Full transcript: Dr Carl Hart on London Real
8:10 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is dr. Carl Hart who is an associate professor at Columbia University University in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology. You were also a research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and have published nearly 100 scientific articles in the area of neuropsychopharmacology.
8:41 You’ve written the book, High Price, A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery, that Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society. The filmmaker, Eugene Jurecki, says you, quote, combine the rigor of a scientist with the street smarts of a former hustler. The result is High Price, a fiercely uncompromising look at public health and an inspiring personal journey. Dr. Hart, welcome to London Real.
9:03 Carl Hart: Glad to be here, man, thank you for inviting me.
9:06 Brian Rose: Now, it’s a real pleasure. I know I think I first made contact with you like about a year ago after I saw you on Joe Rogan and I’m just glad it finally happened.
9:14 Carl Hart: Yeah, we both are Joe, big fans of Joe, so. Yeah, we both sat in that seat and spent some time with him.
9:20 Brian Rose: There’s so much to talk about and I’m just gonna dive in. There’s a point in your book where you said that quote, most of what we think we know about drugs, addiction and choice is wrong, and my work and my life shows why. For people that have never met you, how do you usually start off the discussion of your research, your book, your life? How do you do that? Where do you jump in?
9:43 Carl Hart: People who have never met me, I usually tell them that I’m a shoe salesman, because I don’t really wanna talk about drugs with people who have no sort of background or no real interest in this. So it’s a hard thing because people have these ideas, like I said, that they, what they think they know is actually wrong. So like you and I are talking now, if we think about like, what are those things that they think are wrong? For example, they think drugs like crack cocaine or heroin, they think most of the people who use these drugs, the illegal drugs, are addicted.
10:15 Whereas most are not. 80 to 90% of the people who use these drugs will never become addicted. They just go on and live their life in normal manners. And so that’s one of the things that I tried to make clear in the book, try to really get that across to folks. Other things I tried to get across to folks is that, you know, we know how to deal with drug-related problems, I mean, particularly as it relates to drug addiction.
10:39 We know a lot about dealing with drug addiction, even though the people who are addicted make up a small percentage. The problem is that we just haven’t had the courage to be honest with people about drugs. So rather than saying, for example, sometimes people who use heroin, they run the risk of overdosing from a drug, from that drug. Well, the risk of overdosing from heroin is relatively low if you’re only using heroin alone. But if you combine it with alcohol or another sedative like a benzodiazepine, that risk dramatically increases.
11:20 Seventy-five percent of the people who die from heroin-related death do so because they combine it with another sedative. These kinds of things make people uncomfortable because you’re telling people now, if you’re going to use heroin, just don’t combine it with another sedative so that you are accepting the fact that people will use heroin. rational. But sometimes people will say, you’re condoning drug use. No, I’m understanding human behavior. Humans behave like this. Humans will do this.
11:53 They’ve always used heroin. They’ve always used opiates. Why do I think that they’re going to stop? My job is to keep them safe and to keep our society safe.
12:03 Brian Rose: Right. You said that people will always use drugs and they have always used I think at one point you even said a drug free America is impossible and maybe even not even wanted.
12:15 Carl Hart: Well, I certainly don’t want to live in a drug free world. I mean, that’s ridiculous. I mean, if we start to think about, let’s just start to talk about the government sort of, particularly the US government sort of sanctioning of drug use. Think about wars. Think about our pilots, our aviators, people who work extended periods of time.
12:36 They’re on drugs. They’re on amphetamines. drugs it’s like methamphetamine there are these drugs and you know what we want them on these drugs we want them on these drugs so they don’t fall asleep when they’re working these extended periods when people go to various shows music rock concerts or concerts many of the performers are probably taking stimulants because they have to perform in another city because they have to perform the next night anybody go to American baseball games I don’t know why you would, but you might if you go to baseball games. The drug in baseball is amphetamine. I mean, they play 162 games a year, sometimes double-headers two games a day. Of course they’re taking amphetamines. It makes sense. We think about pain. If I’m in pain, I want an opiate, a heroin-like drug. I don’t want to see the medicine. I don’t want ibuprofen, particularly if it’s a difficult or really tough pain or a pain that’s really severe and so the notion that we should live in a drug-free world or have a drug-free world that’s not even really worth discussing that’s not even really that’s just so low level I mean I it’s hard for me to get excited about a conversation like that because it’s it’s not reality right
13:54 Brian Rose: why are we tended as humans to go for this like binary discussion like you said it’s either if you’re talking about about drugs, and you’re not saying they are the devil, then by definition you’re advocating them.
14:08 Why do we get so ultra-sensitive about something, whereas we don’t get that sensitive about, say, other risky behavior, like driving cars fast, or this or that, what is it in us that makes us so scared about drugs?
14:22 Carl Hart: Well, it’s certain drugs now. Right. And so we want to be clear, because we certainly don’t get queasy about conversations related to alcohol, which could, in some cases, be one of the more dangerous drugs that we have available. Or even marijuana now, we don’t get queasy about that.
14:40 But we certainly get uncomfortable about heroin or crack cocaine. And we do, in part, because the users of those drugs, we tend to look at as being other. People other than us and people who are undesirable people. And those undesirable people are the real reason that we are responding the way that we respond. And the folks that we think are the primary drug users oftentimes are not even the primary drug users because opiate use, crack cocaine use, all of those drugs are used by people who look just like the majority of the folks in a society.
15:21 Brian Rose: Okay, so it’s a media bias that happened there. Did it happen kind of when the drugs were originally introduced and we saw them in a film or we saw here, and you’re talking about heroin withdrawals. I think I remember seeing a Hawaii Five-O episode when I was a kid, and there was some dude in a jail cell having heroin withdrawals, and as soon as that was, but that’s the only time I’ve ever seen anything like that, and yet that is stuck in my head. You’re laughing.
15:48 Carl Hart: No, I’m laughing at a Hawaii Five-O. Yeah, I know. Book him down, all right? I’m just dating myself.
15:52 Brian Rose: Yeah, great show.
15:53 Book him down. This is the original Hawaii Five-O, by the way. There’s a new one there.
15:57 Carl Hart: Yeah, no, I know the original. I’ll hear you.
15:59 So I think it’s more than the media bias. I think that even in science and medicine, those sort of endeavors, those professional activities, we have worked to perpetuate that bias as well, that misinterpretation, because in part, the folks who come to treatment, those people who have a real serious heroin problem, for example, they need your help, And they are probably really down on their luck, and they are not doing well. They don’t see the vast majority of the heroin user.
16:35 And so they generalize from that narrow sort of slice, that narrow picture that they have. So they also play a role, and they play a role in educating our population. And the media just kind of reinforces that view. And when you have all of these forces working together, that’s why you remember Hawaii 5-0. You know, because if you were going to your physician and your physician or people you respected in medicine were saying, no, Brian, that’s not true, I mean, for example, I prescribed you Percocet for your toothache or for some shoulder pain that you have, it’s the same or essentially the same drug as heroin.
17:14 And so what you saw in a Y-5O is just, that’s more exaggerated. Now when, and that’s the reality, but your physician was not saying that sort of thing.
17:22 Brian Rose: There’s a line in the movie Trainspotting, and I’m sure you’ve seen the movie Trainspotting, where I think the main character’s coming off heroin, and he goes into his mom’s pharmacy cabinet and grabs some of her pills, and he says, I’m going to take these from my mom, who in her own societal accepted way is also a drug addict, and I just hadn’t ever seen it put that way.
17:43 But most people don’t understand that, like you said, Vicodins and Percocets are opiates just like heroin, correct?
17:50 Carl Hart: That’s right. And the thing about those drugs that, well, there are a number of things about those drugs. So on the one hand, we get heroin, and most people get heroin from the streets, particularly in the U.S. and U.K. and these places, you get heroin off of the street.
