I have three boys. And I wanted to make sure it connected with them and then those guys who grew up like me, in environments like me.And then I knew something about science that your New York Times reader would be interested in. So I was thinking about it in multiple ways: I'll connect with the people who grew up like me first, and then the New York Times reader will be interested in the science because it's so good and they want to be "in the know."

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.

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.

Much of the early work focused on dopamine and we were really looking for rewarding sorts of effects and sure enough, we only found that. But you can destroy the main dopamine-producing structures of the brain and you can still get an animal to self-administer drugs like cocaine.

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

When you have the national narrative being "crack is awful and black people are using it," why go against that narrative when you want to get that publication in The New York Times or wherever? It encourages people to play right into it.

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.