“Chasing the Scream” Is Basis of New Billie Holiday Film

FEATURING JOHANN HARI – Actress Andra Day recently became the second Black woman to ever win a Golden Globe award for her role as the legendary singer Billie Holiday in the new film The United States Vs. Billie Holiday. The film focuses on how Holiday was the earliest high-profile target of the U.S. war on drugs. While her music is widely loved, her personal story is little known and was told in a book by journalist Johann Hari that the film is based on. A few years ago we spoke with Hari about his book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs.

By almost all accounts, the US’s so-called War on Drugs, has been a miserable failure. Aside from failing to address the causes of addiction, the war has disproportionately targeted poor people and people of color, who fill up our absurdly large prisons. On the border with Mexico, it has unleashed a horribly violent war, empowering traffickers and armed militias. In his book about the U.S.’s war on drugs, Hari, who is a British journalist, explores the obscure historical origins of the Drug war through the stories of ordinary people, and a history that goes back to the 1930s with a man named Harry Anslinger, and his vendetta against Billie Holiday.

FEATURING JOHANN HARI – Actress Andra Day recently became the second Black woman to ever win a Golden Globe award for her role as the legendary singer Billie Holiday in the new film The United States Vs. Billie Holiday. The film focuses on how Holiday was the earliest high-profile target of the U.S. war on drugs. While her music is widely loved, her personal story is little known and was told in a book by journalist Johann Hari that the film is based on. A few years ago we spoke with Hari about his book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs.

By almost all accounts, the US’s so-called War on Drugs, has been a miserable failure. Aside from failing to address the causes of addiction, the war has disproportionately targeted poor people and people of color, who fill up our absurdly large prisons. On the border with Mexico, it has unleashed a horribly violent war, empowering traffickers and armed militias. In his book about the U.S.’s war on drugs, Hari, who is a British journalist, explores the obscure historical origins of the Drug war through the stories of ordinary people, and a history that goes back to the 1930s with a man named Harry Anslinger, and his vendetta against Billie Holiday.

Johann Hari, Award winning journalist and author whose 2015 book is Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs on which the new film The United States Vs. Billie Holiday is based.

** This interview first aired in January 2015.

Johann Hari, Award winning journalist and author whose 2015 book is Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs on which the new film The United States Vs. Billie Holiday is based.

** This interview first aired in January 2015.