Ep100 - Dr. Carl Hart: Legalize all Drugs, including Heroin and Crack
"Heroin not only kept me alive, it kept me from killing."
This episode of Brave New Weed podcast is made possible with the support of Bar Capital. Bar Cap invests in, advises, and helps raise capital for companies and fund managers operating in the cannabis space.
Bar Cap believes ancillary companies that are key to the growth of the cannabis industry are a great way to invest in the space. Their recent focus has been cutting edge developments in cannabis plant tissue culture and genetics.
For a limited time, listeners of the Brave New Weed podcast have complimentary access to Bar Cap’s insights. Whether you’re a company looking to raise money or an accredited investor looking for insights, visit www.barcapital.com where you can fill out the contact form to take advantage of this offer. Make sure to mention the Brave New Weed podcast and a representative of Bar Cap will reach out to you. You’ll also find the full regulatory disclosures and risk disclaimers on their website.
Each member of Bar Capital is a Registered Representative and offers securities through Stonehaven, LLC a Member of FINRA/SIPC.
I first heard Dr. Carl Hart speak at a Horizons conference on psychedelics in New York City last year. This conference is highly respected and attended by researchers, scientists, students and those with a keen interest in the subject matter. Get his book here.
Hart was the final speaker of the day. He presented a powerful argument for the legalization of all drugs. ALL drugs, not just plant medicines or the ones that people use therapeutically or to fast-track their spiritual journeys.
“All drugs” includes the demonized ones -- heroin, PCP, and crack included. Bravely (brazenly?) he looked directly at the audience and talked about his own experiences with heroin, PCP, and speed. He said that he liked those drugs, used them for his own growth, and was living proof that one could use them without addiction and still have a career, a wife and family and live ethically and responsibly.
I was stunned, in part because Dr. Hart is an esteemed professor of psychology at Columbia University and he was publicly admitting to something that most people I know rarely speak about openly. The same is also true for high functioning executives who run hugely successful companies but who are also heroin, speed or in most cases, alcohol users. I know plenty of these people. You do too, but they rarely acknowledge what they do behind closed doors.
I wondered how Hart’s admission would go down, but I didn’t have to wonder for long. At the end of Dr. Hart’s presentation the audience leaped to its feet in a standing ovation.
As you'll hear in this interview, Carl’s arguments are based on evidence he has accumulated over 30 years of researching addiction and neuroscience, so the case he makes in his new book, Drug Use For Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear, is persuasive. Don’t for a second think that he’s skewing evidence to suit his own biases.
Still, his admission forced me to look hard at myself and realize that I -- self-styled truth teller -- am full of shite. I’ve always explained my own drug experimentation in terms of plant medicines being preferable to synthetic compounds (even though cocaine and heroin, do come from the coca and opium plants). But when Carl pointed out that white affluents who use drugs are affirmed as psychonauts while black and brown people who use them are called “crackheads,” I realized that I was on shaky ethical ground. Actually, I was on no ground at all. I was a hypocrite.
At first glance, legalizing all drugs sounds reckless but compared to the miserable, expensive and by now institutionalized 60-year failure that is the War on Drugs, it is eminently sane. That war has been lost. It has cost billions of dollars and has resulted in little more than filling our prisons with hundreds of thousands of mostly black and brown male citizens, not to mention ever rising rates of addiction, crime, violence and cartels. Einstein said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. If we put a fraction of Drug War money into legalizing, dosing, and purity testing substances so those who wish to use them can do so more intelligently and safely than they are currently allowed under prohibition, we might be a better society.
Would this lead to confusion? Will the voices of fear and darkness scream about the foolishness, or more likely, the immorality, of such a program? Will they ignore countries like Portugal, which decriminalized all drug use 20 years ago and has seen rates of addiction plummet? Might it also lead to more human treatment and deeper understanding of addiction? Would I have major doubts about its ability to succeed?
The answer to all of those questions is ‘Yes.’
Can I envision how this would roll out practically?
No. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tried. as Dr. Hart says in this honest, heartfelt and truly awesome 100th podcast, ‘We put a man on the moon. Surely we can figure this out if we want to.’
Please be sure to tune into the interview with Bar Capital's CEO, Anand Shahi, on "New Rules for Investing in Cannabis" at the top of this episode. Bar Capital believes ancillary companies that are key to growing the cannabis industry are a great way to invest in the space and Anand is worth listening to. The company is a generous supporter of this podcast.