18:07 And heroin is often stepped on or adulterated, cut with other things. And so the impurities become more dangerous than the actual drug itself, more dangerous than heroin. And so you do need to worry about those impurities, but when you think about the pill cabinet, going to get your mom Percocet or Vicodin, you at least know that there are no impurities besides Acetometafin. If we’re talking about Percocet or Vicodin, it contains Acetometafin, a lot more Acetometafin than opioids, than the opioid.
18:41 The opioid is only like five to 10 milligrams where Acetometafin could be anywhere from 325 milligrams to 500 milligrams. Acetaminophen, of course, is the number one reason for liver toxicity in the world. And we don’t have that discussion. So when we think about people getting in trouble with the prescription drugs, they’re getting in trouble in large part because of acetaminophen. But that discussion is not being had.
19:10 Brian Rose: Why do you have acetaminophen in with the opioid?
19:15 Carl Hart: Well, I think we have been in with the opioid because it’s an abuse deterrent and such that trying to discourage people from taking large amounts of the opioid. I see the medicine, if you take large amounts of that, you’re going to really shoot your liver, do some damage to your liver. It’s like I think if you want people to drive their cars below 70 miles per hour, right? So if people exceed that, you have their tires blow out.
19:54 That’s kind of how I look at having to see the medicine in with the opioid, like Vicodin a Percocet. It’s not a very, it doesn’t seem very smart to me.
20:02 Brian Rose: Right. There’s a part in your book that, well it’s the very beginning of your book, and it really grabbed me, and I think it was like in the early 90s, possibly when you were running some clinical trials, I believe down in Florida at the time, with crack cocaine. Was that somewhere else?
20:18 Carl Hart: All of them were in New York.
20:20 Brian Rose: In New York. Yeah. Oh, in San Francisco. In New York, okay.
20:24 Carl Hart: New Haven and New York.
20:25 Brian Rose: And this guy is taking a hit of crack from the pipe, and afterwards, I believe part of your trial you were giving them an option of another hit or $5 and he took the money and This started making you a question your own your own You know baggage or ideas about drugs and like I said, everyone has these ideas, especially the crack I don’t know if it was more than anything because the 80s I mean I knew that time yeah when it was just like, you know, it was terror It was these psychopathic people and so is that when you first started going down this path? yeah well what did you learn on that day too I’m probably paraphrasing that’s no brain
21:04 Carl Hart: I mean I think you you hit on the head I was you described this experiment where we were giving people alternatives and alternatives with its crack or the five dollars that’s an alternative and you’re right and so in that study we showed that they took crack about half at a time and five dollars about the other half at a time that was one of the sort of things that got me to start questioning but it’s not like it was one thing because you know my sort of thinking about drugs and like drugs like crack cocaine was just like you I mean it was so well-established and so robust is thinking that crack what’s the worst drug over them all
21:42 Brian Rose: I believe that too yeah and so New Jack City Chris Rock New Jack City man having with yeah it was a crack withdrawal that That’s it.
21:50 Right. Those even exist. I don’t know.
21:52 Carl Hart: No, no. That was a great question, man.
21:55 I’m glad you asked it. Because that’s exactly right. We certainly look for that, too. Crack withdrawal. And we certainly didn’t find it.
22:00 Not like what you saw in New Jack City. And even today, people were saying, that was my neighborhood. It’s like, no, it wasn’t. You know, that’s fiction. And yeah, you might have seen poverty and crime, a number of things in your neighborhood, But crack was just one of the things in the mix and those things was in your neighborhood before crack ever hit.
22:23 But crack was a convenient sort of scapegoat. But yeah, I didn’t see this sort of crack withdrawal that Chris Rock portrayed. I think people got it twisted. It was like, well, it’s withdrawal, so it looks like heroin withdrawal. So it doesn’t matter, you know, it’s a drug.
22:42 But anyway, so when we think about when I started to question, I started to question that was one of the things, but all along my education I was questioning and trying to see what was consistent, what was inconsistent. So it’s a light, it’s a 25 year process, you know, and recall now I just wrote the book in 2013 published it that study was done in 99 or so and I was questioning then but it took me a lot more evidence to be so forceful and to be so confident that something’s really wrong here that I can say it publicly because it’s a it’s a frightening thing to come out in public and say hey you know what crack isn’t as bad as we thought it was you know.
23:28 Brian Rose: I had never heard anyone say that until I heard John Rokin and but yet you know the way you spoke I was like I got to listen to this guy and when you started bringing up this scientific evidence you know I’m a I’m a you know technically trained scientist engineer like everything started making sense with what you were saying but in the beginning it must have been very hard for you to come to the conclusion the conclusion that I got to go all in on this.
23:59 Carl Hart: No you know it’s frightening and it It was difficult, and it still remains difficult, as you know.
24:06 You’re saying something that everybody else’s anecdotal experience seems to be inconsistent and scientists, there are scientists who will disagree with this position. But the thing that I just ask people to think about is this. I have personally, my own studies personally, given thousands of doses of crack cocaine. Now, with funds from the US government, from US citizens, taxes that they pay. Do you think that we would be allowed to give thousands of doses of crack cocaine if it was as dangerous as we have made it out to be?
24:52 Not no, but hell no. So that’s evidence right there. I mean that’s, I mean I didn’t even start talking about the papers. I mean we can get into the scientific papers that we published. I mean we published dozens of papers on crack cocaine to show, I mean of course we were studying crack cocaine because the original reason is that we wanted to try and develop treatments to help people who were addicted And along the way, in science, you make some discoveries.
25:26 And one of the discoveries that we made was, oops, we said that this drug was a hundred times more dangerous than powder cocaine. Not true. Inconsistent with the scientific evidence. When you compare crack cocaine to powder cocaine, produce identical effects. Same effects.
25:47 Brian Rose: Some people say, well, crack cocaine is more intense intense and the effects are more rapid and so therefore that justifies this sort of differential treatment under the law. And it doesn’t in your mind.
26:00 Carl Hart: Well I’m going to tell you because it’s certainly when you compare crack cocaine, smoking crack cocaine to snorting, powder cocaine, the effects of crack cocaine are more intense because they hit more quickly. But when you dissolve this powder cocaine in water and inject it intravenously, identical effects at smoking the drug.
26:20 So what we had was basically a difference of relative administration, not drug. They are the same drug. It would be like somebody telling you that we’re going to punish people who smoke marijuana more harshly than those people who eat marijuana in their brownies. Doesn’t make any sense. They’re the same drug.
26:41 Same is true with crack and powder cocaine. But we’ve learned this through the studies that we do.
26:47 Brian Rose: Kale Kane’s been injected for, you know, whatever a long time.
26:50 Carl Hart: Absolutely.
26:51 Brian Rose: Right. And so then why why then why crack in the 80s?
26:54 Why does it become is it simply a scapegoat? Is it simply something that politicians grab on to is it now? Is it all about power at the end of the day?
27:06 Carl Hart: I Think you know, there were a number of things that’s going on here. So when we think about We think about power in general and we think about about tools that we use to marginalize people, further marginalize people.
27:23 Drugs become excellent tools in this regard because we are ready, well, let me take a step back. You can’t do that with a drug like marijuana any longer. So you can’t say, you can’t vilify the marijuana users like we once could in 1935, for example. We could vilify marijuana users. we can say that these people start out with marijuana today but they’re on heroin tomorrow and they’re killing their mom at the smoking marijuana.
27:52 We could say that and people believe that because there were so few marijuana smokers at the time. There were so few people who knew about this drug. Couldn’t do it. So you could vilify marijuana. The same is true now for crack cocaine.
28:09 There are relatively few numbers of people who have smoked crack cocaine, compared to something like snorting cocaine. So you can make up these incredible stories by crack cocaine, about crack cocaine, and be believed, because people don’t have experience with it. Sure, it’s new, I don’t know. You see this with all these new drugs, so-called new drugs, they’re not really new, they’re just some new form of the drug. But whenever they hit the market, you have these incredible stories and you are believed, because most people don’t know anything about it.
