Dr. Carl Hart, an acclaimed researcher of neuropsychopharmacology and behavioral neuroscience, gave a lecture titled “Drug Use for Grown Ups: Where Science and Policy Intersect” on Wednesday, March 19. Hart, the Mamie Phipps Clark Professor of Psychology at Columbia University, said he has been on a mission to clear up misconceptions about drug use and expose harmful and biased drug use policies, “Science should be driving our drug policies, even if it makes us uncomfortable.” Co-organizer of the lecture and associate professor of psychology at Swarthmore, Barbara Thelamour, introduced Hart to the audience and established his driving thesis: that “human beings have the right to seek pleasure without punishment and that pathologizing drug use directly contributes to racial and class disparities and injustice in the criminal justice system.”
Hart began his lecture by establishing that he and the audience were “going to try to have a grown-up conversation about drugs.” However, before he could get into presenting his material, he wanted to put forward his assumptions about the listeners in the room. Hart assumed that the audience would respect others’ human rights, a point he dubbed “paramount.” He also made clear that in a scientific discussion evidence, especially empirical evidence, is the currency of the conversation. Finally, he assumed that each audience member had the same goal as him: “I’m really trying to grow up. I’m trying to be really responsible for my behavior, and I’m trying to let other people be responsible for theirs.”
Once Hart and the audience were on the same page, he provided some personal backstory and revealed how he got into the study of drugs. Hart was enlisted in the Air Force from 1984-1988, an experience “that really just opened [his] mind.” By the end of his four years, he made the difficult decision to leave the military so he could make a larger impact on the world, one where he wasn’t bound to “only have the rank on [his] shoulder as [his] contribution or [his] work.”
Eventually, he heard about a supposed crack cocaine scare in the United States. After the passing of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, Hart says that crack cocaine was being punished 100x more harshly than its powder form and thought to be addictive after one hit. Driven by what he called ignorance and a “bleeding-heart liberal desire to help,” Hart left the armed forces for neuroscience to research the neuronal underpinning of addiction.
Hart organized his “journey” into three sections, split by roughly three decades between 1990 and the present. The first decade he named “the decade of the brain,” when he approached his new involvement with studying drugs with excitement and a strong work ethic as a PhD candidate. During his decade of the brain, Hart was primarily researching tobacco and cocaine. He cites the 1988 Surgeon General’s report as one of his first moments of disillusionment. The report labeled nicotine as addictive in the same way that cocaine and heroin were. In combination with Al Leshner’s study claiming that addiction is a brain disease, Hart used these texts “like [his] Bible.” Yet, after looking more closely, he noticed that he could not find evidence from research with human participants to support these claims and felt they fundamentally ignored the right to bodily autonomy.
Throughout the lecture, Hart highlighted the alignment of his values with the human rights and ideals postulated in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He believes in the right to “live your life like you see fit as long as you don’t disrupt others from doing so.” The passing of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, with its claim that the United States would be drug-free by 1995, seemed to Hart as if the government was infringing on the rights of those who “loved their drugs.” Further, the new act, which also penalized anyone using crack cocaine, predominantly targeted Black communities. Black crack users made up the majority of crack-related arrests, even though the majority of those who smoked crack were not Black.
However, Hart conducted a pivotal study in which crack users were given the choice of money or using crack that showed drug-taking behavior was governed by the same principles as other behaviors: the participants would choose crack if the monetary award was only five dollars, but would rather have the money if it was increased to twenty dollars. In other words, Hart says he was able to show that crack users can and do behave as rationally as others.
This study, and the recognition of a bias in drug policy against people of color, led Hart to enter his “decade of behavior.” He was no longer aspirational about saving the United States from the terrors of drugs, but rather he wanted experiments to aid in changing drug law. This decade brought upon his work with cocaine and cannabis. His study on smoked cocaine self-administration demonstrated that the inhumane/unpredictable symptoms of the drug are not true, even though drug-induced unpredictability has been cited multiple times in criminal cases against people of color. He showed that cocaine can be taken safely. Other studies of his demonstrated that long-term cocaine users were cognitively intact in regards to decision making and that cognitive functioning is virtually unaffected by cannabis use. However, these findings have been controversial, leading researchers to publish critical responses pointing out logical and methodological errors within Hart’s work.
In his most recent and ongoing decade, the “decade of action,” Hart began with research on methamphetamine, which he described as the equivalent of “the fentanyl of today.” He discussed the former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, who started a war on methamphetamine in his country and claimed that a person is not viable for rehabilitation after they have used meth. Hart acknowledged that this statement mirrors some of the conclusions presented in the drug literature but was not supported by the studies’ hard data. Duterte then justified the killings of thousands of meth users on the basis that they would not be able to be rehabilitated. Hart presented an anecdote in which he arrived in the Philippines for a lecture but was forced to leave immediately because of a press conference Duterte gave that personally attacked him. The press conference led to multiple threats against him and the publication of a defamatory cartoon in The Manila Times. After Hart heard that “[the Filipino government] would hire people for like $100 to $500 to kill people,” he quickly fled the country.
Research that Hart completed in this decade found that methamphetamine users had cognitive functioning within a normal range and that any difference in brain imaging measures against non-drug users was pathological and irregular. In 2020, he published an article titled “Exaggerating Harmful Drug Effects on the Brain Is Killing Black People.” This was Hart’s response to language police used in addressing the crowd that had gathered during the murder of George Floyd, including “This is why you don’t do drugs, kids.”
After the conclusion of his drug journey, Hart went on to debunk myths about why we ban certain drugs. He says that it could be to prevent overdoses and, in response to this possibility, presents the trajectory of drug-related deaths over recent years. Recently, opioid deaths – including fentanyl-related deaths – have been increasing, even as heroin-related deaths have been decreasing. However, he claims the method of counting drug-related deaths is greatly flawed.
Hart said, “People are dying. I’m not saying that people are not. But what I am challenging is that people are dying from drugs.” Hart brings up important points about the quality of information presented on the death certificates used for counting overdoses. Because many of the coroners who examine the body do not have the qualifications to do so, Hart claimed that there is an error rate of 20-30% in testing bodies for drugs post-mortem, and even then, there is no biological confirmation required that the drug was even in the body system. Additionally, most drug deaths involve multiple drugs and thus are counted as multiple deaths (one per drug in the system), resulting in a large overrepresentation of the number of deaths by drugs.
Hart also states that initial drug laws were motivated by things other than pharmacology, including racism, classism, money, and power. Finally, he states that prohibition, and by extension the restriction of any drugs, is inconsistent with the promise of liberty in America. He thinks that adults can behave as they see fit as long as they don’t prevent others from doing the same.
Hart ended the lecture with key takeaways for his audience. He reiterated that he started studying addiction and along the way discovered drugs (and that “drugs are cool AF”). Drugs helped him learn to think and be human. He also encouraged the audience to think of the founding promises of the United States: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He encouraged the audience to “save yourself,” continuing, “that will go a long way. You just allow people to live their life as they see fit, because they know more about their life than you do.”
Hart concluded by urging the audience to take advantage of their time at college to learn how to think. After all, “if you know how to think, that’s the most powerful tool you can have.”
