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T
he fervour around crack cocaine reached such a level of hype in the US
in the 1980s, neuroscientist Dr Carl Hart told the 2014 HIT Hot Topics
conference, that at one point black civil rights activists teamed up with
the Ku Klux Klan to combat America’s new Public Enemy No.1.
In 1989 the KKK launched the ‘Krush Krack Kocaine’ initiative, to rid the
streets of Lakeland, Florida of crack dealers. People selling crack were legitimate
hate targets at the time – they’d been described by Jessie Jackson, the Democrat
civil rights activist and Baptist minister, as ‘death messengers’ and ‘terrorists’.
Incredibly, the KKK initiative was ‘welcomed’ by the local National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People.
Crack hit the black community hard. Around 80 per cent of those convicted for
crack offences were black. Harsh new anti-crack laws introduced by President
Ronald Reagan meant that those caught with crack received prison sentences up
to 100 times more severe than for the powder form of cocaine, more commonly
used by white Americans.
Dr Hart became curious about a drug that had so damaged his community in
Miami. He wanted to know more about the drug being mentioned in such fearful
tones by his heroes Gil Scott-Heron and Public Enemy. Dr Hart decided to leave
his job in the US airforce, where he had spent time based over here in Swindon,
and returned to the US to study neuroscience in order to understand crack’s
effect on people’s minds and bodies.
The subsequent research he conducted into the psychology of crack cocaine
use has since become famous. What he found blew holes in the accepted
narrative – that crack cocaine was an entirely new drug that transformed addicts
into mindless zombies intent on violence and getting their next fix. Hart’s
experiments, where crack users were given a choice between $5 and a rock of
crack, found that half the time, these ‘crack addicts’ went for the money. In other
words, they made rational decisions.
‘A small amount of money was enough to shift their drug-taking behaviour. This
made me rethink the crack narrative,’ said Hart. A similar experiment he conducted
among crystal meth users yielded the same kind of results – the drug users did not
blindly lunge for the drugs. ‘I realised that the vast majority of people who use this
drug don’t have a problem. Look at Rob Ford. He could use crack and be mayor of
Toronto. He was a jerk, but he could use crack and be mayor.’
Dr Hart said exaggerations around crack and crystal meth – that they cause
brain damage, obliterate rational thought and are uniquely novel compounds – are
perpetuated more by design than by accident.
‘The public has been misled about drugs. Why is this? It serves a function. It
allows us to target people who we don’t like. We can’t say we don’t like black
people, but we can say we don’t like an activity they are involved in, such as
taking crack. This narrative helps to avoid dealing with the real problems of the
poor, that if we get rid of crack, we don’t have to talk about bad education, bad
housing and so on.’
16 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| December 2014
Conference |
HIT – Hot Topics
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
This year’s HIT
Hot Topics
conference delved
into neuroscience to challenge
our perceptions of drugs and drug
taking.
Max Daly
reports
IN
MIND
AND
BODY