28:42 And it seems like it’s real, it comes from this official source, so I believe it. Now, when you have that sort of thing, now politicians and other parents, a number of people, they don’t even have to educate about that drug. All they have to do now, politicians pass a law. Give one group some money, law enforcement or another group some money, treatment providers, Give them money, everybody’s happy. Except the people who are getting caught up with possessing that drug.
29:15 But we don’t really care about them anyway because they really haven’t had a voice in this society anyway. And so it functions, this sort of vilification functions to serve people, numbers of powerful people in our society or people who are plugged in. You don’t even have to be powerful. You just have to be a participant in this society.
29:37 Brian Rose: Right, and so the parents are almost being a bit lazy about parenting.
29:42 They grab onto the just say no to drugs, don’t do this, just blanket qualification.
29:48 Carl Hart: Yeah, parents are overwhelmed, as you know. Parents are overwhelmed, and so as a result, that’s one last thing I have to think about. I heard it, this bad, you don’t do it. There’s no parenting going on there, but that happens in a lot of domains, right?
30:06 And that’s part of the problem, and me as an educator, I want people to actually think and have their kids understand and evaluate the evidence and the information. Because if they’re forced to evaluate the information in this domain, it increases the likelihood that they will do a similar sort of thing in another domain. And we as a society benefits when they get practice at evaluating information and making decisions based on the evidence. But I think that might be a bit too idealistic.
30:41 I think just in general, but I love being idealistic. I mean, when I stopped being idealistic, well fuck. I mean, I don’t wanna be here anymore if I’m not idealistic.
30:52 Brian Rose: Right, what was the name of your Ted Med talk? You said, let’s quit abusing drug users.
30:58 Yeah.
30:58 Brian Rose: And in that you mentioned three former presidents, you know, that had openly admitted to doing drugs. And it’s funny because you dropped that in your TED Talk and then you said those are our last three presidents and everyone laughed. And it’s just fascinating that on one side we can vilify the drug user and yet when we all look around it and we look in the mirror, it’s us, it’s all of us. And I always joke, I live here now, I don’t live in America anymore and I always joke that they sent all the Puritans to America, okay?
31:28 Because over here we’re next to the continent and next to France and I know you spent time over here in the Air Force. And so you kind of feel like the continental approach is a little bit more like, okay, we’re humans and yeah, we’re a little messed up and sometimes we do some bad stuff and brothels are legal in Germany, but in America, it’s almost like, no, no, no, no, we are Puritan and this is bad and we are good and the religious right and I’m giving you all sorts of ammo here. And so why, I guess two questions.
31:55 Why do we do that as a society where we’re looking at ourselves so many times and yet we try to put ourselves in a place we don’t do that stuff or you know great people don’t do that you know it’s more than just a drug issue you know
32:10 Carl Hart: it’s just you making me laugh because you know you you’re talking about this place as if it’s kind of enlightened I mean when it comes to drugs this is one of the most backwards places
32:22 Brian Rose: you want to bring the UK yeah yeah I heard you say that you speak in Liverpool and a few other times and that surprises me actually
32:30 Carl Hart: oh my god no even sex I mean you’re talking about the brothels in Germany. Last night, I was watching a documentary on Channel 4 on this legalized prostitution in Germany. It was some of the most moralistic and judgmental things that you would ever wanna see, but they presented it as if it was objective and they were, these are some judgmental folks.
32:53 I mean, they’re here.
32:55 Brian Rose: Right, more so than the US.
32:57 Carl Hart: I don’t know. Yeah, all right, let’s put it this way. The prime minister, Cameron, right?
33:05 Brian Rose: That’s his name?
33:06 Carl Hart: Yeah. Everybody knows you smoke marijuana. It’s in the book, and what he said, that he won’t deny it. What?
33:14 What? I mean, this is amazing to me. 2015, you can’t just admit that you smoked marijuana when you have US presidents who have admitted. I mean, Barack Obama not only has admitted smoking marijuana but also using cocaine. And he’s probably the smartest president that we’ve had in decades.
33:36 I mean, that’s not to say that I support his drug policies or anything like that. All I’m saying is that the fact that he used marijuana or used cocaine says nothing about his intellect and his ability to govern. And so they can’t even admit that here. I mean, at the prime minister, I think that says something.
33:57 Brian Rose: Yeah, maybe it’s that everyone thinks that they are more enlightened than everyone else on a personal level and a country level.
34:05 Carl Hart: And I am not arguing that we are enlightened in the United States, because that’s not what I mean. But what I am arguing is that I would rather have drug conversations in the US than in the UK. I think that they are more rigid in terms of their views on drugs. they think they’re in life.
34:23 Brian Rose: See, I always end this impression, and maybe it’s because of the guests we’ve had on here.
34:29 We’ve had, you know, Professor David Nutt and Dave Talks does a lot of the psilocybin research and things like that, and I always think that, you know, we’re near Portugal, and marijuana doesn’t seem to be as criminalized over here, here, again, I’m qualifying my government, but I always feel like we’re a little more open-minded over here, and we, you know, we don’t have a lot of the baggage that U.S. does when it comes to hemp and marijuana and all those kind of things, but I guess I’m wrong.
34:53 Carl Hart: Yeah, yeah, you know, I am, Yeah, I’m reluctant to even say that.
34:56 I would rather deal with US officials on drugs than the UK because it’s almost like a compliment to US officials, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to give them a compliment because I am not happy about how we deal with drugs in the US, but I certainly am more happy than I am with how they’re doing it here.
35:16 Brian Rose: I watched a video where you were at Liverpool giving a speech, I believe, and you played an old video of Ronald Nancy Reagan from, I believe, 86 maybe.
35:25 And I remember that campaign, I remember the Sedona drugs, I remember, I watched the video and Ronald Reagan’s talking about this new form of cocaine and this thing and it’s all going to be an epidemic and all that stuff and that was back when there weren’t a lot of other sources of media. We forget how powerful television used to be. So you didn’t have any counter-argument anywhere and as a goddamn President of the United States and his wife. So how much are we still living in that message that was sent 30 years ago now?
35:56 Carl Hart: Unfortunately I think we, many of us, but you and I were just joking about New Jack City because you still have, like you said, we have all these other medias but places like VH1, New Jack City has apparently found a home there every other weekend, it’s on. And so it’s also educating a new generation of the effects of crack cocaine. So those things are still out there. We’re still in the 1980s when it comes to drugs like crack cocaine. But fortunately, we have some scientists, some people who are speaking out.
36:31 Like you mentioned David Nutt, a big fan, I am, of David Nutt’s work. There are other people who have been speaking out, scientists, a guy in Vancouver, Canada, Bruce Alexander, a number of people who have done a lot of scientific work and who are calling into question what we are teaching and saying about drugs, whereas in the 80s there were fewer people because we simply didn’t know. But now the evidence is overwhelming.
37:03 Brian Rose: What I like about you is that you don’t point the finger at the government or the prison union or this and that.
37:11 You say public enemy and the producers of New Jack City and even scientific community, everyone is responsible and parents in their own way of perpetuating an untruth because of lack of education.
37:24 Carl Hart: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Because like law enforcement, that’s an easy sort of target and government is an easy target. The government will do precisely what the voters want them to do. That’s a fact.
37:37 I mean, because they worry about, that’s why I don’t really talk to governmental officials. They are a waste of time for me. But I talk to voters. I rather talk to the population because they’re the ones that really are in control of this. If the voters didn’t want these laws to be the way they are, they wouldn’t be that way.
37:59 It’s the voters. that’s who we have to educate, not the political officials. So I don’t blame them. I don’t blame them entirely. I just don’t think they’re not leaders, and that’s unfortunate.
