Street Roots •
News
Page 10
Carl Hart spoke in June at Simon Fraser University near Vancouver, B.C., about reworking an approach to drug addiction.
M ost users are responsible, says researcher C arl Hart,
who wants to change attitudes a n d policies about drugs
BY KATIE HYSLOP
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
arl H art w ants us to think differently
about drugs.
E
A neuropsychopharm acologist from
Columbia University - m eaning h e’s a
research er and teacher on th e effects of drugs
on hum an brains - H art has dedicated his work
to dispelling m yths about illegal drug use.
H e thinks all drugs should be legal, and h e ’s
spent th e past year and a half sharing his views
on a worldwide book to u r prom oting his part-
m em oir and part-neuroscience tex t “High
Price.*’
“Eighty to 90 percent of th e people who use
drugs are like m e,” H a rt said during a June talk
a t Simon F ra se r University’s Goldcorp C entre
for th e A rts in British Columbia.
“T hey pay taxes; they take care of th eir
families; they are responsible m em bers of our
society.”
G esturing to th e screen behind him, which
displayed images of U.S. P residents Barack
Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, he
said, “In som e cases, they even becom e
president of th e U nited States.”
Addiction ra te s do vary; 9 p ercent of
m arijuana users, 15 to 20 percent of cocaine
and crack u se rs and roughly one-quarter of
heroin u se rs will becom e addicted. Yet legal
"Setoclive
sf these drags' laws,
eliect, serve as a tool to
m arginalize black males, w
especially, and te e p them g j
i n this visions cycle of
in ca rce xa tlo B and Is o la tio n
|
■
CARL HART,
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR
I
drugs like alcohol and cigarettes have addiction
ra te s of 10 to 15 p ercen t and 33 percent,
respectively.
So why do we hand down harsh crim inal
penalties for using crack w hen legal cigarettes
have a g re ater risk of dependency? H art boils it
down to racism .
“Selective enforcem ent of th ese drugs’ laws,
in effecf, serve as a tool to marginalize black
m ales, especially, and keep them in this vicious
cycle of incarceration and isolation from
m ainstream society,” he told th e audience.
A discriminatory system
H art didn’t come by this knowledge solely
from his research in Columbfe’s labs. He grew
up poor in a Mjami ghetto and as a youth
carried a gun, sold drugs, u sed drugs and
w atched as th e sam e life path he w as fixed to
follow led so m any of his loved ones to ruin.
“Eventually I decided to get serious about
m y education. E arning a Ph.D. in neuroscience
kind of changed my trajectory,” h e said wryly.
H a rt focuses his research on U.S. drug
crim e statistics, including th a t sentencing for
crack possession is 18 tim es th e sentencing for
cocaine, even though they’re th e sam e drug.
It used to be w orse. From 1986 until th e
Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, sentencing for
crack in th e U nited S tates w as 100 tim es
sentencing for cocaine possession. If you w ere
caught w ith 5 m illigram s of crack, you received
th e sam e sentence as som eone caught w ith
500 m illigram s of pow der cocaine.
“We have enforced th is law such th a t black
people in th e U nited S tates re p re se n t 80
p ercen t of th o se people a rre ste d u n d e r th o se
laws,” said H art, noting th e re is no difference
in cocaine use betw een black and w hite U.S.
populations.
Canada, w here H a rt w as recently speaking,
has a sim ilar problem . M ore th an a q u a rte r of
priso n ers are m em bers of th e indigenous
com m unities, y e t th ey m ake up less th a n 5
See ADDICTION, page 11