(1/6/2014) “Drugs Aren’t the Problem”

Neuroscientist Carl Hart on Brain Science & Myths About Addiction

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/6/drugs_arent_the_problem_neuroscientist_carl

As we continue our conversation on the nationwide shift toward liberalizing drug laws, we are joined by the groundbreaking neuropsychopharmacologist Dr. Carl Hart. He is the first tenured African-American professor in the sciences at Columbia University, where he is an associate professor in the psychology and psychiatry departments. He is also a member of the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse and a research scientist in the Division of Substance Abuse at the New York State Psychiatric Institute…

But when I started to look more carefully, started looking at the evidence more carefully, it became clear to me that drugs weren’t the problem. The problem was poverty, drug policy, lack of jobs—a wide range of things. And drugs were just one sort of component that didn’t contribute as much as we had said they have…

So, one of the things that shocked me when I first started to understand what was going on, when I discovered that 80 to 90 percent of the people who actually use drugs like crack cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana—80 to 90 percent of those people were not addicted…

And so, we are not anywhere near being able to explain drug addiction with our brain science yet…

So, when I think about what Patrick Kennedy says, if he was really concerned about the minority community, one thing that he would be talking about is this fact: Today, if we continue the same sort of drug enforcement policies, one in three African-American males born today will spend some time in jail…