38:13 Brian Rose: And what about law enforcement or prison unions or there’s a whole prison industrial complex as well. What is your read on that?
38:22 Carl Hart: A number of people have spoken on this. Michelle Alexander, I think her book is the best known new Jim Crow and she kind of points out how law enforcement has benefited from the sort of drug laws. Other people have talked about how in the United States you might know we got 2.3 million people in jail or so, more than any other country that ever has inhabited Earth.
38:49 Brian Rose: You said 5% of the population in America, 25% of the prison population.
38:54 Carl Hart: Absolutely. We have all of these people in prison, and now we have the private prison industry and their commodity that they deal in are prisoners, and so they are in support of these tough laws. In that way, their pockets get fat. I mean, that’s kind of simple.
39:12 We know that that happens, and I don’t know what more can we say about it. It’s clear. We know it’s happening. The incentives are in place for it to happen. We need to change the incentives.
39:24 It’s kind of simple. If we change the incentives, this won’t happen. But we, as a people, our general population seems to be okay with it. That’s why it happens. It’s not that these people are just simply evil, I mean, they’re just doing what the people want them to do.
39:43 Brian Rose: And so you think the real message has to go to those people? You know, a lot of people throw their hands up and they’re like, oh, we’re not in control of the government. But, yeah, you don’t buy into that. Everyone can vote their way.
39:57 Carl Hart: No, I think people are apathetic because it doesn’t impact them.
40:01 And they have to look, they have to be shamed. I think it’s part of our responsibility, too, to shame those people and say, this is a human rights violation. These are the same people who may say that, hey, I protested against apartheid or I marched with Martin Luther King you know they say all of this sort of historical thing well you have those things happening right now where are you and so we it’s our responsibility to say call them out if we don’t call them out shame on us
40:31 Brian Rose: Talk to me about your background because your book is so good because you weave in your personal story although I think you don’t like talking too much about your personal story and I’m not gonna get into too many details but you know you grew up as young black man in the south we were talking about Miami Miami is not South Beach as we were saying earlier it’s a small sliver you know the rest of Miami you know you might as well be in Mississippi as far as I guess I understand that’s exactly right what was your life like growing up and and has that have you has that been an asset to you now in what you do
41:10 Carl Hart: yeah I think so man I think I think that’s a good way to put it I think it certainly has been asset right I mean obviously when I think about many of my friends you put it, I grew up in a hood, and I grew up in sort of rough circumstances, engaged in petty crimes, did all those sorts of things, participated in underground economy, did all
41:31 Of this sort of thing. And my friends did, and many of them didn’t manage to survive, as one might predict, just because of circumstances. But growing up as an outsider in the country They helped me to really watch and learn and shut my mouth, and that has helped me in science. That’s what science is really all about. You watch, carefully observe, and you go where the evidence tells you to go.
42:04 And so I think that’s really helped me, and it also has helped me, being an outsider has helped me to sympathize with those people who are less fortunate, or those people who don’t have a voice or don’t have the power. I mean, now in my life, I’m doing OK, I’m all right. I am a part of the power structure. I can be a part of that. But my background has helped me to understand the needs and the concerns of people who are not.
42:35 And so I have to look in the mirror every day, And I have to make sure that I’m doing everything I can to promote these ideals of sort of freedom, human rights, justice, equality, all of these kinds of things that I was taught as a kid and I didn’t see as a kid. And so I wanna make sure I do my part. I mean, because those ideals, man, they’re great. I mean, they’re outstanding, you can’t beat them. And I think I’m in a position to help to make sure that we bring those ideals to as many people as possible and to call out people who are in positions and not doing this.
43:20 Brian Rose: You said one time that it’s ultimately not the drugs themselves that are the problem. The problems are poverty, unemployment, selective enforcement, ignorance. Is it really not the drugs anymore? Again, I asked earlier, is it about power, or is that just a simplistic way of the way I’m looking at it?
43:43 Carl Hart: So it all depends how we define the problem.
43:46 So if we’re talking about the problem of drug addiction, and that’s kind of what I was talking about in that regard, or if we’re talking about the problem of drugs in terms of trafficking, if we’re talking about the problems of drugs, there can be a number of things. So we’re talking about addiction, yeah, we can say the problem is not drugs. I mean, the simple evidence there is that the vast majority of people who use the substance don’t have a problem.
44:14 So how can you say it’s the substance? So maybe we should start looking at the environment, the individual, all of these things, but we can’t say it’s the drum. That would be naive and not careful. Which is you know that wouldn’t be very smart now if we think about like drug trafficking, and we start thinking about what? What what is the problem? I?
44:37 Mean we think about drug trafficking No matter what in any human society you’re going to have people who engage in Deviant behavior that is behaviors That’s not condoned by the society and and when they when that behavior happens that society takes actions to discourage or stop that behavior. Gonna always have that sort of thing going on as long as you have humans. So when we think about drug trafficking from that perspective, as long as we set the equation such that there could be money to be made, there’s economic opportunity that would not otherwise exist for people, what you can expect to have drug trafficking. It’s rational. It’s just a logical sort of choice. So you think about, well, we’re worried about people being killed in trafficking.
45:33 First of all, the drug dealers themselves, the traffickers, they don’t want people killed because they want to make their money. And so people get killed because of, for a variety of reasons, but in part because of this over sort of a policing of that sort of activity and then it increases the potential to profits and that sort of thing. So people, we need to step back and say, all right, how do we have these activities and minimize the harms to people not engaged in the endeavor?
46:13 That means that you won’t have all of this undercover activity, shootouts, and all the rest of these sorts of things. You might actually decrease the unintended harms that is caused by that sort of activity. But you have to step back and stop saying that these guys, the drug dealers, are irrational or bad people. And when you start doing that sort of thing, that’s not very smart. They’re making rational choices based on the decisions before them.
46:42 That’s just, so that’s one way. So if that’s power, if that’s what you’re calling power at, okay, I don’t know exactly what you mean when you say power.
46:53 Brian Rose: I guess I was thinking about certain groups keeping other groups in certain socioeconomic places or consequences happening because of drug laws that seem to always get people to do what they want to do and it might be masked as you know this or that or something being illegal or something being that I guess that I think about power that’s kind of the sense I think
47:19 Carl Hart: you know like like the drug laws certainly have increased disparities in a society you have certain number you for example in the United States black men are much more likely to be arrested for for drugs, drug-related violations, even though they don’t use drugs at rates that are higher than white men, for example.
47:42 So that certainly happens, so you keep people, people continue to be marginalized. But that’s sort of selective law enforcement, and we tolerate that sort of thing because decisions that are made at the law enforcement level, I mean we, so I think that’s a simple fix too. we just make sure that we we have to make sure that we’re not having this selective law enforcement and and and it’s not the laws themselves so the people who pass the laws I don’t think said let’s go out to this group or these laws are going to have this selective negative in effect on this group I don’t think that I mean because when you look at the crafting of the law for example one law the crack cocaine powder cocaine law the one that punished crack cocaine violations a hundred times more harshly than powder, 16 of the 20 congressional black caucus members voted for that. But that law disproportionately impacts black folks.
48:44 But they weren’t sitting around when they passed that law along with their white colleagues to say, yeah, let’s go after these people. I don’t think they were, that was their intention, You know, that certainly was not their voice intention. But it’s had that impact, in part because of selective law enforcement. Because at the law enforcement level, police chiefs and people in charge made decisions to go into certain neighborhoods. That those were choices, and that’s a fact.
49:21 Brian Rose: Your solution is decriminalization, not legalization. I was wondering if you could tell me what you’re thinking behind that.
49:28 Carl Hart: Yeah. The solution, that’s the solution from high price in the book. Now, I argue that we should decriminalize, decriminalization would be treating drugs just like a traffic violation.
