35 Facts About Carl Hart

Carl L Hart was born on October 30,1966 and is an American psychologist and neuroscientist, working as the Mamie Phipps Clark Professor of Psychology at Columbia University.

Carl Hart became the first tenured African-American professor of sciences at Columbia University.

Carl Hart is the author of two books for the general public, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery that Challenges Everything You Know about Drugs and Society and Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear.

Carl Hart grew up in the Carol City neighborhood of Miami Gardens, a suburb of Miami considered one of the most dangerous in the US.

Carl Hart was a proficient athlete involved in high school sports.

Carl Hart was raised by a single mother, who separated from an abusive father when Hart was six.

Carl Hart attended University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he worked with his undergraduate neuroscience professor, Robert Hakan, before attending the University of Wyoming.

Carl Hart pursued postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco and Yale University, and completed an Intramural Training Award fellowship at the National Institutes of Health.

Carl Hart is the Mamie Phipps Clark Professor of Psychology and former chair of the psychology department at Columbia University.

Carl Hart arrived at Columbia in 1998; in 2009, he became the university's first tenured African-American professor of sciences.

Carl Hart has a particular interest in the social and psychological factors that influence self-administration of drugs.

Carl Hart is the Principal Investigator at Columbia University's Neuropsychopharmacology Lab.

In 1999, Carl Hart began investigating the effects of crack cocaine on behavior.

Carl Hart's research is centered around human subject experiments conducted in his research lab at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

Carl Hart opposes the brain disease model of addiction dominant in the field, which holds that addiction is a brain disorder.

Carl Hart indicates that the absence of positive outlets and activities is one reason drug use can occur in communities.

Carl Hart argues that drug laws intended to make a society safer should be based on empirical evidence.

Carl Hart is a Research Fellow and former co-director at Columbia's Institute for Research in African-American Studies.

Carl Hart has written two books for the general public, High Price and Drug Use for Grown-Ups, and co-authored, with Charles Ksir, recent editions of the introductory textbook, Drugs, Society, and Human Behavior.

Carl Hart describes his upbringing, time in the military, years in college and grad school, and his journey to a PhD and tenured professorship at Columbia.

Carl Hart discusses the challenge of learning white cultural norms and language as an aspect of succeeding in academia, and then returning to his family and feeling alienated and unable to connect.

Carl Hart ends the book with an argument for the decriminalization of drugs, stating that his research has shown that the dangers associated with drugs are largely misunderstood, and that a decrease in stigma and increase in conversation would likely decrease the number of drug related deaths.

In 2021, Carl Hart published Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear.

Carl Hart argued that he is not an addict, but that he uses drugs responsibly in the "pursuit of happiness".

Carl Hart further argued that for the majority of individuals, recreational use of drugs has a positive effect, and that journalists and researchers overstate the harms of such drug use.

Carl Hart argues that drug policy in the US and most of the rest of the world "is based on assumption and anecdote, but rarely on scientific evidence".

Carl Hart advocates decriminalizing drug use through policies that are scientifically based rather than heavily influenced by social determinants such as race and class.

Carl Hart has lectured and testified around the world as an expert on psychoactive drugs.

Carl Hart testified before the United States Congress' Committee On Oversight and Government Reform.

Carl Hart has testified, on the stand and in written submissions, in family courts in New York City, advocating for children to stay with parents who have tested positive for marijuana use, arguing that there is no scientific basis for casual marijuana use having an effect on parenting.

Carl Hart stated that the assertion subscribed to outdated notions of marijuana use, such as those implied in Reefer Madness, and failed to recognize the seven decades of research on marijuana that show the levels of marijuana present in Martin's blood were insufficient to cause the aforementioned side effects, and that the side effects mentioned are extremely uncommon in marijuana users.

In May 2017, speaking at a drug policy conference at the University of the Philippines Diliman, Carl Hart addressed the misconceptions about methamphetamine in the Philippines amidst President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs.

Carl Hart has been a speaker at Talks at Google, The Reason Foundation, and The Nobel Conference.

Carl Hart spoke at TEDMED 2014, discussing his evidence-based view of drug addiction, and how that should impact public policy.

Carl Hart is married to Robin Carl Hart and has three children.