Carl Hart

Hart recounts that as a teenager in early-1980s Miami, a city then overrun with crack cocaine, he saw drugs as a raging menace.⁠[1]

In a 2025 lecture he recalled serving in the US Air Force from 1984 to 1988, an experience that opened his mind, before leaving the military to study the neural basis of addiction.⁠[2]

He later received his undergraduate degree in psychology at the University of Maryland and did his graduate training in experimental psychology and neuroscience at the University of Wyoming.⁠[3]

In 2013 HarperCollins published High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society, which combines memoir with drug science.⁠[4]

In June 2013 he appeared on WBUR’s On Point, arguing that the United States should decriminalize all drugs, including crack, and seeking to dispel myths about the drug.⁠[5]

On October 16, 2013, he spoke about his upbringing at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore; the organizers introduced him as a Columbia associate professor and the university’s first tenured African American professor in the sciences.⁠[3]

In 2014 High Price won the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award; Columbia described his research focus as the interactions between drugs of abuse and the neurobiological and environmental factors that mediate physiology and behavior.⁠[4]

In May 2017 Hart, then chair of Columbia’s psychology department, said at a forum at the University of the Philippines that there was no evidence methamphetamine leads to violence or causes brain damage; President Rodrigo Duterte countered that it “fries the brain” and called him a “fool.”⁠[6]

In June 2017 he replied that Duterte’s claim that methamphetamine shrinks the brain was “ridiculous” and argued that drug abuse should be countered with public education and alternatives.⁠[7]

On January 12, 2021, his 304-page Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear was published.⁠[8]

In the book Hart, a former head of the psychology department, calls himself “an unapologetic drug user” and argues that responsible grown-ups can use various drugs and still be responsible parents and citizens.⁠[9]

Psychiatrist Sally Satel called the book “provocative and enlightening” in her review but described it as a calculated risk: by portraying drug use as so potentially rewarding for responsible users, it may inadvertently seduce non-grown-ups into hazardous use.⁠[1]

In 2021 commentators including Angela Rye criticized him for potentially understating the harm drugs have done to communities; Hart responded that he was “not on any team” and preferred to be seen as a scientist rather than an activist.⁠[10]

He appeared on episode 233 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls him a psychologist at Columbia University; topics included the experience of drugs, drug use for grownups, studies and negative effects of drugs, whether all drugs should be legalized, the war on drugs, recovery and the depiction of drugs in movies.⁠[11]

In 2022 philosophy lecturer Bryan McCarthy wrote in America magazine that Hart sees both harm reduction and the brain-disease model of addiction as overemphasizing drugs’ harms and ignoring their benefits, positions that are contentious even among drug policy reform advocates.⁠[12]

Columbia describes him as Mamie Phipps Clark Professor; his lab studies psychoactive drugs in humans with an interdisciplinary approach and advocates humane drug policy, and he co-authors the textbook Drugs, Society, and Human Behavior with Charles Ksir.⁠[13]

In a March 19, 2025 lecture at Swarthmore College he recalled a study in which crack users chose between the drug and money: when the reward rose to $20 participants preferred the money, which he took to show that their behavior follows the same principles as other behavior.⁠[2]

X: Public account: https://x.com/drcarlhart (opens in a new window)⁠[11]

Columbia University: Official website: https://www.columbia.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[13]