49:38 Might get a warning or you might have to pay a fine, but you’re not, you don’t go to jail. Portugal does that, Portugal does that, the Czech Republic does that, and they have been, Czech Republic did it before Portugal. And they’ve done it for more. Portugal 2001 is the year they did it in Czech Republic in the late 90s and they they’re happy with that policy. They don’t have loads of people in jail for drugs like we do in the United States. Now that’s what I argued in high price and I argued that because we arrest 1.5 million people in the United States for drug possessions every year. 80% of that 1.5 I’m sorry for drug possession. And so I thought this would be a way to immediately impact the number of people that were arrested for drugs. I no longer feel that way. I am, I now argue for legal drug regulation. I, and I’ll tell you why. One of my major concerns about drugs are the potential dangers. The drugs themselves, however, are less dangerous than the adulterants in drugs. Decriminalization does not touch that. You still have this illegal illicit market that’s not regulated and so legalization would at least make sure that the product is pure and people we can control the dosing and that sort of thing.
51:09 Brian Rose: But you used to say legalization and the society wasn’t ready for it.
51:14 Carl Hart: Ah, man. You know how you say things and you’d be like, damn, did I say that stupid shit?
51:18 Brian Rose: But I thought it was an interesting point when you said it. I was like, you know, maybe they aren’t. Maybe we aren’t.
51:24 Maybe it’s too big of a step to make.
51:26 Carl Hart: No, I mean, that’s a good point you raise in terms of, I, it’s not my job to say what the society is ready for. And that’s why when you said, you used to say, and I was like, damn, that’s some stupid shit. I didn’t mean to say that, but I did. If I said it, I said it, that’s not, no, it’s not my job to say what the society is ready for.
51:48 My job as a scientist and an educator is to give the best available information and advocate according to that position and not to tell, I can’t tell people what they’re ready for. I can only show them the information and then I try and make my case. That’s it. So now I’m worried more about the adulterants in drugs and I think it’s our responsibility. You might remember back during prohibition when we were making bootleg alcohol and it had adulterants and people were getting sick and ill from this sort of thing.
52:25 We don’t even know what adulterants in alcohol look like today and so we can do the same thing for cocaine, the same thing for these other drugs. Of course, we can talk about what the legal regulation looks like to make sure that enhance safety and decrease the negative effects.
52:43 Brian Rose: So we’ve had that conversation in the media here. I guess that’s why I think that we’re a little more educated in the UK, because there were some MDMA deaths recently, and I think Professor Nutt chimed in, as he should, by saying, if there were standards here, You wouldn’t have these impurities and you wouldn’t know the dose issues and that kind of thing.
53:06 And I had a former guest in here named Jamie Bartlett who wrote a book called Inside the Digital Underworld, but he went into the Silk Road and he found that with an Amazon type peer reviewed marketplace that the Silk Road had high rates of customer service, high rates of exactly what they were selling because it was completely peer reviewed and it was like a fascinating study as what you could get there as opposed to on the corner from someone you never met. It’s hard for me that there could be billion-dollar industries that exist like that, you know, whether it’s just, like you said, untested, unregulated, you know, with potentially dangerous substances. Yeah.
53:41 Um, so when you say you all are having the conversations in this country about… I saw it being discussed, like, in the papers as far as whether, you know, this MDMA death would have been prohibited if it was legalized and, you know, because then the dose would be known and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I don’t know if that conversation happens in America. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t live there anymore.
54:00 Carl Hart: It does, okay. Like it’s been happening here, been happening here like every other year, you all have that same conversation. That isn’t going anywhere. That’s not going anywhere. I mean it’s the same conversation, a friend of mine, her daughter died of MDMA here in the UK.
54:16 She wrote a book and she’s been out here talking about this issue, about regulating the market. If the market was regulated, maybe her daughter would still be here today. I’m sure that’s what I’m talking about. Marie Cockburn is her name.
54:34 Brian Rose: What does this whole space look like in 20 years, when we’re both gray haired old men 30 years?
54:41 What do you think it looks like? What do you want it to look like? What else do you think it looks like?
54:48 Carl Hart: Well I think, I mean I’m gray haired now, so I have no idea what it’s going to look like. You know I try and stay away from predicting that sort of thing because I would have never guessed that we would have legalized marijuana in the United States even though we saw this sort of movement I would have never guessed it I mean I think it’s rational I think it’s it’s what should be done and I think other states might follow or they may not I’m not sure you know when we think about the United States we have like 23 states that have legalized marijuana from medicine and DC of course all of these things happening but then if you look and you see where these things are happening they certainly are not happening in the American South none of this sort of progressive drug law sort of things are going on in the American South not happening again you have high numbers of minority populations in the South and drug laws have been excellent tools to control populations and people we just don’t like. And so when you’re asking me to predict what’s going to happen, I don’t know. You know, I thought we’d be a lot farther along in the United States in our discussions about race. I mean, I think many of us predicted that particularly when you elect a black president, but it seems like we’ve had fewer conversations about race or
56:23 Or, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say conversation, that’s some stupid shit. But that’s what people say conversations like, I don’t want conversations about it. I want real actions about it. And so you’ve seen Baltimore. You’ve seen Ferguson, Charleston, South Carolina.
56:43 You’ve seen all of these kinds of-
56:45 Brian Rose: I watch it from over here and it’s just hard to ignore.
56:48 Carl Hart: Right, and then you hear people say things like, well, we should put cameras on police. You think? I mean, that’s like, is this a conversation? I mean, do you have to have that conversation?
56:59 If you’re struggling about whether you should do that, you got a long way to go. So when you’re asking me to predict about the drug thing, I have no idea. All I can do is try to present the best evidence I can.
57:13 Brian Rose: Right, right. You said, I believe, that Colorado and Washington, when people start running the numbers, It’s very possible that people come out with the numbers and say, this is bad.
57:25 That there might be some groups that are just gonna say, look at this. Yeah. Yeah, that was a fascinating statement when you made it. Why did you say that?
57:36 Carl Hart: Well, because I sit on scientific boards.
57:39 And I sit, I’m a member of the National Institute on Drug Abuse Advisory Council, that’s NIDA, in the US. And I hear conversations. hear what some of these scientists say and they’re not focused on, they’re focused on what are the bad things that we can pull out of this and that scientists, we find what we look for. That’s part of what we do. You go in with bias or the perspective, it’s not difficult to confirm what you What you want what you were looking for even as a scientist, especially as a scientist because you have your livelihood It’s your ego. It’s your you have all the incentives in place for you to do that I mean now that this is not to say that the majority of scientists do this intentionally But it certainly happens. I mean
58:41 When you ask the question about like what do you tell people when you when you tell them what you do and that sort of I talk about drugs, the group that I would like to talk to least about drugs are scientists because they have all these biases about drugs because they have gone into studying drugs to solve a problem and so drugs are a problem and if you start out with that sort of narrow focus then you’re missing all of this that’s all over here and you’re only right here in this narrow sort of range and as I get older you’re saying when we get when we’re old and gray it’s like I’m there and now I feel like I’m there now so I have less time or and I have less interest in talking with people who like that I just don’t and it’s kind of nice to be able to say I’m not doing it
59:40 Brian Rose: Right. What happened like when I if you look show a scientist and say 50% took the crack and 50% took the $5 You know, yeah, how do you dispute that that how do you dispute that? Is it?
59:54 Do they find a way? I mean,
59:56 Carl Hart: I Don’t know if they dispute that no I think you might get distracted into talking about something else like brain effect or some other sort of thing But no, I mean these data are it wasn’t only us who found this other people have found similar findings With crack cocaine or cocaine and other drugs other drugs. They found similar things So it would be hard to dispute that that that’s not it. I think they’ll change the subject.
