Carl Hart War On Drugs Summary

Carl Hart, a doctor in psychology and psychiatry, wrote an autobiography on his experience and knowledge with drugs. He not only talks about the effects of drugs in a community but challenges the ideas and stereotypes of cocaine and heroin. His time in research with other professionals in neurology and psychology makes him a reliable resource. The author himself uses his knowledge and other findings to determine what leads to drug use. Hart also goes into the importance in what kind of environment you’re studying addicts from. The psychologist makes points about how medias misinform the public on drug use during the drug war in the eighties. Using over exaggerated statements about first time drug use, creating this stigma against users and

The idea that one use of crack or cocaine could make you into an addict was advertised in commercials. Imaging only blacks using these drugs. Twenty years before the war on drugs marijuana was on the scene, also depicted as a deadly drug. Today, we don’t see marijuana as such a threatening product. Cocaine and crack is still viewed this way. Carl Hart has witnessed this same misinformed audience with lack of research for another substance. In 2005, Hart went to a discussion on Methamphetamine. There were officers that claimed it turned people into wild animals and causing a more severe addiction than crack. This discussion by government officials and not scientists proves his point on how hysteria starts. He “was baffled that others in the room didn't recognize how myths about drugs are recycled from one generation to another…angry that such hysteria unfairly vilified methamphetamine users and decreased their willingness to seek help if needed” (Hart 291). This type of hysteria that resembles the one in the 1980’s can only predict more severe laws and punishments against drug users. The office of national drug control policy mission is to rely on science to help “eliminate sentencing differences because there is no scientific justification for the differential treatment of crack and powder cocaine under law”

He also knew he wanted to stray in control, so he wasn’t affected by peer pressure as much. Unfortunately, he did act irrationally towards his girlfriend one time and her aunt. He explains that, “psychoactive drug effects are not determined by pharmacology alone. It is an interaction between biology and environment that determines drug effects on human behavior” (208). His day watching that Oprah episode about gold diggers affected his perception of his relationship with Melissa as he was high on marijuana. Hart’s finding can be supported through the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Their website states:

As with any other disease, vulnerability to addiction differs from person to person, and no single factor determines whether a person will become addicted to drugs. In general, the more risk factors a person has, the greater the chance that taking drugs will lead to abuse and addiction. Protective factors, on the other hand, reduce a person’s risk of developing addiction. Risk and protective factors may be either environmental (such as conditions at home, at school, and in the neighborhood) or biological (for instance, a person’s genes, their stage of development, and even their gender or