by Carl Hart
Though both of their births had been peak life experiences for me, I’d realized as I changed diapers, chased toddlers, and—before I knew it—found myself watching them play basketball and wondering when they’d be able to outplay me, that it wasn’t at all the biological bond that made a father. It was the care, the daily repetitive care. It was being there and learning with them, having a life together.
And so seeing Tobias had felt like a slap in the face. I felt as though I was being held responsible for a child I’d had no say in raising. I wanted to do the right thing but I couldn’t help feeling cheated. All the learning he’d done, all the reinforcement and punishment and extinction training he’d received for the most formative years of his life had had nothing to do with me. I’d almost literally been an unwitting sperm donor and yet this child was blood. The differences between him and my other sons and the arc of my childhood and his confounded me. I couldn’t help thinking about those differences as I slowly got to learn more about his life.
Although I can’t know for sure, I do have some speculations about some of the important differences. Unlike me, my son Tobias had never seriously participated in organized sports or even much in street games. He hadn’t known the pleasure of becoming skilled at something through practice and using the fruit of hard work to win public competitions. He hadn’t had a father like me in his life or older sisters like mine who nurtured him when his mother was unable to. His mother had been even younger and less well informed than MH had been when I was born; he didn’t know the real story about his father. He didn’t have even the limited academic success I’d had with math in elementary school. In fact, he doesn’t appear to have ever been engaged at all by education and he dropped out before completing high school.
Tobias didn’t have a Big Mama who stressed the importance of getting that degree, nor did he have a dream like mine of athletic glory, which led me to enlist in the air force rather than face the humiliation of not playing at least college-level ball. He didn’t get military training, nor did he have the opportunity to travel and see a world different from the one he knew in South Florida. He hadn’t found mentors who could teach him about black history and consciousness, real men who could show him the way to find different values than getting the most pussy (and seeing women in that demeaning fashion) and having a name on the street. The gap between us felt even more vast than the one between me and my family in Miami. At least I had a shared history with them.
When I met him, Tobias had so little mainstream cultural capital that he described me to his friends as a “teacher.” He didn’t understand the difference in status between a high school teacher and a college professor, let alone the differences between being a tenured professor or non-tenure-track lecturer, or between being at an Ivy League or a less prestigious school. Just as I’d been as a teenager, he was completely isolated from the mainstream.
I didn’t know how to reach him or provide him with appropriate and helpful alternative reinforcers. He isn’t a drug addict; he’s a young black man with no high school diploma and limited employable skills in a country that sees him as a problem, not a resource. The unemployment rate for black men at the end of 2012 was about 14 percent, twice the number for white men.1 Those problems don’t have answers in the neuropsychopharmacology that I study.
I began to realize that I would need to speak out if I was to ensure that my work didn’t lead people to the wrong conclusions about drugs and the causes of social problems.
CHAPTER 15
The New Crack
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.
—HIPPOCRATES
One afternoon in mid-2005 I received a phone call from the U.S. drug czar’s office, the ONDCP, a component of the Executive Office of the President. Initially, I thought, Oh shit, I must be in trouble! But that wasn’t it. They were phoning to request my participation in a roundtable discussion about the drug methamphetamine. The purpose of this roundtable, the caller explained, was to educate writers about the real effects of methamphetamine so that stories written about the drug would be more authentic. The writer participants would consist of individuals who wrote for a variety of magazines and television shows. I happily agreed to take part because this seemed to be a departure from previous “educational” efforts by ONDCP. These were the same folks who in the late 1980s brought us the public service announcement (PSA), “This is your brain on drugs.” During the spot, a man holds up an egg and says, “This is your brain.” Then he picks up a frying pan and says, “This is drugs.” Then he cracks open the egg, fries the contents, and says, “This is your brain on drugs.” Finally, he asks, “Any questions?” This PSA is one of the most ridiculed antidrug advertisements of all time because of its simplistic and inaccurate portrayal of drug effects.1
Today, ONDCP’s slogan is “Relying on science, research and evidence to improve public health and safety in America.” So, perhaps one of the goals of the roundtable, I figured, was to provide the writers with information with foundations in evidence rather than fear-based anecdotes. In addition to me, the panelists were an assistant U.S. attorney, an undercover narcotics agent, and a methamphetamine “addict.” Because I was one of the few scientists studying the effects of methamphetamine in people, my role was to summarize the current state of our scientific knowledge about the drug. I began by saying that methamphetamine is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ADHD and narcolepsy. The attendees were surprised. How could this awful drug that they had heard about be sanctioned for anything? Then I presented data from my studies showing that methamphetamine produced the same effects as the better-known prescription medication Adderall (generic name: a mixture of amphetamine salts). The chemical structure of the two drugs is nearly identical (see figure 2).