1:00:25 Brian Rose: Okay, you talk about cocaine heroin Cannabis, you don’t talk much about psychedelics and I was wondering if it any reason Why do you think those have their own issues and stereotypes?
1:00:37 I guess there’s less OD’s on them. So maybe, but that doesn’t mean that society isn’t missing a big beat by not understanding them better.
1:00:47 Carl Hart: Great question. Your point is that I talk about those drugs less and you’re absolutely right. And one of the reasons that I talk about those drugs less is because for 40 years or so, there had been like a moratorium on the study of those drugs.
1:01:04 After Timothy Leary and his antics and a number of other people and the concerns with psychedelics, the funding for those drugs, the federal funding for those drugs just dried up. So we were no longer studying those drugs. And then they were not deemed drugs of abuse. So therefore, the National Institute on Drug Abuse didn’t really fund studies to study those drugs. The National Institute on Drug Abuse, by the way, funds about 80% to 90% of the world’s research in this area.
1:01:40 And so that’s entire world. And if they’re not funding those studies on this class of drugs, they’re not really getting done. There are a few now private donors, but not much is known about them in terms of careful laboratory studies. And so-
1:01:56 Brian Rose: Some here, yeah. Some here in the last year or two.
1:01:59 Carl Hart: Yeah, yeah, I mean, we have some studies in the states, but not many. There are a few studies on psilocybin, that sort of thing, a few. But the point is that, frankly, I feel less confident in talking about the psychedelics from a scientific perspective, because there is just simply less scientific evidence. But the little evidence that has been accumulating shows that they function just like any other psychoactive drug. Increasing those, increasing effects, effects are predictable.
1:02:36 The thing that I was told about these drugs is that they produce these unpredictable effects. I just simply haven’t found that to be the case with any drug. And from what I’ve seen in the scientific literature with these drugs, the same sort of thing. And the night-
1:02:50 Brian Rose: You’ve been said to say that there’s no drug which usually takes one time and becomes addictive.
1:02:55 Carl Hart: Yeah, that’s true.
1:02:56 It’s a hard statement for most people to even say. I just hope that there will, it’s a statement that every scientist in this area would say because if they wouldn’t say that, then they should probably check their credentials at the door. By definition, addiction requires work. And so that means you have to go back and you just cannot meet criteria for addiction without this work, an addict has to put the work in to become an addict. That’s by definition, so this notion that one hit will make you an addict is so ridiculous.
1:03:34 I hope people clearly understand that now, but the nice thing about the psychedelics is that the class of people, the people who are using psychedelics, who are attracted to those drugs, are typically the folks in our society who are pillars of their community or who are more certainly engaged in what’s going on in the community. And so I’m hoping that those people will be more vocal because they are certainly respected in the community, more so than even the users of marijuana, but I shouldn’t say that, the perceived users of marijuana. But I’m hoping that the psychedelic users will become more vocal and say, hey, I use these drugs and I pay my taxes, I take care of my family, I have my responsibility, and I do so under these conditions, I use these drugs under these conditions and this is what it does for me, or why I do it.
1:04:44 Brian Rose: Yeah, they say we’re having a psychedelic revolution. I don’t know if that’s the word to use, but you know, more and more people are coming out talking about it, we’ve talked about it on the show, my own experiences with ayahuasca, with DMT. And so, you know, it’s something that’s in the conversation more. I agree the perceived value of those people is different than the perceived value of your crack user and your marijuana user and all that stuff or whatever it’s worth.
1:05:05 At the same time, you’re fighting this crazy government media bias from the LSD hanging over the 60s and 70s to all of the myths that were kind of, you know, came out of that in a different way than the Reagan era crack, you know, kind of mythology.
1:05:27 Carl Hart: yeah but again it’s a it’s a matter of people just being courageous you know it’s I have less sort of tolerance and patience for people who know that what is going on is bullshit and they don’t speak up what kind of adult or human are you if you don’t speak up. I don’t have much patience or tolerance for that sort of thing, in part because I have seen so much injustice for reasons that, you know, just there are, because the persons were in the out group.
1:06:06 And so, as you know, I really try to encourage people to come out of the closet about their drug use.
1:06:12 Brian Rose: Yeah, I had Rick Doblin in here, the founder of MAPS, he does a lot of work. had him here twice actually and at the very end of the show I said what’s the one thing people can do and he said you know Brian come out of this I could have a closet you know come out of the closet on what you’re doing and just tell people because you know that’s the biggest thing that’s holding people back you know yeah
1:06:36 Carl Hart: because they see you responsible guy all of these sorts of things it’s like their stereotypes are shattered right they are no longer they They will have to do some updating of their sort of view about this, or else they will have this cognitive dissonance that will cause them so much trouble.
1:06:53 Brian Rose: What’s your life like these days? What is your life like this? I’m curious, you travel around the world, I know you did your Ted Med talk last year, you talk about your book, what is the life of Carl Hart like? Maybe in conversations like this with cameras these days, or in a classroom, or in a hall given a lecture, or in an airplane, in a hotel.
1:07:27 Carl Hart: I am on the road every week, damn near every week, even when I’m teaching my class, I’m on the road, given these lectures, trying to educate the public and I’m trying to write, trying to work on these new books, thinking about constantly, did I say something wrong and re-evaluating what I think about drugs, what positions that I’ve taken, constantly re-evaluating, constantly thinking about whether I misled someone or gave inaccurate information, constantly thinking about how to be a better scientist, a better person, all of these kinds of things, constantly thinking about how I’m being judged, how I will be judged, and what have I done for other people? I mean, what have I done? What does my life mean, if anything, in terms of other people and educating people? Where I am a tenured professor at a nice university.
1:08:46 I have a good job, but if it was just for me, it really wouldn’t be worth anything or much. And so I’m trying to use my position to make sure that I make somebody else’s life a little easier. And when we think about drugs and we think about how we vilify drugs all around the world and the knowledge that I know, it would be criminal for me not to be traveling the world sharing. It would really be, what kind of man would I be, really? Yeah.
1:09:23 Brian Rose: It’s a lot of pressure.
1:09:25 Carl Hart: No, I don’t think so. I think it’s more pressure, it’s more pressure for me to be silent. You know, I think about, you know man, you think about people who have inspired you. They were on the road some way, music or whatever they were doing, spreading the message.
1:09:46 And were it not for them, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to make other people’s lives a little easier.
1:09:54 Brian Rose: You were on The Young Turks, and they introduced you as, I think, the first, or one of the first black professors that was tenured at Columbia. And I was looking at you, and I was, I wanted to ask you, does it bother you to be introduced like that?
1:10:12 Carl Hart: Yep.
1:10:12 Brian Rose: First science tenured professor, right?
1:10:15 Carl Hart: Yeah, man, it’s a little, it’s uncomfortable, right, because, you know, me, I think of myself and my record, you know, it doesn’t matter. I think of myself, I play basketball, you know, professionally here for a little bit. And at the highest levels, so I’m a very competitive person, very competitive. And so when people say the first black science, it’s like, I’m the best, regardless. So when they say that sort of thing, that makes me uncomfortable, that part does, because I work hard to be the best, no matter what.
1:10:58 But the fact that they say the first black tenured science professor, it means a lot of things to a lot of different people. So it’s okay, I understand, particularly in the United States, where we’re at in our history, I’m sure the same is true in this country, it’s an embarrassment to us. It should be an embarrassment to us at Columbia. But it’s not only Columbia, it’s at these other institutions too. They should be embarrassed. And so I understand why people say it. I mean they say it for a variety of reasons. And it makes me uncomfortable for my sort of reason.
1:11:41 But then there’ll be other people, some young kid out there who might be inspired by that. So it is what it is. So I just, I mean, people say a lot of things about me and that’s not the worst thing that they say about me. So I just deal with it.
1:11:59 Brian Rose: What’s your relationship like with media?
1:12:02 You do a lot of media. You don’t like a lot of media.
