Most users are responsible, says Carl Hart, who wants to change attitudes and policies about drugs
Carl Hart wants us to think differently about drugs.
A neuropsychopharmacologist from Columbia University — meaning he’s a researcher and teacher on the effects of drugs on human brains — Hart has dedicated his work to dispelling myths about illegal drug use.
He thinks all drugs should be legal, and he’s spent the past year and a half sharing his views on a worldwide book tour promoting his part-memoir and part-neuroscience text “High Price.”
“Eighty to 90 percent of the people who use drugs are like me,” Hart said during a June talk at Simon Fraser University’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts in British Columbia.
“They pay taxes; they take care of their families; they are responsible members of our society.”
Gesturing to the screen behind him, which displayed images of U.S. Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, he said, “In some cases, they even become president of the United States.”
Addiction rates do vary; 9 percent of marijuana users, 15 to 20 percent of cocaine and crack users and roughly one-quarter of heroin users will become addicted. Yet legal drugs like alcohol and cigarettes have addiction rates of 10 to 15 percent and 33 percent, respectively.
So why do we hand down harsh criminal penalties for using crack when legal cigarettes have a greater risk of dependency? Hart boils it down to racism.
“Selective enforcement of these drugs’ laws, in effect, serve as a tool to marginalize black males, especially, and keep them in this vicious cycle of incarceration and isolation from mainstream society,” he told the audience.
A discriminatory system
Hart didn’t come by this knowledge solely from his research in Columbia’s labs. He grew up poor in a Miami ghetto and as a youth carried a gun, sold drugs, used drugs and watched as the same life path he was fixed to follow led so many of his loved ones to ruin.
“Eventually I decided to get serious about my education. Earning a Ph.D. in neuroscience kind of changed my trajectory,” he said wryly.
Hart focuses his research on U.S. drug crime statistics, including that sentencing for crack possession is 18 times the sentencing for cocaine, even though they’re the same drug.
It used to be worse. From 1986 until the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, sentencing for crack in the United States was 100 times sentencing for cocaine possession. If you were caught with 5 milligrams of crack, you received the same sentence as someone caught with 500 milligrams of powder cocaine.
“We have enforced this law such that black people in the United States represent 80 percent of those people arrested under those laws,” said Hart, noting there is no difference in cocaine use between black and white U.S. populations.
Canada, where Hart was recently speaking, has a similar problem. More than a quarter of prisoners are members of the indigenous communities, yet they make up less than 5 percent of Canada’s overall population.
Heavy drug use among indigenous people is connected to their higher rates of homelessness, child welfare interventions, poverty and suicide compared to the rest of Canada. All of these issues are linked to the colonial violence indigenous people have endured across generations in Canada.
On the surface, Hart said, poor physical and mental health of many residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighborhood — notorious for its high levels of poverty and public drug use — make them the poster children for the antidrug campaign. But he sees something else going on.
“If you look at those folks really carefully, you can see that many folks have psychiatric illnesses that are not being attended to,” he said. “They have a multitude of problems. But it’s just simply easy to say that it’s (their intersecting social and economic issues are) because of their drug use.”
Educating people
Hart doesn’t bother to debate his findings with the antidrug crowd.
“I have to make sure I don’t engage in conversations with people who don’t abide by the rules of evidence” is one of his best-known quotes.
The day after his Vancouver talk, Hart said he preferred to talk to people open to listening.
“Once they have the information, then they can put pressure on their legislators,” he said. “And that’s my strategy, to basically educate folks. Help people to understand.”
Once they understand, Hart lays out how they can help, from knowing the science behind his work and engaging in factual debates, to holding yourself and others accountable for racism.
Perhaps the most difficult ask is coming out as a drug user to help dispel the myth that only addicts use illegal drugs. While Hart is open about his drug use, he said that in his case, it helps that he’s proven himself as an award-winning Columbia University professor.
“For (other) people, when they think about coming out of the closet, they may have to do it on a smaller scale, like to friends and relatives,” he said.
Hart acknowledges it isn’t an easy path to tread; he’s lost friends and research funding due to his views. His book tour has been the main source of research funding as of late. But these are sacrifices he’s willing to make to change society’s attitude and policies toward drugs.
“The focus shouldn’t be on whether you are using drugs, but it should be on your deeds,” Hart told his Vancouver audience before it erupted into the second standing ovation of the night.
“I want to make sure people are good people.”
Courtesy of INSP News Service www.street-papers.org / Megaphone, Vancouver, B.C.
