Johann Hari Quotes & Sayings

1993, in the death throes of apartheid, South Africa imprisoned 853 black men per hundred thousand in the population. The United States imprisons 4,919 black men per hundred thousand (versus only 943 white men). So because of the drug war and the way it is enforced, a black man was far more likely to be jailed in the Land of the Free than in the most notorious white supremacist society in the world. — Johann Hari

For each traumatic event that happened to a child, they were two to four times more likely to grow up to be an addicted adult. — Johann Hari

Your working assumption, when you meet a homophobe, should be that they are gay. — Johann Hari

the core of addiction doesn't lie in what you swallow or inject - it's in the pain you feel in your head. Yet we have built a system that thinks we will stop addicts by increasing their pain. "If I had to design a system that was intended to keep people addicted, I'd design exactly the system that we have right now, — Johann Hari

The war on drugs makes it almost impossible for drug users to get milder forms of their drug - and it pushes them inexorably toward harder drugs. — Johann Hari

It isn't the drug that causes the harmful behavior - it's the environment. An isolated rat will almost always become a junkie. A rat with a good life almost never will, no matter how many drugs you make available to him. As Bruce put it: he was realizing that addiction isn't a disease. Addiction is an adaptation. It's not you - it's the cage you live in. — Johann Hari

For anybody who suspects that we need to reform the drug laws, there is an easier argument to make, and a harder argument to make. The easier argument is to say that we all agree drugs are bad - it's just that drug prohibition is even worse. — Johann Hari

The US head of state grew up on food stamps. The British head of state grew up on the postage stamps. — Johann Hari

Wouldn't it be better to spend our money on rescuing kids before they become addicts than on jailing them after we have failed? — Johann Hari

When Billie Holiday came15 to London in the 1950s, she was amazed. They "are civilized about it and they have no narcotics problem at all," she explained. "One day America is going to smarten up and do the — Johann Hari

I'm so patriotic, I think every British kid should have a chance to grow up to be our head of state. — Johann Hari

[The question] is no longer: How do we stop addiction through threats and force, and scare people away from drugs in the first place? It becomes: How do we start to rebuild a society where we can form healthier bonds? How do we build a society where we look for happiness in one another rather than consumption? — Johann Hari

The opposite of addiction isn't sobriety. It's connection. — Johann Hari

The bombs held in current nuclear arsenals are seventy times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. If we don't begin opposing the drift towards more and more of them, we will live in the shadow of the mushroom cloud for the rest of our lives - and millions may die there. — Johann Hari

Ethan Nadelmann, one of the leading drug reformers in the United States, had explained: People overdose because [under prohibition] they don't know if the heroin is 1 percent or 40 percent ... Just imagine if every time you picked up a bottle of wine, you didn't know whether it was 8 percent alcohol or 80 percent alcohol [or] if every time you took an aspirin, you didn't know if it was 5 milligrams or 500 milligrams. — Johann Hari

The truth emerging from this scattered picture of nuclear proliferation is simple: there is a stronger chance of a nuclear bomb being used now than at almost any point in the Cold War. — Johann Hari

The climate-change deniers are rapidly ending up with as much intellectual credibility as creationists and Flat Earthers ... they are nudging close to having the moral credibility of Holocaust deniers. — Johann Hari

This denial is bizarre. Last time Chomsky denied something I attributed to him, it was Chomsky's word against mine and there was no way to resolve this argument. This time, however, there's some fairly conclusive evidence. It describes itself as 'the official weblog of Professor Noam Chomsky', and it is attached to Z Magazine, for which Chomsky has regularly written for over a decade. It claims Chomsky makes direct blog entries. Yet Chomsky claims he has 'nothing to with with it'. Are we really meant to believe this? If it is true, why does he carry on writing for a magazine that publishes a false blog in his name? — Johann Hari

It is a natural human instinct to turn our fears into symbols, and destroy the symbols, in the hope that it will destroy the fear. It is a logic that keeps recurring throughout human history, from the Crusades to the witch hunts to the present day. — Johann Hari

It would be as if the Navy Seals defected from the U.S. Army to help the Crips take over Los Angeles
and succeeded. — Johann Hari

The greatest trick the rich - and their cheerleaders on the right - ever pulled was convincing the world that class didn't exist. Out here in the real world, it is more real and more rigid than it has been for a century. — Johann Hari

If your problem is being chronically starved of social bonds, then part of the solution is to bond with the heroin itself and the relief it gives you. But a bigger part is to bond with the subculture that comes with taking heroin - the tribe of fellow users all embarked on the same mission and facing the same threats and risking death every day with you. It gives you an identity. It gives you a life of highs and lows, instead of relentless monotony. The world stops being indifferent to you, and starts being hostile - which is at least proof that you exist, that you aren't dead already. The heroin helps users deal with the pain of being unable to form normal bonds with other humans. The heroin subculture gives them bonds with other human beings. — Johann Hari

