Our ability to study the brain has been limited because of our tools and our tools have only allowed us to look at one neurotransmitter and we haven't looked so much into co-localization and co-release of transmitters. Our thinking is hampered by our tools.

My critique of how we deal with drugs in society is just that - that we use these anecdotes to apply to everyone and the anecdotes are not representative.

I don't want to be on the bandwagon of dogging any president or anybody in positions where they have all these different constituencies.

The way we're currently educating people about heroin is to say that heroin is so awful. Heroin is not so much the problem. It's when you combine it. It's hard to die from heroin alone.

The 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.

We need to continuously put pressure on politicians to do more, because they are happy just to do nothing—it’s easier to do nothing.

High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society.