1:12:06 Carl Hart: This interview is not over yet, so you might not like me anymore, Don, I don’t know. Wow, Joe Rogan, you know, I love Joe, I mean I love talking to him, I mean I think people like Joe, it’s a pleasure to talk to him because you have a real conversation where he asks probing questions, but it’s done in a way to get information, not to show how smart he is. And that’s the problem with what I find with most media. They forget that they invited you as a guest and then they start believing, not all, but many start believing they’re hyped that they’re supposed to be experts on everything. And you just, no one can do that. I mean if you asked me to talk about many subjects that stray away from drugs it would be difficult for me to go on about it and so I think that most of my sort of interactions with the media has been in that regard where people bring you on and then they think they’re the experts in the area that they brought you on but it’s not unique to me it’s also other people have seen have similar experience or they bring you on just to endorse a position that they have and that’s also disturbing as opposed to like this we’re having a conversation let’s talk let’s but who has the time to listen and talk nobody does this anymore
1:13:48 Brian Rose: yeah it’s rare and so when you go in do you have to be prepared for those six minute or ten minute interviews I mean
1:13:57 Sounds like you have to be ready because you don’t know what’s gonna happen and you have to try to you know Do what you do and express your yeah?
1:14:07 Carl Hart: Yeah, you do definitely have to be ready and I used to get a lot more anxious before early on But that those days are done. You know one of the advantages of being older is like Fuck it. I’m here and you asked me something and then you if you have a got-you sort of question and just be prepared to have a gotcha response, so.
1:14:30 Brian Rose: Right, and it’s a force multiplier at the end of the day, so you have to use it as a tool for your message, right? I mean, it’s important.
1:14:40 Carl Hart: Sure, yeah, you know, you need it. I mean, the media has, my just sort of media coverage has helped me to get my message out. I mean, people would not know who I am, were not for various media outlets.
1:14:55 And so it’s one of these things, you have to do it, it’s just a matter of minimizing the harm.
1:15:02 Brian Rose: The harm. Can I ask you a couple of questions just about your personal habits? Sure. Kind of like success secrets, but I always wonder what goes on behind the guy I see on the TED stage and all these things.
1:15:17 So I was wondering, are there any crucial parts your daily routine that guarantee you kind of repeated success whether it’s you know waking up early or a meditation or exercise I don’t know if you still play ball or is there anything like that?
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1:15:51 Now back to the rest of the show.
1:15:53 Brian Rose: What do you tell your kids about drugs? I’ve got an 11-year-old, and I remember having a conversation when she was eight, and I was trying to explain what drugs were, and I’m telling you, let alone a 28-year-old, but try it in an eight-year-old, because she was firing back with the greatest things, you know, I was like, well, this is a drug, and she’s like, well, what about the wine that I saw you drink, and I’m like, well, and what about cigarettes, and then what about this, and what makes this illegal?
1:16:21 And I was like, I had to just shut up because I didn’t know exactly what to say.
1:16:27 Carl Hart: Sounds like your daughter is getting a great education. That’s precisely what you want people to do. You want all adults and people to ask precisely those questions. And you know, if my kids do, I know my kids do similar sort of things and I’m proud of them for it.
1:16:47 I mean, my kids have been coming to the lab with me, watching me give people drugs, since they were three, able to walk. And so we had, I remember having a conversation with my four-year-old at the time, it’s like, Dad, you’ve given this person marijuana, I thought cigarettes and smoking was bad, and I thought doctors are supposed to help people, you know, so things like these are conversations we had when he was four. But when it comes to drugs themselves, these days we don’t have many drug conversations, but they come to my lectures, they read my books, and our conversations have more to do with what are you doing to make this society better? And like their job at this point is that they’re both in school, one’s in college and one will be in high school next year, their job is to get the best grades they can, although the one who will be in high school next year organized a walkout of his middle school for the non-indictment verdict for the cop who killed Eric Garner in New York.
1:18:06 And so in his sort of way of protesting he did that sort of thing. they wanted at Columbia, he participated in all kinds of protests and he’s active on campus with student organizations. So they’re doing their thing in terms of school being civically engaged and they know quite a bit about drugs, but we don’t really talk much about drugs per se, although they could give my lectures now.
1:18:43 Brian Rose: When parents ask you advice, they’re like, what do I say to my kids?
1:18:50 What do you tell them?
1:18:52 Carl Hart: If their focus of the conversation is on drugs, like there’s a reason that they’re focused on drugs. So the drug that their kids will most likely be engaged with, based on all of the data that we’ve collected over the years, tobacco, alcohol, or marijuana. So when they want to know what are the major concerns, I hope they know the major concerns for tobacco and alcohol. I mean, those drugs are in our society and we have so much education related to them. Alcohol withdrawal is a major concern if you’re like worried about death and that sort of thing or alcohol poisoning and most people know that. Marijuana they know less about. That drug I try and just tell them to make sure that their kids start with lower doses if they’re going to use marijuana you know and again it’s these are these a real conversation so we are We’re beyond the stage where we’re saying, how can you talk about drugs?
1:19:59 We’re beyond the fact that they understand that I’m not encouraging them to tell their kid to smoke or otherwise they wouldn’t come to me. So we’re beyond that. And I’m mainly trying to tell them what they can expect, what are the effects of the drug, some like marijuana, right? Because anxiety or paranoia is certainly a likely sort of effect of marijuana when you’re a novice when you’re relatively new and sometimes you might get so paranoid or anxious that that causes you to do something stupid and so you want to make sure that your kids understand that this is a normal sort of effect. Just chill and you make sure that they understand that it’s going to wear off. If they take too much it’s going to wear off. Just relax and just chill, don’t get overexcited, and you try and make sure that if they know that if their kid is engaging in this sort of thing, that they want to control, try to control the environment as much as possible, like tell them where to use like at their house or something and not in public where they’re more likely to get in trouble with the law and those sorts of things.
1:21:12 Trouble with the law can be more, in often cases, certainly for certain parents, it’s worse than the drug effects. So these are just simple basic kind of lessons that I talk to parents about. And if they ask more detailed questions, happy to do that. But these are just the basics. If you take care of these basics, that takes care of most of the people.
1:21:37 Now if you have kids who are doing things other than this and they are doing higher doses, then you’ve had a sort of lack of supervision issue going on for some time. And those are other issues that you have to get into.
1:21:50 Brian Rose: Right, one of the common things you say is, don’t blame the drugs. You said it on Rogan a few times, don’t blame the drugs. And you’re right, if there’s a problem at that level, then there’s a parenting issue, there’s a communication issue, there’s all sorts of other issues going on from a parenting standpoint, not to mention other people, you know, doing things in society.
1:22:12 Carl Hart: Exactly. Exactly. But you know, we are, I’m a parent, you’re a parent. And nobody wants to be told that they’re a bad parent. And I certainly don’t want to tell anybody they’re a bad parent.
1:22:25 But we do have to be honest with ourselves. And I know if I did something wrong or if I was less vigilant than I should have been in a certain situation. I know that. And that certainly happens. As a parent, it happens in all domains of my life. And we have to take responsibility. It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person or anything of that nature. It’s just that the goal, our goal is to keep the kids safe. Okay?
1:22:57 Brian Rose: I always ask everyone here a few questions at the end. I’m going to hit you with these.
1:23:03 Carl Hart: We’re in already. Oh, close.
1:23:04 Brian Rose: I know it goes by quick, right? If you can make a phone call to the 20 year old Carl Hart and give that young man a bit of advice. What would you tell him? Was he in the Air Force yet?
1:23:16 Carl Hart: I was here, man.
1:23:17 Brian Rose: You were here? Yeah. That’s amazing. Yeah. Shit.
