People rarely die from heroin alone, it's the combination that's deadly. Maybe we should blast that out as a public health education message. That way at least we're keeping people safe.
Carl HartThe policy that received more attention particularly in the past decade and a half or so has been the US cocaine policy, the differential treatment of crack versus powder cocaine and question is how my research impacted my view on policy. Clearly that policy is not based on the weight of the scientific evidence. That is when the policy was implemented, the concern about crack cocaine was so great that something had to be done and congress acted in the only way they knew how, they passed policy and that's what a responsible society should do.
Carl HartIf we want to think about racism and how it might play out in drug policy, we have to think about the trial of George Zimmerman. We think about the prosecution, when they said "race is not a factor." It's so dishonest.
Carl HartTake crack cocaine. Particularly in the early days of the policy, ninety percent of the people being arrested were black, even though they didn't use the drug at higher rates and even though their numbers in the general population are so low. How could that be? The thing is, you place all your resources in communities of color. And if you do that, you're going to arrest black people.
Carl Hart