Carl Hart

I grew up in the hood in Miami in a poor neighborhood.

I am a drug expert and the father of 3 black males.

As a parent, a scientist, and educator, what I know is that it's always better to provide the education that will help keep my children - all people - safe, even if I don't want them to engage in the behavior.

If drugs are bad, any respectable society should do something to deal with them.

You have to be open-minded, and you have to be critical, and you have to let go of your predispositions about what you've been told that doesn't have foundations in evidence.

You don't have money, you can't do science. But that's part of the price that I pay.

I'm the only tenured black faculty in the sciences at Columbia, in the middle of Harlem.

Most of the stuff that parades as drug education in this country is just rubbish with no foundation in evidence.

Drug reformers get seduced by politicians who co-opt our language but who make no meaningful change. And when we don't hold politicians accountable, we contribute to harm.

If we were going to look at how pharmalogical drugs influence crime, we should probably look at alcohol.

Skills that are employable or marketable, education, having a stake or meaningful role in society, not being marginalized - all of those things are very important.

All of my childhood, we were on welfare. My mom received Aid for Families with Dependent Children - welfare. Without that, we wouldn't have had subsidized housing. Most of my childhood, we had a two-bedroom apartment, but eventually we got into the projects, where we had four bedrooms. That was great.

Trump has been - has shown himself to be the most ignorant president that we've ever had. He has shown himself to be the one that disregards law more so than any other president we've had.

When patients reject official advice and proved medicine, they become more susceptible to quackery.

If we stay focused on data and the real issues, we can tailor our inventions to enhance public health and safety while decreasing the likelihood of racial discrimination.

We need better public education and more realistic education.

If you are funding researchers to look primarily for pathology, not surprisingly, that is what they are going to find and report on.

The strange proposition that black intellectuals - regardless of their training - are 'race experts' mainly because they are black is naive and potentially dangerous.

I strongly discourage any intellectuals, regardless of race, from speaking on matters for which they have limited or no expertise.

The listening community has the obligation of distinguishing informed opinion from tweets.

I think people are curious at some level, and they want to alter their current state of being. I mean, that could be from curiosity, that could be from stress, that can be from some other sort of ailments or problem that they are experiencing or could just be from boredom, but humans have always attempted to alter their consciousness.

The notion that scientists are dispassionate - first of all, that's wrong. Scientists are extremely passionate.

In the hood, you have a problem with somebody, you have to deal with it. The outcome is pretty immediate.

Politicians move when the public requires them to move.

Number one in high school, when I was sort of entrenched in the street life, if you will, the major thing that kept me plugged in the mainstream was athletics. I played basketball throughout high school. I also played football, but I played basketball throughout high school.

I had a grandmother who was really strong, who doted on me, who wanted to make sure that I didn't go off the beaten path, although I did.

I had to go to England to really learn about American racism in a way that corroborated my reality. That was critical.

When I got out of the military, I finished up my education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and I had some mentors who said, 'You got what it takes. You should consider going to graduate school, getting a Ph.D. in neuroscience.' I didn't think I had what it took until somebody who had a Ph.D. told me I had what it takes.

It is always a good time when I visit the 'Melissa Harris Perry Show' on MSNBC.

If politicians did care about their constituents, they would work harder to seek out people like me. They don't.

It's not a crime to make a mistake; in fact, it's human. I certainly have made mistakes.

In the mainstream, I'm suspect because I'm black. I have dreadlocks, I have a goatee. I mean, I'm just suspect. In my classroom and at Columbia, I'm not as suspect because it's clear I know what I'm doing, but I am still suspect.

I have a hard time arguing with stupid people.

It takes some courage to say you were wrong.

When you go to jail, you are under the supervision of the state. You are housed with people who are criminals, so that becomes the expectation. People learn to become better criminals in jail and prison.

Disregard belief systems that aren't based on empirical studies.

Sleep is probably the most important biological function. If you don't get enough sleep, you can get psychiatric illnesses and all types of different illnesses.

Drug reformers need to be hyper-vigilant. I understand that when you've been oppressed so long, so thirsty for truth, that when someone comes along and gives you a sip of water, you think that they're the savior. But in that water there may be cyanide.

Too often, ill-informed rhetoric has led to emotional hysteria that obfuscates solid evidence regarding the real problems faced by poor people and, in overwhelmingly great proportions, by black people.

I went into the military because I didn't get a scholarship, a basketball scholarship I thought that I would get.

Researchers, treatment providers - we all have a stake in the drug hysteria game.

My kids are really into social justice.

One of the things we know about people is that people are not very courageous in general.

It is my mission to put sensible and evidence-based information above politics and exaggeration.

Teaching university students affords me the opportunity to demonstrate to young adults that they don't have to be perfect to make contributions to their country.

My research has taught me many important lessons, but perhaps none more important than this: drug effects, like semesters, are predictable; police interactions with black people are not.

I am certain that my white colleagues, when faced with an emergency situation, wouldn't think twice about calling the police. This, however, may not be the case for their black and Latino students.

It turns out that the term 'diversity' can be anything from black faculty to military veterans. Well, I am both, but have yet to be subjected to discrimination because I'm a veteran.

The way we have been thinking about brain science is that people show you pretty pictures, pretty images, and you think that that tells you something about how they behave. It doesn't.

I went to college in the Air Force, and I went to college at the University of Maryland, who had college campuses on Air Force bases.