EXAGGERATING HARMFUL DRUG EFFECTS ON THE BRAIN IS KILLING BLACK PEOPLE.

Dr. Carl Hart.

“This is why you don’t do drugs kids.” That admonishment—directed at bystanders who watched in horror as police manhandled George Floyd’s 46-year-old, defeated black body—spoke volumes about what kind of people we are and our warped values. Drug researchers with neuroscience leanings, me included, have helped shape and perpetuate this sick ethos in which police, as well as others, believe that it’s okay to brutalize a Black person, so long as they are suspected of having used or sold a “recreational” drug.

Full article — https://drcarlhart.com/exaggerating-harmful-drug-effects-on-the-brain-is-killing-black-people/

WeedPress comment: Read the whole article — I’m emphasizing this portion of the article, because I can, and because readers need to face this. I also want to reference the following for when I have discussions and lectures with the addiction counseling community. Also, one of my best friends in childhood, his brother got shot up by the police because he was on heroin, and cops are terrified with the false lie that pcp makes you superhuman strong and uncontrollable and dangerous, which justifies shooting brown people based on the fear of officer safety — a fear that is enabled by addiction counselors hysterical paranoia that is not science based but rationalized by half-truths filled in with confirmation bias and emotional reactionary knee jerk solutions of unnecessarily violent state intervention tactics. If ignorance of these half-truths is replaced by confronting the emotionality of this topic to break through to scientific based drug policies that are sociological in nature and not hard science rigid like, we can stop dehumanizing and harming people. Doctors and counselors are all too comfortable hiding behind an ignorant cloak of false moral righteousness when what they’ve really been doing for 40 years is stepping over the sick and dying on their way to Sunday church. Real humanitarian drug policy requires harm reduction policies not like those in San Fransicko, but those in Portugal, where coercive state interventionist policies do not end in brutality and death — or like the case of my childhood friend’s brother, a lifelong paralysis — police do not need to be overly violent when we get better educated policy makers to utilize unemotional best practice drug policies sourced from around the world and viewed through a pragmatic sociological lens. Oppositionally to that we currently see instead, drug policy made through ideological moral purity that is religious and dogmatic in nature and results in brutal dehumanization of fellow brothers and sisters of human kind. Until people listen to Dr. Carl Hart and other tenured professors we will continue to see communities of all colors shapes and sizes rise up to protest the failed drug war. I fail to find the words to paint the picture adequately because the audience guarding institutional policy making has seem to lost have lost it’s heart — and heartless over emphasis on coercive measures absent balancing humanitarian concerns has already resulted in the massacre of tens of thousands in every community nationwide.

Here’s Dr. Carl Hart.

Full article — https://drcarlhart.com/exaggerating-harmful-drug-effects-on-the-brain-is-killing-black-people/

Dr. Carl Hart:

Even the mere accusation that an acquaintance might be a drug seller is enough to justify police slaughtering a Black woman in her own home. Perhaps none of these travesties of justice was more appalling than the killing of 26-year-old EMT Breonna Taylor. Just after midnight on March 13, 2020, plain-clothes officers broke down the door of her apartment and fired multiple shots, hitting her eight times. They were seeking two men suspected of selling drugs out of a house that was nowhere near Ms. Taylor’s home. The judge, who signed the “no-knock” warrant, allowed a search of Ms. Taylor’s home because one of the two suspects had supposedly received packages there previously. As of June 19, none of the three cops—Jon Mattingly, Myles Cosgrove, and Brett Hankison—involved in fatally shooting Ms. Taylor have been charged or even fired.

This wasn’t the first time police killed a Black woman during a botched drug raid. Back in 2006, acting on false information from an informant, Atlanta police executed a no-knock warrant at the home of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnson in search of drug dealing. They broke down her door, entered her home, and shot her dead. I know it shouldn’t matter, but, for the record, no drugs were found.

Ramarley Graham, Rumain Brisbon, and Sandra Bland also had their lives cut short as a result of an interaction with police initiated under the pretense of drug-use or drug-sales suspicion. The list of the dead is too long to detail here, but you can bet that many Black Americans know each of their names and fear being added to this death list every time the police engage us. I have learned from my laboratory research that drug effects are predictable. I have learned from my life experience that police interactions with Black people are not; too often the Black person ends up dead. That is why when Black parents ask my advice regarding drugs, I tell them that I would much rather my own children interact with drugs than with the police.

Full article — https://drcarlhart.com/exaggerating-harmful-drug-effects-on-the-brain-is-killing-black-people/

Even when a Black drug suspect survives the encounter with law enforcement, that person is much more likely than their white counterpart to be arrested (e.g., Hart, 2013). This despite the fact that both groups use and sell drugs at similar rates (Hart and Hart, 2019). This is called racial discrimination or racism. It is not “implicit bias” or some other euphemistic, pointless distraction that the field of psychology has come up with so that the status quo (i.e., white supremacy) can stay intact by failing to address racism directly (Hart and Hart, 2019). When I use the terms racial discrimination or racism, I mean precisely this: an action that results in disproportionately unjust or unfair treatment of persons from a specific racial group. Malicious intent is not required—I don’t care to know what’s in your heart or head. What is required is that the treatment be unjust or unfair and that such injustice is disproportionately experienced by at least one racial group (Hart and Hart, 2019).

Full article — https://drcarlhart.com/exaggerating-harmful-drug-effects-on-the-brain-is-killing-black-people/

Remaining Silent Is Not an Option

Observing the carnage and racism that take place under the guise of protecting the public from so-called dangerous drugs (i.e., the war on drugs) made me rethink my views about drugs and their regulation. I’m embarrassed to admit it now, but I once wholeheartedly believed that drugs like crack cocaine and heroin destroyed certain Black communities. In fact, I began studying neuroscience because I thought it was uniquely suited to solve the “drug problem.”

