Everything Americans Think They Know About Drugs Is Wrong: A Scientist Explodes the Myths

[polly7]

Columbia University scientist Dr. Carl Hart combines research and anecdotes from his life to explain how false assumptions have created a disastrous drug policy.

By Kristen Gwynne / AlterNet June 13, 2013

What many Americans, including many scientists, think they know about drugs is turning out to be totally wrong. For decades, drug war propaganda has brainwashed Americans into blaming drugs for problems ranging from crime to economic deprivation. In his new book High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society, Dr. Carl Hart blows apart the most common myths about drugs and their impact on society, drawing in part on his personal experience growing up in an impoverished Miami neighborhood. Dr. Hart has used marijuana and cocaine, carried guns, sold drugs, and participated in other petty crime, like shoplifting. A combination of what he calls choice and chance brought him to the Air Force and college, and finally made him the first black, tenured professor of sciences at Columbia University.

Kristen Gynne: What are some of the false conclusions about drugs you are challenging?:

KG:You talk about how people are always blaming problems on drugs, when those issues really spring from the stress of poverty. What are some examples?:

KG:What kinds of environmental factors matter?

CH: ..... If you have competing reinforcers or alternatives, like the ability to earn income, learn a skill, or receive some respect based on your performance in some sort of way, those things compete with potentially destructive behavior. And so as a psychologist, you just want to make sure people have a variety of potential reinforcers. If you don't have that, you increase the likelihood of people engaging in behaviors that society does not condone.

Skills that are employable or marketable, education, having a stake or meaningful role in society, not being marginalized—all of those things are very important. Instead of ensuring that all of our members have these things, our society has blamed drugs, said drugs are the reasons that people don't have a stake in society, and that's simply not true.

KG:What is actually responsible for problems often linked to drugs?

CH: Poverty. And there are policies that have played a role, too. Policies like placing a large percentage of our law enforcment resources in those communities, so that when people get charged with some petty crime, they have a blemish on their record that further decreases their ability to join mainstream, get a job that's meaningful, and that sort of thing.

KG:What would policy that reflects reality look like, and how do we get there?

CH: That is complex, but quite simple to start. The first thing is we decriminalize all drugs. More than 80% of people arrested for drugs are arrested for simple possession. Wen you decriminalize, now you have that huge number of people—we're talking 1.5 million people arrested every year—that no longer have that blemish on their record. That increases the likelihood that they can get jobs, participate in the mainstream........

Full article: http://www.alternet.org/drugs-addiction?sc=fb

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I hope this gets lots of eyes.

He's dead on. Poverty results in the desperate acts we see that cause behaviours we've criminalized.

[virtualobserver]

2. this man needs a national platform to speak from

important information-

[bemildred]

3. +1. nt

[AzDar]

4. K & R

[NonMetro]

5. The "War on Drugs" Keeps Paychecks Coming For Prison Guards?

And cops, judges, probation or parole officers, and prison contractors. It's the GOP job creation program!

[bemildred]

6. It is the pretext for a police state is what it is and always has been. nt

[raccoon]

15. Amen. And a way to disenfranchise non-whites. nt

[bemildred]

16. It's been very effective for that.

And a major motive behind all the ubiquitous violations of the Voting RIghts Act that nobody seems to be able to anything about for some reason, and a great source of blackmail material for prosecutors and cops trying to puff up their careers by "convicting" the guilty through quick, easy plea bargains. And it is and always has been a fountain of corruption inside politics and out, not unlike it's predecessor Prohibition, which it replaced in the hearts of all those "law-enforcement" officers who missed the easy money and free hand from those days when the public threw that out for being too stupid to proceed with. Too.

And most of the cowardly reptiles that inhabit the Congress went along with it all and cheered it on, and still would be too if they were not being outvoted at the ballot box by the states again, one by one.

[jwirr]

7. Brilliant man. Want to read that book.I wonder how he

deals with people who take drugs and are not in poverty situations? I think he is dead on regarding the poor. That may also explain why many are hooked as children and even IF they get a job continue to take drugs. I hope he deals with the actual effect of being hooked.

[polly7]

17. I found the book on Amazon here and ordered it.

I think his research and views are equally applicable to many areas in the world - probably, most - so it's interesting to see how differently the subject is addressed in each. I wish I'd read it when it first came out.

It's gotten some great reviews:

“It’s a fascinating combination of memoir and social science: wrenching scenes of deprivation and violence accompanied by calm analysis of historical data and laboratory results.” (John Tierney, New York Times)

“A refreshing new analysis of drug use that reveals how common misconceptions about illegal drugs are far too often not based on empirical evidence. . . . . [A] thought-provoking…[and] important work on substance abuse.” (Library Journal (starred review))

“Combining memoir, popular science, and public policy, Hart’s study lambasts current drug laws as draconian and repressive…. His is a provocative clarion call for students of sociology and policy-makers alike.” (Publishers Weekly)

“It’s not every day you read a book that blows the lid off everything you’ve ever been taught about drugs, but Dr. Carl Hart’s recent work…does just that. Part memoir, part myth-buster…a fast-paced read.” (Huffington Post)

“Perhaps nowhere has a voice been more resonant in a single place than in Dr. Carl Hart’s profoundly impacting new memoir, High Price.” (Ebony.com)

[dougolat]

8. Like we should have learned from Prohibition...

...it's the illegality that supports the profits, and a cascade of unintended consequences worse than the original problem.

(and the prohibition of alcohol also benefited the petroleum industry by "smashing the stills" used to supply alcohol fuel for rural America's mechanization. Similarly, the later ban on hemp locked in the future for petroleum by-products, slamming the door on less poisonous and more biodegradable hemp derived alternatives; thus the Plague of Poisonous Petroleum Products was contrived, not inevitable.)

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

9. I've advocating decriminalizing all drugs forever.

[vkkv]

10. Poverty, Escapism, Lack of opportunity, Low self-esteem, compulsive behavior, peer pressure

are a few more reasons.

[appalachiablue]

11. K & R. CH was much in the media a few years ago. He's an excellent speaker with interesting ideas.

[Skittles]

12. Dr. Hart is a major cutie pie

I....er.....sorry, I will read the article now

[ms liberty]

13. I've seen him interviewed...

He's really interesting and understands more than pretty much anyone else who considers themselves experts on this subject.

[dreamnightwind]

14. He should be Bernie's "drug czar"!

I've seen video of him speaking a few times, he's excellent, and I agree with his premise. As a society, we're way too punitive, and way too reluctant to examine what forces are at play in a person's life. Instead of working with a person to give their life meaning, we subscribe to the maxim "the beatings will continue until moral improves". Not hard to see where that leads.

He was the person, IIRC, who did the study that debunked the classic rats-will-starve-themselves-to-get-addictive-stimulus study, by showing that, if the rats had other rats to hang out with, or a good environment, they rarely became fixated on the stimulus (I can't remember if it was a drug or a pleasure stim, same principle either way). In the study where they would starve themselves, they had nothing else to do, just a rat in a cage with 2 buttons.