, becoming a vocal activist against racially biased drug war policies.

Tiffany Smith, a Baltimore child with no connection to the drug trade, is killed by a stray bullet in a gang turf war.

A female prisoner named Marcia Powell collapses and dies after guards leave her in an outdoor Arizona cell in extreme heat.

A US military unit trains an elite Mexican enforcement force at Fort Bragg, which later defects entirely to become the Zetas cartel.

Marisela Escobedo's daughter's killer is acquitted at trial despite having given a full confession to police.

Doctor Gabor Maté develops a theory that childhood trauma, more than chemical exposure, is the primary driver of addiction.

Within a decade of Portugal decriminalizing all drugs, the number of problematic drug users is cut in half.

Uruguayan President José Mujica fully legalizes marijuana, allowing pharmacies to sell it as a taxed product to adults over twenty-one.

Hari reveals that Anslinger secretly shielded Senator Joseph McCarthy's heroin addiction from prosecution, never applying the drug laws to him.

Johann Hari's personal childhood encounter with addiction sends him on a journey to understand how the drug war shapes individual lives across generations. From the doctors prosecuted for helping patients to the criminal empires that thrived under prohibition, each story reveals the unintended consequences of Anslinger's policies. Street dealer Chino Hardin and innocent bystander Tiffany Smith represent the two faces of drug war casualties, while Marcia Powell's death in an Arizona prison cell shows how the system punishes addiction instead of treating it. The Zetas cartel's rise from a US-trained military unit into Mexico's most feared criminal syndicate exposes how prohibition generates the very violence it claims to fight. Scientists and reformers from Vancouver to Portugal demonstrate that treating addiction with compassion rather than force produces dramatically better outcomes. In the book's closing revelation, Hari exposes Anslinger's ultimate hypocrisy by showing that the drug war's architect quietly shielded a powerful senator from the very laws he built.

The human stories behind the drug war's front lines.

Anslinger abruptly reverses his own prior conclusion that marijuana is harmless and begins campaigning aggressively to outlaw it.

Holliday's former pimp, seeking revenge for being cut from her life, helps Anslinger's agents set her up for arrest.

Holliday is arrested a second time on possession charges but a jury finds her not guilty after questioning police conduct.

Anslinger retires from the Bureau of Narcotics after more than thirty years, leaving his drug war firmly embedded in government.

Leigh Maddox joins the Baltimore police force after a drug gang murders her closest friend.

Maddox discovers that her department's drug arrests consistently trigger an increase in gang violence and homicide rates.

Maddox learns that African Americans make up sixty-four percent of drug dealing arrests despite comprising only nineteen percent of dealers.

Maddox quits the police force, joins Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and opens a low-cost legal clinic for drug offenders.

Teenagers in Juárez form the Angels of Juárez, marching in enormous costumes at murder scenes and publicly naming cartel killers.

Rosalio Reta surrenders himself to American police, choosing prison over the near-certain death awaiting him inside the Zetas cartel.

Marisela Escobedo marches more than a thousand miles from Juárez to Mexico City to demand justice directly from the president.

Hari discovers that animals across many species deliberately seek out intoxicating substances, suggesting drug use is a natural impulse.

Vancouver opens InSite, the first legal supervised injection site in North America, following years of VANDU activism.

Switzerland's heroin prescription program finds that most addicts given a reliable legal supply stabilize and slowly reduce their use.

The Transform Drug Policy Institute advises Uruguay to model marijuana legalization on existing alcohol and tobacco regulations.

Every turning point in the war on drugs begins with a deliberate choice: Anslinger reversed his own findings to pursue marijuana prohibition through racism, and Billie Holliday's vengeful ex-pimp helped seal her fate by collaborating with the state. Leigh Maddox's journey from true believer to reformer shows how the evidence against prohibition accumulates until it becomes undeniable, one arrest statistic at a time. In Mexico, ordinary people choose courage over silence, from the Angel protestors marching at murder scenes to Marisela Escobedo's solitary thousand-mile march for justice. Scientists make discoveries that fundamentally reframe what addiction is: not a moral failure, but an adaptation to pain, isolation, and broken bonds. Reform movements grow from Vancouver's pioneering supervised injection site to Switzerland's controlled heroin clinics, each proving that a different approach to drugs saves lives and reduces harm where punishment only deepens it.