Carl Hart Quotes

• My critique of how we deal with drugs in society is just that - that we use these anecdotes to apply to everyone and the anecdotes are not representative.

  Carl Hart

  Drug, Anecdotes, Use

  Source: therumpus.net

  11 Copy quote

• We should decriminalize all drugs. The assumptions on which our drug policies are based are flawed.

  Carl Hart

  Drug, Assumption, Should

  Source: therumpus.net

  13 Copy quote

• One of the things that has happened is that our drug laws have been institutionalized now. If you want to say that somebody's a bad person in a movie or in a television show or something about that, you say they sell drugs or they use drugs.

  Carl Hart

  Law, Drug, Use

  Source: therumpus.net

  13 Copy quote

• Our ability to study the brain has been limited because of our tools and our tools have only allowed us to look at one neurotransmitter and we haven't looked so much into co-localization and co-release of transmitters. Our thinking is hampered by our tools.

  Carl Hart

  Thinking, Brain, Tools

  Source: therumpus.net

  13 Copy quote

• The way we're currently educating people about heroin is to say that heroin is so awful. Heroin is not so much the problem. It's when you combine it. It's hard to die from heroin alone.

  Carl Hart

  People, Awful, Way

  Source: therumpus.net

  12 Copy quote

• Take crack cocaine. Particularly in the early days of the policy, ninety percent of the people being arrested were black, even though they didn't use the drug at higher rates and even though their numbers in the general population are so low. How could that be? The thing is, you place all your resources in communities of color. And if you do that, you're going to arrest black people.

  Carl Hart

  Color, Numbers, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  7 Copy quote

• If you're a member of a despised group, look out! They'll find a drug and associate you with its use. There are a lot of people in the gay community using methamphetamine and paying taxes and going to work and doing well.

  Carl Hart

  Gay, People, Community

  Source: therumpus.net

  11 Copy quote

• Your decision to place your law enforcement resources in these communities is racism, but nobody has called people out on this. The law itself is not racist. But people's decision about where we're going to place our efforts, who we're going to prosecute, who we're not going to prosecute, is racism. And nobody's calling them on it.

  Carl Hart

  Law, Racism, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  10 Copy quote

• I am glad that people are trying to have a rational conversation about drugs.

  Carl Hart

  People, Drug, Trying

  Source: therumpus.net

  8 Copy quote

• People rarely die from heroin alone, it's the combination that's deadly. Maybe we should blast that out as a public health education message. That way at least we're keeping people safe.

  Carl Hart

  Health Education, People, Safe

  Source: therumpus.net

  11 Copy quote

• Looking at the data and at my drug use and evaluating it carefully just let me see that I wasn't special, but my drug use challenged what I thought about cocaine. Because I would accept when I would say, "What happened to that person?" and someone would say, "They started using cocaine...they went downhill..." I would just accept that, even though I had a different experience and all these other people had a different experience. But I would throw that out because I thought my experience was an aberration.

  Carl Hart

  Drug Use, Data, Different Experiences

  Source: therumpus.net

  9 Copy quote

• When you have the national narrative being "crack is awful and black people are using it," why go against that narrative when you want to get that publication in The New York Times or wherever? It encourages people to play right into it.

  Carl Hart

  New York, Play, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  10 Copy quote

• We need to continuously put pressure on politicians to do more, because they are happy just to do nothing—it’s easier to do nothing.

  Carl Hart

  Needs, Pressure, Politician

  4 Copy quote

• If we want to think about racism and how it might play out in drug policy, we have to think about the trial of George Zimmerman. We think about the prosecution, when they said "race is not a factor." It's so dishonest.

  Carl Hart

  Thinking, Race, Play

  Source: therumpus.net

  7 Copy quote

• I think about my cocaine use. I liked it. I thought it was a great drug. But I knew that if I was doing that almost exclusively, I wouldn't be able to continue to also have significant others and a wide range of other things. And I wasn't special. A number of people, including the people I was doing cocaine with, also behaved the same way.

  Carl Hart

  Thinking, Numbers, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  8 Copy quote

• High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society.

  Carl Hart

  Journey, Discovery, Self

  "High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society". Book by Carl Hart, June 11, 2013.

  9 Copy quote

• I've had investigations of my lab because people didn't like what I had to say. And when you have investigations and you're doing research, you're shut down for a while. You have to start all over again. So that's one area where I paid a high price.

  Carl Hart

  People, Research, Labs

  Source: therumpus.net

  7 Copy quote

• I have three boys. And I wanted to make sure it connected with them and then those guys who grew up like me, in environments like me.And then I knew something about science that your New York Times reader would be interested in. So I was thinking about it in multiple ways: I'll connect with the people who grew up like me first, and then the New York Times reader will be interested in the science because it's so good and they want to be "in the know."

  Carl Hart

  New York, Boys, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Writing in a nuanced way, getting at all the details in a way that remains interesting for the reader, is very difficult.

  Carl Hart

  Writing, Interesting, Details

  Source: therumpus.net

  7 Copy quote

• You have rappers saying "stay off drugs, go to school" - empty verbal behavior. I think all of this became institutionalized in the early '90s. And it's become more and more solidified, more and more entrenched.

  Carl Hart

  School, Thinking, Rapper

  Source: therumpus.net

  7 Copy quote

• Much of the early work focused on dopamine and we were really looking for rewarding sorts of effects and sure enough, we only found that. But you can destroy the main dopamine-producing structures of the brain and you can still get an animal to self-administer drugs like cocaine.

  Carl Hart

  Animal, Self, Drug

  Source: therumpus.net

  13 Copy quote

• The policy that received more attention particularly in the past decade and a half or so has been the US cocaine policy, the differential treatment of crack versus powder cocaine and question is how my research impacted my view on policy. Clearly that policy is not based on the weight of the scientific evidence. That is when the policy was implemented, the concern about crack cocaine was so great that something had to be done and congress acted in the only way they knew how, they passed policy and that's what a responsible society should do.

  Carl Hart

  Past, Attention, Done

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• Crack in the early 1980s or mid 1980s I'm sorry is that one of the worst myth is that one hit and you're addicted for life. We saw that in 1980s and we're seeing it again with methamphetamine today, one hit and you're addicted and it simply not true, addiction requires work not the people should go out and experiment or do these themselves but the fact is that's a myth and the concern is that, it's dangerous because when people perpetuates that myths and then when young people are people actually try methamphetamine or crack cocaine and find that, that doesn't happen to them.

  Carl Hart

  Sorry, People, Addiction

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• I don't want to be on the bandwagon of dogging any president or anybody in positions where they have all these different constituencies.

  Carl Hart

  President, Different, Want

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Dopamine makes up less than one percent of the brain's neurotransmitters. It's a small portion. Dopamine is released when people are happy, angry, stressed. So it's really hard to call this specific neurotransmitter "the pleasure neurotransmitter."

  Carl Hart

  People, Brain, Stressed

  Source: therumpus.net

  14 Copy quote

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