Carl L. Hart > Quotes

“Rarely do we find [people] who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions.”
― Carl Hart, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear

“One of the most fundamental lessons of science is that a correlation or link between factors does not necessarily mean that one factor is the cause of another. This important principle, sadly, has rarely informed drug policy. In fact, empirical evidence is frequently ignored when drug policy is formulated.”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“If Barack Obama had come up in a time when the drug war was being waged as intensely as it is now, we probably would never have heard of him. A single arrest could have precluded student loans, resulted in jail time, and completely ruined his life, posing a far greater threat to him than the drugs themselves did, including the risk of addiction to marijuana or cocaine.”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“Indeed, a great deal of pathological drug use is driven by unmet social needs, by being alienated and having difficulty connecting with others. The”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“Clearly, many people consume psychoactive substances “in the pursuit of happiness,” a right the government was established to secure, to protect. So why then is our current government arresting one million Americans each year for possessing drugs? Why are so many drug users hiding in the closet? This reality does not align with the spirit of the Declaration”
― Carl Hart, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear

“what look like disadvantages from one perspective may be advantages from another—and ways of knowing and responding may be advantageous and adaptive in one environment and disadvantageous and disruptive in another.”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious, one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. —JAMES BALDWIN”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“I discovered that the predominant effects produced by the drugs discussed in this book are positive. It didn’t matter whether the drug in question was cannabis, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, or psilocybin. Overwhelmingly, consumers expressed feeling more altruistic, empathetic, euphoric, focused, grateful, and tranquil. They also experienced enhanced social interactions, a greater sense of purpose and meaning, and increased sexual intimacy and performance. This constellation of findings challenged my original beliefs about drugs and their effects. I had been indoctrinated to be biased toward the negative effects of drug use. But over the past two-plus decades, I had gained a deeper, more nuanced understanding. Sure, negative effects were also possible outcomes. But they represented a minority of effects; they were predictable and readily mitigated. For example, the type of drug use described in this book should be limited to healthy, responsible adults. These individuals fulfill their responsibilities as citizens, parents, partners, and professionals. They eat healthy, exercise regularly, and get sufficient amounts of sleep. They take steps to alleviate chronic excessive stress levels. These practices ensure physical fitness and considerably reduce the likelihood of experiencing adverse effects. Equally important, I learned that people undergoing acute crises and those afflicted with psychiatric illnesses should probably avoid drug use because they may be at greater risk of experiencing unwanted effects. The vast amount of predictably favorable drug effects intrigued me, so much so that I expanded my own drug use to take advantage of the wide array of beneficial outcomes specific drugs can offer. To put this in personal terms, my position as department chairman (from 2016 to 2019) was far more detrimental to my health than my drug use ever was. Frequently, the demands of the job led to irregular exercise and poor eating and sleeping habits, which contributed to pathological stress levels. This wasn’t good for my mental or physical health. My drug use, however, has never been as disruptive or as problematic. It has, in fact, been largely protective against the negative health consequences of negotiating pathology-producing environments.”
― Carl Hart, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear

“Don’t try to change yourself; change your environment. —B. F. SKINNER”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“After reading this book, I hope you will be less likely to vilify individuals merely because they use drugs.”
― Carl Hart, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear

“The key is to keep the focus on people's actions, on their behaviors, rather than speculate about their motives. Trying to determine what's in a person's head or heart is a pointless distraction. It's impossible to know for certain the heart's inner secrets.”
― Carl Hart, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear

“Racism is the belief that social and cultural differences between groups are inherited and immutable, making some groups inalterably superior to others.”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“Albert Einstein’s words are fitting: “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”
― Carl Hart, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear

“you have probably heard about studies in which rats or even primates continually pressed levers to get cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine until they died, choosing drugs rather than food and water. But what you probably didn’t know is that these animals were kept in isolated, unnatural environments for most of their lives, where they typically became stressed without social contact and had little else to do.”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“Abandon the urge to simplify everything . . . appreciate the fact that life is complex. —M. SCOTT PECK”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“I'd always known that shit was fucked-up, of course. But I hadn't had clear, precise language to describe it or to understand how best to fight back.”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“Data now confirms that believing in the importance of practice, rather”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“Indeed, a great deal of pathological drug use is driven by unmet social needs, by being alienated and having difficulty connecting with others.”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“Instead, the adults around us saw school as a quest for a certificate, a stamp of approval you could show around later in life. Rather than valuing the process of education itself and the essential critical thinking skills that can be gained from it, they saw school as a means to an end.”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“As with previous “drug crises,” the opioid problem is not really about opioids. It’s mainly about cultural, social, and environmental factors such as racism, draconian drug laws, and diverting attention away from the real causes of crime and suffering. As you’ll discover throughout this book, there’s nothing terribly unique about the pharmacology of opioids that makes these drugs particularly dangerous or addictive. People have safely consumed them for centuries. And, trust me, people will continue to do so, long after the media’s faddish focus has faded, because these chemicals work. Fatal overdose is a real risk, but the odds of this occurring have been overstated. It is certainly possible to die after taking too much of a single opioid drug, but such deaths account for only about a quarter of the thousands of opioid-related deaths. Contaminated opioid drugs and opioids combined with another downer (e.g., alcohol or a nerve-pain medication) cause many of these deaths.”
― Carl Hart, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear

“People often consider social relationships only as negative forces in drug use. However, what they fail to understand is the complexity of group behavior. Human beings have always devised means of determining who is “us” and who is “them,” and the consumption of specific foods or drugs is typically one way of doing so. Teens are especially sensitive to these cues of belongingness, and so if drug use is the price of group membership, it’s one that many are willing to pay. Some groups, however, mark their boundaries by avoiding certain types of drug use—for example, athletes rejecting smoking, 1960s hippies rejecting hard liquor in favor of marijuana and LSD, and blacks avoiding methamphetamine because it is seen as a white drug. From the level of the clique to the level of the national culture, behavior related to drugs isn’t only about getting high; it’s often used to delineate group membership and social standing. The social aspects of drug use also change with age. For example, having children and getting married are both associated with reductions in drug use; one of many studies with similar findings in this literature found that people who are married are three times more likely to quit using cocaine and those who have children are more than twice as likely to stop.1 Similar data shows that people with close family and romantic relationships tend to have better outcomes in treatment2—and students’ feelings of social warmth and connectedness to school and parents are linked with reductions in drug problems.”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“essence, the war on drugs is not a war on drugs; it’s a war on us.”
― Carl L. Hart, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear

“if you have no experience with a particular reinforcer, it”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“Chance favors only the prepared mind. —LOUIS PASTEUR”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“My time at Parklife got me thinking about drug users who do not have access to such drug-related services and education. The amount of money required to attend a festival, especially when entrance ticket, travel, and food costs are included, is prohibitive for most. Consequently, it is not surprising that the highest drug-related mortality rates in the United States are found in regions, including Appalachia and Oklahoma, with lower rates of university completion and greater economic distress.12 Attention-grabbing headlines claiming that opioids (or any other drug) are killing people are wrong. Ignorance and poverty are killing people, just as they have for centuries.”
― Carl Hart, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear

“It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict. It is the need to escape from a harsh reality. —SHIRLEY CHISHOLM”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“GIVEN SOCIETY’S RETURN on the twentyfold increase in our drug-control budget, we could reasonably conclude that the war on drugs has been a complete failure.”
― Carl L. Hart, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear

“It is certainly possible to die from an overdose of an opioid alone, but such overdoses account for a minority of the thousands of opioid-related deaths. Most are caused when people combine an opioid with alcohol, an anticonvulsant, an antihistamine, a benzodiazepine, or another sedative. People are not dying because of opioids; they are dying because of ignorance.”
― Carl Hart, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear

“... mais de 75% dos usuários de drogas - façam eles uso de álcool, remédios ou drogas ilegais - não enfrentam esse problema [do vício]. Na verdade, as pesquisas demonstram reiteradamente que essas questões afetam apenas entre 10 e 25% daqueles que experimentam até as drogas mais estigmatizadas, como heroína e crack.”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

“But it wasn’t until I joined the air force and began taking college courses that I fully recognized the power of language.”
― Carl Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society