1:23:22 Carl Hart: Twenty years old, you couldn’t tell me much, man. Oh, the thing I would say is be careful with others heart you know yeah don’t toy with people’s heart and he wouldn’t have listened to you nah nah
1:23:39 Brian Rose: on that same a note what’s the best advice you’ve ever received could be business it could be personal it could be I guess your business is research
1:23:51 Carl Hart: the best advice I’ve ever received is in high price. And it came from my father, that 20-year-old. Actually, I was 19 maybe. I had come home from the Air Force from Okinawa, Japan, and my grandmother had just died. And the Air Force was going to allow me to stay in Miami, be stationed in Miami. I had orders to come here to England, but they would have allowed me to stay in Miami, to be stationed there instead. And I was going to do it because I was back in the hood and I had all of my friends, my girlfriends and that sort of thing. And so I was going to stay home. And my dad was like, I told my dad this, I’m going to stay at the crib and be here and gave him some bullshit excuse about why I was going to stay there. And you know he just kind I coolly said, you know, he said, you know, man, pussies everywhere.
1:25:02 And that was it. And I broke out. And it’s the best advice I got because otherwise I would have stayed in Florida. And that you would have never heard of me. Right.
1:25:16 Brian Rose: And you think he knew you needed to get out of Dodge.
1:25:20 Carl Hart: He knew it. Right. Yeah.
1:25:22 Brian Rose: A lot of parents don’t want to let go though.
1:25:25 Carl Hart: Well, it’s not the case. That wasn’t the case, that we didn’t have that issue.
1:25:31 Brian Rose: Okay, but did you listen to him? Obviously you did.
1:25:35 Carl Hart: I left, yeah, I came here.
1:25:37 I came here immediately, yeah.
1:25:39 Brian Rose: Wow, and yet none of that would have happened otherwise. You might not be here, I don’t know.
1:25:46 Carl Hart: Yeah, I don’t know either, but the likelihood of me being here is really low. And so that piece of advice is the advice that really kind of pushed me out in order, it opened me up for all of these sort of possibilities.
1:26:01 Brian Rose: Right, right. Last question, bit of advice to the 20 year olds that are out there listening anywhere around the world could be in Okinawa or in the UK or Brazil, that kind of thing. You know, what do you tell them if they want to, you know, they see you and they see everything you’ve accomplished. Like, you know, what if they want to, you know, have a life like that or make a difference. You keep talking about, you know, What are you going to do for society?
1:26:24 That’s a big metric that I don’t hear it very often. What should they do?
1:26:30 Carl Hart: First of all, the first thing that I tell people, this is a problem that I have these days, because I get a lot of emails and letters and things. People wanting to do what I do. And they only see the kind of public thing of what I do, the advocacy sort of thing.
1:26:49 They may see me give a talk. They didn’t see the hard work that went into this. Like 20 years of just studying in the lab, nothing else.
1:27:03 They didn’t see that hard work. So the thing that I would tell people is completely dedicate yourself to your craft. If you don’t completely dedicate yourself to your craft, the likelihood of you doing anything remotely similar is really low. And so the advice is, throw yourself in your work, completely dedicate yourself to your craft. That’s the only way you can be successful. I don’t know any other way. Maybe people who are wealthy or super charismatic can do it otherwise, but you don’t get super charisma without working on it and some people get wealth without working because they were born that way. That’s the only thing that I think that it’s the only thing I can think of where people are able to be out here if they are born into that sort of situation. Otherwise most of us we just have to completely dedicate ourselves to our crap. And what you said earlier earlier, find something you’re happy doing.
1:28:16 Brian Rose: Got to. Because you have to. It’s a requirement. Otherwise, you can’t completely dedicate yourself. Can you imagine faking what you do?
1:28:25 Can you imagine if you’re like, oh my God, I got to listen to this borm. It’s funny you say that about the hard work. I’m so fortunate that I get to sit down with amazing people like you every week and talk to them. And it’s true, what people see many times are the guy on television, the guy in front the rock concert the guy on you know whatever but like these people work like dogs probably to the detriment of their health their families sometimes their relationships it’s you know almost bordering on the insane level probably you and me this is this technically is a holiday here in Britain I don’t know in the US as well memorial day
1:29:10 Carl Hart: it’s the only holiday one of the few holidays I care about right because people die for this right right right but you’re here Yeah, doing what you do. Yeah, so yeah, absolutely You know the thing is what you just said I really love what you said because it gives us an opportunity to think about The thing that one of the things that really bothers me. I watch sports a lot and I hear these broadcasters these people Say things like he’s gifted or he’s just like he’s just physically gifted like it was just given to them and I hear athletes saying this stupid shit too it’s hard work without the hard work you wouldn’t be there and so people talk about these gifts like it’s not hard work everybody who’s successful are they really put the work in even though they you may not call it work, but it’s work.
1:30:06 Otherwise, you’re not gonna be successful.
1:30:09 Brian Rose: Amen to that. Dr. Hart, thanks so much for being here. You made me really think about my own, quite honestly, my own relationship with drugs, substances, everything over my whole life, and by researching you, I’m thinking about how I teach my kids about it, and just how, I was just thinking as humans, we come on this planet and we’re gonna have these relationships with these substances regardless.
1:30:33 Some will be productive, some might be counterproductive, who knows, but the more information we know about what’s actually true, and that’s the scientist in me that values that in the utmost, because that’s all the great breakthroughs we’ve made as a culture, as a race, whether it’s Galileo or go on and on, it’s like the truth that sets us free.
1:30:54 Carl Hart: What happened to Galileo? They burned him, right?
1:30:57 Brian Rose: But yeah, that’s well said, so maybe we’re going there. But you know, it’s made me really question my own relationship with these things and substances in my own upbringing.
1:31:08 You might think you’re an enlightened person or an educated person, but you carry around all this baggage that was brought to you over the centuries about this and that. It’s fascinating. I had Amanda Fielding sitting in that chair a couple weeks ago, and she’s founded the Beckley Foundation. Yeah, I know. You know her, yeah.
1:31:25 A lot of Professor Nutt’s research and she was sitting there and she was saying the government is really a reflection of our own ego. And she said, she talks about psychedelics a lot about breaking down the ego and how we really want to hold on to our ego and by the fact that it’s really necessary to break it down sometimes. And when I think about your work and about drug policy, I just figured that when we look in the mirror at ourselves, part of us kind of wants to hate ourselves, maybe because it feels like we’re weak to take these substances or we’re not in control and it makes us bad but you know when I listen to you I just think you know we’re not bad it’s just us being human and let’s just get educated about it and let’s not vilify someone and let’s you know let’s just put a little more love in the world
1:32:12 Carl Hart: and absolutely let’s just let’s just get through this thing and and figure it out you know it absolutely and and and we should not only put more love in the world but we have to call those out who don’t. I mean that’s the big issue because people say they allowed this bad behavior to happen and they should be called down. I mean if we call people out and embarrass people the behavior will stop happening and we’ll have a more just society.
1:32:37 Brian Rose: Right. And I agree and I don’t even necessarily think a lot of times it sees people you You know, intentionally doing evil, it’s like, like you said, they’re part of a status quo or even an industrial complex that they’re rewarded by having these views and it actually makes rational people think kind of irrational things. So yeah, they need to be called out. We all need to come out of the closet. I’ve come out a couple times on YouTube, much to the dismay of some people around me, but everything was okay in the end and it’s everything’s going to be okay.
1:33:10 So thanks so much for being here on Memorial Day.
1:33:12 Carl Hart: Thank you for having me, man.
1:33:14 Brian Rose: Pleasure. It’s a real pleasure. We’re going to be following your research.
1:33:17 We’re going to be following your next book, No Pressure. And, you know, we look forward to, you know, hearing a lot more from you. It’s important you’re out there delivering the message.
1:33:25 Carl Hart: Thank you, man. Appreciate it.
1:33:26 Brian Rose: All right. Take care.
