The "war" didn't start with a focus on health, but rather with a specific target. In 1939, Billie Holiday stood on a stage in New York and sang a powerful protest song about lynchings in the South.

The book uses several other narratives to illustrate how the prohibition of drugs creates violence and deeper addiction:

: Immediately after her performance, Harry Anslinger —the head of the newly formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics—sent a message to Holiday: stop singing that song .

: A teenager in Mexico who became a prolific killer for the Zeta Cartel. His story shows how the illegal market turns desperate young people into "monsters" through a culture of terror.

: The story of how Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001, choosing to spend money on housing and jobs for addicts instead of prison—a move that saw addiction and overdose rates plummet.

: Anslinger , who held deeply racist views and hated jazz, assigned a Black agent named Jimmy Fletcher to stalk her for two years to find a way to arrest her. Fletcher eventually found her using drugs, and she was sentenced to a year in prison.

: Even after her release, Anslinger continued to pursue her. When Holiday was eventually hospitalized, dying of liver and heart failure, Anslinger's agents handcuffed her to her hospital bed and arrested her for drug possession after allegedly planting heroin on her. She died while under arrest in that hospital bed at only 44 years old. Other Key Stories from Tras el grito