Skip to main content

Book review of High Price by Carl Hart

By

I recently finished reading an eye-opening book called High Price by Carl Hart, a neuroscientist at Columbia University. The subtitle provides a nice abstract: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society. Prof. Hart tells the story of his non-traditional journey from the "special needs" classroom of his youth (where he was tracked along with the other black kids at his school) through his eventual graduate and post-graduate career in academe. He also mixes in the results of his research on the effects of drugs on the human brain that cast a boatload of doubt on our government's ongoing war against its citizens, also known as the "war on drugs."

Here's a fairly typical yet mind-blowing excerpt about the 1986 law that resulted in a huge disparity in sentencing for crack vs. powder cocaine possession:
Under the 1986 provision, a person convicted of selling 5 grams of crack cocaine was required to serve a minimum sentence of five years in prison. To receive the same sentence for trafficking in in powder cocaine, an individual needed to possess 500 grams of cocaine---1000 times the crack cocaine amount...From a scientific or pharmacological perspective, the disparity wasn't justified: it didn't accurately reflect any real difference in harm related to the drug.
This is because the only differences between crack and powder cocaine crack is cooked with baking soda, which allows it to be smoked. The two forms of cocaine are otherwise nearly identical chemically. Sadly,
One of the keys to crack's success on the market was the selling of very small doses at a low price, something that obviously increases the number of transactions...Crack cocaine increased the prevalence of both street markets and frequent transactions in many black communities. Law enforcement agencies placed considerable resources in black communities aimed at arresting both dealers and users. This combination of factors meant that creating disparate sentences for crack would inevitably---even without any racist intent----put more black people in prison for much longer terms. 
But isn't crack super-addictive? No more addictive than powder cocaine. And according to Prof. Hart's research, cocaine in any form is not very addictive at all, and certainly not as it is portrayed in government propaganda and the popular media. Indeed, 80-90% of people who try "hard drugs" do so without negative impact on their lives. After all, even one of our former presidents dabbled in cocaine without becoming a "fiend."

I highly recommend this book. But be forewarned: once you know something, it's impossible to un-know it. And once you know what's going on with the "war on drugs," it's difficult not to be deeply angered and saddened.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A view from your shut down

By
The Daily Dish has been posting reader emails reporting on their " view from the shutdown ." If you think this doesn't affect you, or if you know all too well how bad this is, take a look at the growing collection of poignant stories. No one is in this alone except for the nutjobs in the House. I decided to email Andrew with my own view. I plan to send a similar letter to my congressperson. Dear Andrew, I am a professor of astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). The CfA houses one of the largest, if not the largest collection of PhD astronomers in the United States, with over 300 professional astronomers and roughly 100 doctoral and predoctoral students on a small campus a few blocks west of Harvard Yard. Under the umbrella of the CfA are about 20 Harvard astronomy professors, and 50 tenure-track Smithsonian researchers. A large fraction of the latter are civil servants currently on furlough and unable to come to work. In total, 147 FTEs
Post a Comment
Read more

The Long Con

By
Hiding in Plain Sight ESPN has a series of sports documentaries called 30 For 30. One of my favorites is called Broke  which is about how professional athletes often make tens of millions of dollars in their careers yet retire with nothing. One of the major "leaks" turns out to be con artists, who lure athletes into elaborate real estate schemes or business ventures. This naturally raises the question: In a tightly-knit social structure that is a sports team, how can con artists operate so effectively and extensively? The answer is quite simple: very few people taken in by con artists ever tell anyone what happened. Thus, con artists can operate out in the open with little fear of consequences because they are shielded by the collective silence of their victims. I can empathize with this. I've lost money in two different con schemes. One was when I was in college, and I received a phone call that I had won an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas. All I needed to d
8 comments
Read more

back-talk begins

By
me: "owen, come here. it's time to get a new diaper" him, sprinting down the hall with no pants on: "forget about it!" he's quoting benny the rabbit, a short-lived sesame street character who happens to be in his favorite "count with me" video. i'm turning my head, trying not to let him see me laugh, because his use and tone with the phrase are so spot-on.
4 comments
Read more