Carl Hart

In May 2017, Hart was invited to speak at a drug policy forum conference held at the University of the Philippines Diliman. In his speech, he addressed the misconceptions about methamphetamine in the Philippines amidst President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. Citing laboratory tests on animals, Hart refuted Duterte’s claim that methamphetamine shrinks people’s brains and causes them to become violent. In the aftermath of his speech, Hart began to receive online death threats which forced him to leave the Philippines shortly thereafter.

In September 2014, Hart was featured in an article discussing how he is debunking drug addiction. He also presented at the TED MED conference on myths about drug addictions TEDMED event and is featured in the documentary The House I Live In (2012 film).

He also uses the intersection of his understanding about the systemic racism inherent in drug criminalization, in combination with his extensive knowledge about drugs, to combat mainstream stories which perpetuate myths of black (and other minority) inferiority. One such example was a response to the Toxicology report presented in the case of Trayvon Martin. The extremely low levels of marijuana in Martin’s blood were seen as evidence that he might have been paranoid the night of his shooting, causing him to attack Zimmerman. Hart spoke out about this ruling—explaining that it ascribed to old notions of marijuana use, such as those implied in Reefer Madness, and failed to recognize the seven decades of research on marijuana that would 1) show the levels of marijuana present in Martin’s blood were insufficient to cause the aforementioned side effects, and 2) disavow the side effects mentioned which are extremely uncommon in marijuana users.

Duterte commented on Hart’s claims, saying: “That’s all bullshit to me”. Duterte also called Hart a “son of a bitch who has gone crazy”. In an interview with Public Radio International, Hart described Duterte as “a president making such ignorant comments about drugs — like he’s a pharmacologist” and added that President Duterte was “out of his league when he talks about drugs”.

In 2013, Hart published the book High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society. In the first chapters of his book, Hart discusses his upbringing, time in the military, and years in college and grad school. He chronicles his journey to his PhD and his tenured professorship at Columbia, and discusses the sacrifices and challenges he had to make. An extremely difficult aspect of succeeding in academia for a black man was, to some extent, assimilating to white cultural standards. He discusses the challenge of learning white cultural norms and language, and then returning to his family and feeling alienated and unable to connect.

In 2012, Hart co-published research on the use of drugs within prisons in the United States. Black men are disproportionately incarcerated for drug use: while only 13.6% of the population is Black, 37.8% of prisoners are black and 79% of people incarcerated due to crack use are black. However, prison as a solution for drug use is not working. Hart’s research finds that drug use continues to occur in prisons, and those with more extensive drug histories tend to use more in prison than those with smaller drug histories. As such, decriminalization of drug use, and alternative policies with an emphasis on effective treatments are called for.

Hart lives in New York City. In 2000, Hart learned that as a teenager, he had fathered a son who had been previously unknown to him. By the time Hart discovered that he had a third child, he also found out that this son had dropped out of high school and become involved in illegal drug sales. His recently discovered son also had been charged with a cocaine offense in Florida.

Carl Hart (born October 30, 1966) is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Columbia University. Hart is known for his research in drug abuse and drug addiction. Hart was the first tenured African American professor of sciences at Columbia University.