Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

by Johann Hari

once again. The streets became safer. The people on heroin prescriptions carry out 55 percent fewer vehicle thefts and 80 percent fewer muggings and burglaries. This fall in crime was “almost immediate,” the most detailed academic study found. The HIV epidemic among drug users stopped. In 1985, some 68 percent of new HIV infections in Switzerland were caused by injection drug use, but by 2009, it was down to approximately 5 percent. The number of addicts dying every year fell dramatically, the proportion with permanent jobs tripled, and every single one had a home. A third of all addicts who had been on welfare came off it altogether. And just as in Liverpool, the pyramid selling by addicts crumbled to sand: people on the heroin prescription program for a sustained period were 94.7 percent less likely to sell drugs than before their treatment. Jean tells me the drug dealers he used to work for are “completely against this program. They