There Is No Good Drug War

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There Is No Good Drug War

Wednesday, 31 July 2013
By Maya Schenwar, Truthout | Interview


Twenty years ago, when acclaimed neuroscientist Carl Hart began studying drugs, he was motivated by a desire to help communities like the one in which he grew up: poor communities of color that had been, he believed, ravaged by the crack "epidemic." The media craze around crack headlines was swirling to a fever pitch at the time - the late '80s and early '90s - and, Hart writes, "I became utterly convinced that crack cocaine was the cause of everything that I now saw as wrong with the neighborhood."

However, nothing is that straightforward, in the world or in High Price, and Hart's work in the lab called into question some of his most deeply rooted assumptions.

As the DARE program hit its full stride and the aftermath of Nancy Reagan produced ever-more-terrifying tales of drugs' disastrousness, Hart was piecing together a more complex picture—one in which most drug users don't become addicted (in fact, only a small percentage do), and in which even the most taboo drugs can have positive effects.

Hart began studying the effects of drugs like crack and methamphetamine on humans (he always uses controlled doses and studies only people who use regularly anyway) and found that many well-known "facts" about drugs actually bordered on mythology. He started discovering that drug users - even those who were "experienced and committed" (and sometimes, addicted) - made choices based on a wide range of factors, just as the rest of us do. He writes, "I found out people with addictions weren't driven only by drugs." For many drug users, poverty, housing, food and other basic concerns were of foremost concern. In fact, Hart found in his lab, many regular drug users, presented with alternatives like cash or vouchers for merchandise, chose the alternatives over the drugs. Similarly, in experiments where drug-tested patients were rewarded with merchandise vouchers if their urine came back drug-free, the relapse rate proved relatively low – demonstrating that they weren't simply trading the vouchers for another hit. ................................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/17865-bad-science-and-the-drug-war-book-review-interview-with-carl-hart