One Hundred Years of the War on Drugs

January 2015 will mark a century of the United States’ war on drugs: one hundred years since the first arrests under the Harrison Act.

Facing down this anniversary, journalist Johann Hari wanted to explore the larger contours of the story—to find out why the war began, why it continues and how to move beyond it. Join Hari as he shares his twenty-thousand-mile global journey into the drug war’s many facets and its dramatic human stories: The first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, whose revulsion to drugs began as a child with the overheard screams of a neighbor going through withdrawal. A mother in Mexico who spent years tracking her daughter’s murderer. A child smuggled out of the ghetto during the Holocaust who later helped unlock the science of addiction. A man who led his country to decriminalize all drugs—from cannabis to crack. Hari then brings us back to the United States, where the war was instigated and exported, but where change is also coming.

Johann Hari has written for many of the world’s leading newspapers, including The New York Times, Le Monde and the Guardian. He was twice named Journalist of the Year by Amnesty International, for his reporting on the war in the Central African Republic and on the fall of Dubai. He has also been named Journalist of the Year by Stonewall. From the age of twenty-three, he was one of the leading op-ed columnists for the Independent.