In 1999, I landed my dream job, conducting research that involved giving thousands of doses of drugs, including crack cocaine, marijuana, ketamine, and methamphetamine, to a range of people in order to study the effects. I believed my work contributed to our understanding of drug addiction. Twenty years later—20 years I’ve spent studying the interactions among the brain, drugs, and behavior and observing how moralizing about drug use is expressed in social policy—my initial excitement has given way to skepticism, cynicism, and disillusionment.

It took me a long time to see the damage my field was doing to communities like the one from which I came. I was too busy for too long being a soldier in the regime, caught up in the cause of “proving” how damaging drug use is to the brain. And because my intense actions aligned with the dominant perspective held at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)—my primary funder—I personally benefited. I was awarded multimillion-dollar grants to conduct my research, and I served on some of the most prestigious committees in the area of neuropsychopharmacology. I also was awarded tenure at my university, which, importantly, allows me to speak so freely here and elsewhere.

Full article — https://drcarlhart.com/exaggerating-harmful-drug-effects-on-the-brain-is-killing-black-people/

Using “Science” to Legitimize a Massacre

The fact is, we, as researchers, consistently exaggerate the harmful effects of drug use. This is not to say that drug use can’t or doesn’t cause some people to experience significant distress and problems that impair their ability to function. This, by the way, is the most common definition of addiction, what we call substance use disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5). I am merely pointing out that most people—70% to 90%—who use even the most stigmatized drugs, such as heroin and methamphetamine, do not meet criteria for a substance use disorder (Hart, 2013). This fact highlights two important points. The first is society’s flagrant disproportionate focus on addiction when discussing drugs. Addiction represents a minority of drug effects, but it receives almost all the attention. Another related point is this: if most users of a particular drug do not become addicted, then we cannot blame the drug for causing drug addiction. It would be like blaming food for food addiction.
Even more pernicious is the fact that NIDA unabashedly touts the baseless notion that drug addiction is a brain disease. To date, there has been no identified neurobiological substrate to differentiate non-addicted persons from addicted individuals (Hart et al., 2012). Simply put, there is no solid evidence that human recreational drug use causes brain damage; nor is there credible evidence showing that addiction is caused by a brain abnormality. Unfortunately, this fact has not tempered dire warnings in the neuroscientific literature regarding the harmful impact of drug use on the human brain. Consider the following claim by Volkow et al. (2016): “If early voluntary drug use goes undetected and unchecked, the resulting changes in the brain can ultimately erode a person’s ability to control the impulse to take addictive drugs.” The first clause of this sentence encourages people, including cops, to be paranoid about any drug use, even the nonproblematic recreational use that characterizes the experience of the overwhelming majority who use these drugs. The paranoia this statement provokes was on full display when police admonished witnesses to stay off drugs while their brother in blue used his knee to cut off the dying Floyd’s last breath. The second clause is perhaps even more disturbing because it argues that there are inevitable brain changes in response to drug use that cripple the user’s self-control. There is absolutely no scientific evidence in humans to justify this statement. As I have noted previously, the pretty pictures produced by brain imaging without data are not evidence, but they are misleading (Hart et al., 2012).

Full article — https://drcarlhart.com/exaggerating-harmful-drug-effects-on-the-brain-is-killing-black-people/

Also, it’s fair to ask: if recreational drug use is neurotoxic, why are researchers, me included, allowed to give these drugs to people regularly with NIDA’s blessings? The truth is, recreational drug effects are overwhelmingly positive (e.g., Hart et al., 2008). This is not an endorsement for the use of drugs. It’s just a fact. Everyone who studies the direct effects of recreational drugs in people knows this to be true. I don’t know how the folks at NIDA or other scientists reconcile the apparent inconsistencies between this reality and their overemphasis on harmful outcome. I suspect that some researchers overemphasize the negative in order to enhance the “significance” section of their NIH grant applications and articles. The greater the perceived problem, the more impactful the research. Other scientists might characterize their behavior as erring on the side of caution. In other words, it is better to highlight any potential dangers—even those that are remote—while downplaying and ignoring potential benefits, including obvious ones. The problem with these rationalizations is that they wrongly assume that the current lopsided and negative presentation of drug effects on the brain is without serious pitfalls. It’s not. Journalists write articles consistent with these half-truths. If you do a quick search of newspaper articles written about any recreational drug, you’ll find that almost all focus on negative outcomes. Films and public service announcements also employ these distortions in their depictions of drug users.

Misrepresentation of drug-related brain evidence has contributed to dehumanizing stereotypes. They shape callous political rhetoric and harmful policies and practices. Take, for example, the words and actions of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: “a year or more of shabu [methamphetamine] use would shrink the brain of a person, and therefore he is no longer viable for rehabilitation.” Thousands of people have been killed extrajudicially as a result of Duterte’s inhumane treatment of drug users and sellers (Bueza, 2017). What’s more, the current occupant of the White House has repeatedly praised Duterte and other barbaric leaders for a “great job” on their handling of drug users and dealers, knowing full well that their tactics include extrajudicial executions. In the United States, where tacit racism is pervasive, it is unsurprising—and infuriating—that the fear of drugs, abetted by arguments poorly grounded in scientific evidence, is used to legitimize the massacre of Black people.

Full article — https://drcarlhart.com/exaggerating-harmful-drug-effects-on-the-brain-is-killing-black-people/