Carl Hart

Hart grew up in an impoverished Miami neighborhood, engaging in petty crime and the use and sale of drugs. His parents were divorced during his childhood, and he was raised by a single mother.[2] This environment influenced his world view, and he came to believe drugs were the reason for poverty and crime in most neighborhoods. Only later did he come to believe that "crime and poverty were mostly independent of drug use".[3] After high school, he served in the United States Air Force,[4][5] which became his path to higher education.

Hart earned a bachelor of science degree in psychology from the University of Maryland. He then earned his master of science and Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Wyoming. Hart attended UNC Wilmington, where he worked with Robert Hakan, before attending the University of Wyoming.[2]

Hart is the Chair of the Department of Psychology and the Dirk Ziff Professor of Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University. His research is focused on understanding factors and circumstances that lead to decisions about whether or not to self-administer drugs.[6]

In September 2014, Hart was featured in an article discussing how he is debunking drug addiction.[7] He also presented at the TEDMED conference[8] on myths about drug addictions and is featured in the documentary The House I Live In (2012 film).

Carl Hart has given testimony to the United States Congress' Committee On Oversight and Government Reform.[9] He has been featured as a guest speaker at Talks@Google,[10] The Reason Foundation,[11] and The Nobel Conference.[12] Hart has also been interviewed or otherwise featured on CNN, "Stossel"[13] and "The Independents" on Fox Business, "All In with Chris Hayes" on MSNBC, Reason TV,[14] "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News, "Democracy Now!", and The Joe Rogan Experience.[15]

Hart's research focuses on the behavioral and neuropharmalogical effects of psychoactive drugs. He is particularly interested in what social and psychological factors influence self-administration of drugs.[5] He uses his research as a scientific basis for his presentations on the importance of decriminalizing drugs. He cites the criminalization of crack cocaine (typically associated with black communities) and lack of similar criminalization of powder cocaine (traditionally associated with white communities) as an example of how drug criminalization has been based on social problems rather than scientific fact.[8] His work provides the scientific evidence to debunk the myths about hard drugs, and to work toward more lenient and humane policies.[16]

Hart's research acknowledges structural injustices, but also plays into an oppression analysis perspective of psychology. His research in some ways mirrors the work of Martin Seligman. Seligman did research on dogs, later used as a human model, finding that dogs placed in a situation where they cannot escape pain learn helplessness and lose the ability to escape when the option is reopened to them.[17] Hart's research has similar tones, in that he indicates a lack of positive outlets and activities as a reason for drug use in communities. His work differs in acknowledging the extreme structural injustices that further oppress and imprison black people. He uses his research to argue that laws intended to make a society safer based on empirical evidence, rather than an oppressive legal system that promotes white supremacy, will move us closer to justice.[8]

Hart recognizes how drugs may have been criminalized in the United States to specifically target minorities. One such example is the difference in sentencing between crack and cocaine, which are essentially the same drug. Hart is working to expose racism embedded in drug laws and to decriminalize drug use through policies that are scientifically based rather than heavily influenced by social determinants of the era.,[28][29] Hart has lectured in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America and has testified before the United States Congress and around the world as an expert witness on psychoactive drugs.[29]

He also uses the intersection of his understanding about the systemic racism inherent in drug criminalization, in combination with his extensive knowledge about drugs, to combat mainstream stories which perpetuate myths of black (and other minority) inferiority.[29] One such example was a response to the Toxicology report presented in the case of Trayvon Martin. The extremely low levels of marijuana in Martin's blood were seen as evidence that he might have been paranoid the night of his shooting, causing him to attack Zimmerman.[30] Hart spoke out about this ruling—explaining that it ascribed to old notions of marijuana use, such as those implied in Reefer Madness, and failed to recognize the seven decades of research on marijuana that would 1) show the levels of marijuana present in Martin's blood were insufficient to cause the aforementioned side effects, and 2) disavow the side effects mentioned which are extremely uncommon in marijuana users.[31]

Hart calls for the use of empirical research in determining drug-related incidents across greatly varying scenarios, with the hope that scientifically grounded research will trump the racist policies currently in place, and decrease the unjust incarceration and punishment of black communities for drug use.

In May 2017, Hart was invited to speak at a drug policy forum conference held at the University of the Philippines Diliman. In his speech, he addressed the misconceptions about methamphetamine in the Philippines amidst President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs. Citing laboratory tests on animals, Hart refuted Duterte's claim that methamphetamine shrinks people's brains and causes them to become violent. In the aftermath of his speech, Hart began to receive online death threats which forced him to leave the Philippines shortly thereafter.[32][33][34] Duterte commented on Hart's claims, saying: "That's all bullshit to me". Duterte also called Hart a "son of a bitch who has gone crazy".[35] In an interview with Public Radio International, Hart described Duterte as "a president making such ignorant comments about drugs — like he’s a pharmacologist" and added that Duterte was "out of his league when he talks about drugs".[33][34]

In 2021, Hart appeared in the Netflix documentary Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy where he talked about the complex history of crack in the 1980s.[36]

Hart lives in New York City and Switzerland.[37] He has three children.

• Columbia University Presidential Teaching Award[38]
• Humanitarian Award from Mothers Against Teen Violence[39]
• 2014 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award for High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society[40][41]

• Official website
• Appearances on C-SPAN