Dr. Carl Hart:
A Scientist on a Mission to Spread Knowledge in Support of Health and Happiness of Drug Users by Jessi Lane, Patient Advocate
“Whether we like it or not, recreational drugs are part of our society, and it should be our mission to use this knowledge in support of the health and happiness of drug users. Clearly, part of this mission is to try to keep them safe, not push them into the shadows and force them to risk their lives when there are better alternatives,” (p. 83) says Dr. Carl Hart (2022) in his latest book, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear. Carl L. Hart, PhD, is a neuroscientist and psychologist studying the behavioral and neuropharmacological effects of psychoactive drugs in humans. Dr. Hart is the Ziff Professor of Psychology in the departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at Columbia University and is one of the first tenured African American Professors of Science at an Ivy League institution of higher learning. Hart is a member of the National Advisory Council of Drug Abuse and a board member of the Drug Policy Alliance. He has published a wide variety of scientific literature focusing on dependence, drug-taking behaviors, drug self-administration and the cognitive effects of drug use and has testified before the U.S. Congress serving as an expert witness on the effects of psychoactive drugs (American Psychological Association [APA], 2022). “I see the job of the scientist, in part, as helping to correct the blunders of politicians and journalists. It’s one of the reasons that I became a scientist” (Hart, 2022,
p. 107), he says. It may be true that Dr. Hart is a renowned scientist and an educator. But first and foremost, he is an activist. He is committed to our nation’s citizens who are “tired of watching their tax dollars fund unethical people and corpora-