The United States now imprisons more people16 for drug offenses than Western European nations imprison for all crimes combined. No human society has ever before imprisoned this high a proportion of its population. — Johann Hari

I got my dad a great father's Day present. He called to say: 'Ach. Zis present is so good I now think it vas almost vorth having children. — Johann Hari

Something has gone badly wrong with our culture. We've created a culture where really large numbers of the people around us can't bear to be present in their daily lives. They need to medicate themselves to get through their day. — Johann Hari

For all the chatter that Britain has moved beyond class, recent studies have found that it determines the life chances of British people more today than at any point since the Second World War ... A child born into a rich family in Britain will almost certainly live and die rich, while a child born into a poor family will almost certainly live and die poor. — Johann Hari

If I am an American who has developed an Oxycontin addiction, as soon as my doctor realizes I'm an addict, she has to cut me off. She is allowed to prescribe to treat only my physical pain - not my addiction. Indeed, if she prescribes just to meet my addiction, she will face being stripped of her license and up to twenty-five years in jail84 as a common drug dealer - just — Johann Hari

The world belongs to the strong,"12 Harry believed. "It always has and it always will. — Johann Hari

A sense of dislocation has been spreading through our societies like a bone cancer throughout the twentieth century. We all feel it: we have become richer, but less connected to one another. Countless studies prove this is more than a hunch, but here's just one: the average number of close friends a person has has been steadily falling. We are increasingly alone, so we are increasingly addicted. "We're talking about learning to live with the modern age," Bruce believes. The modern world has many incredible benefits, but it also brings with it a source of deep stress that is unique: dislocation. "Being atomized and fragmented and all on [your] own - that's no part of human evolution and it's no part of the evolution of any society," he told me. — Johann Hari

There is an emerging scientific consensus that global warming is making hurricanes more intense and more destructive. It turns out that Katrina fits into a pattern that scientists and greens have been trying to warn us about for a long time. — Johann Hari

It took me a while to see that the contrast between the racism directed at Billie and the compassion offered to addicted white stars like Judy Garland was not some weird misfiring of the drug war - it was part of the point. — Johann Hari

The opposite of addiction is human connection. And I think that has massive implications for the war on drugs. The treatment of drug addicts almost everywhere in the world is much closer to Tent City than it is to anything in Portugal. Our laws are built around the belief that drug addicts need to be punished to stop them. But if pain and trauma and isolation cause addiction, then inflicting more pain and trauma and isolation is not going to solve that addiction. It's actually going to deepen it. — Johann Hari

Punishment - shaming a person, caging them, making them unemployable - traps them in addiction. Taking that money and spending it instead on helping them to get jobs and homes and decent lives makes it possible for many of them to stop. — Johann Hari

More than 50 percent of Americans have breached the drug laws. Where a law is that widely broken, you can't possibly enforce it against every lawbreaker. The legal system would collapse under the weight of it. So you go after the people who are least able to resist, to argue back, to appeal - the poorest and most disliked groups. In the United States, they are black and Hispanic people, with a smattering of poor whites. — Johann Hari

Billie didn't blame Anslinger's agents as individuals; she blamed the drug war itself247 - because it forced the police to treat ill people like criminals. "Imagine if the government chased sick people248 with diabetes, put a tax on insulin and drove it into the black market, told doctors they couldn't treat them," she wrote in her memoir, "then sent them to jail. If we did that, everyone would know we were crazy. Yet we do practically the same thing every day in the week to sick people hooked on drugs." Still, — Johann Hari

All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. — Johann Hari

I respect you as a person too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs. — Johann Hari

So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection. — Johann Hari

The American head of state grew up with a mother on food stamps. The British head of state grew up with a mother on postage stamps. Is that a contrast that fills you with pride? — Johann Hari

If I had to design a system that was intended to keep people addicted, I'd design exactly the system that we have right now," Gabor would tell me. "I'd attack people, and ostracize them." He has seen that "the more you stress people, the more they're going to use. The more you de-stress people, the less they're going to use. So to create a system where you ostracize and marginalize and criminalize people, and force them to live in poverty with disease, you are basically guaranteeing they will stay at it." "If — Johann Hari

Until the day that "the Great Judge proclaims: / 'The last addict's died,'254 " the poem said, "Then - not till then - may you be retired. — Johann Hari

You will get something wrong today, and tomorrow, and every day of your life. So will I, and everybody you know. You don't have a choice about being wrong sometimes: mistakes will be your life-long companion. But you do have a choice about whether to approach your error in terror so you suppress, ignore, and repeat it-or to make it your honest, open ally in trying to get to the truth. — Johann Hari