This too was surprising to most in the room. Like amphetamine, methamphetamine increases energy and enhances one’s ability to focus and concentrate; it also reduces subjective feelings of tiredness and cognitive disruptions brought about by fatigue and/or sleep deprivation. Both drugs can increase blood pressure and the rate at which the heart beats. I explained that several nations’ militaries, including our own, have used (and continue to use) amphetamines since World War II because of these properties.2 The drug helps soldiers fight better and longer.
Figure 2. Chemical structure of amphetamine (active ingredient in Adderall), left, and methamphetamine.
My fellow panelists were horrified because my lecture was in stark contrast to the stories they told about methamphetamine. The attorney showed a slide presentation filled with disheveled children of alleged illegal methamphetamine makers. “These are America’s children,” she asserted, hoping to evoke a sympathetic emotional response. Her remarks were echoed by the narcotics agent, who declared that methamphetamine was unlike any drug he had seen in his twenty years of service. They asserted that the drug produced an addiction more severe than any other drug, including crack cocaine. The police officer further warned that users of methamphetamine are so violent that Taser guns are ineffective at stopping them. “These people are animals,” he said, and insisted that more intensive methods are necessary for stopping someone high on methamphetamine. The officer concluded his remarks with an anecdote so ghastly that the audience moaned in unison. He stated that methamphetamine causes cognitive impairment so severe that it can lead parents to decapitate their own children; he swore he had witnessed this firsthand.
Judging from the audience’s responses, the anecdotes were effective. They urgently wanted know why law enforcement hasn’t done more do to get this awful drug off the streets. Or how could anyone in their right mind take such a destructive chemical? None of the writers raised questions about the veracity of the stories told by the attorney or the narcotics agent, even though they had just heard conflicting information about the drug. The world was flat again. My mind raced with thoughts about that 1914 New York Times article describing “Negro
cocaine fiends” and how southern police forces had to exchange their revolvers for heavier-caliber weapons because cocaine gave black people superhuman strength. I was baffled that others in the room didn’t recognize how myths about drugs are recycled from one generation to another; I was disappointed because I believed this roundtable would be different. I thought evidence from science would inform our view on the drug. Instead the roundtable turned out to be similar to other drug discussions sponsored by the government, an exchange in hysteria and ignorance. I was also angry because I knew such hysteria unfairly vilified methamphetamine users and decreased their willingness to seek help if needed.
The discussion also reminded me of the exaggerated claims about crack cocaine two decades before. As I pointed out earlier, that drug was believed to be so powerfully addictive that even first-time users would become addicted. It had also been linked to the deaths of two promising young athletes—Len Bias and Don Rogers—although later it became clear that the athletes had taken large amounts of powder and not crack cocaine. Powder cocaine was seen as a recreational drug for the wealthy.
Few people asked whether the sentencing disparity between the two forms of cocaine was based on scientific evidence. In 1986, there were only two scientific publications on smoked cocaine. Both studies contained a number of limitations, which decreased their relevance in public policy discussions. As a result, the law that created the 100:1 crack-powder sentencing ratio was based entirely on anecdotal reports. This in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as lawmakers understood the limits of this approach and were prepared to alter the law as new, more complete knowledge dictated.
By the early 1990s, concern about the dangers of crack intensified and lots of money was pumped into the war on that drug. Not only were law enforcement budgets increased but more money was also allocated for research. Now scientists had a stake in the crack hysteria game. As a result, the scientific database on crack cocaine grew substantially within a few years. As I stated earlier, the data showed that both forms of cocaine produce identical effects; these effects are predictable. That is, as the dose is increased, so are the effects, whether they are blood pressure and heart rate or subjective “high” and addictive potential. The evidence clearly indicated that the 100:1 ratio exaggerated the harms associated with crack and that the sentencing disparity was not scientifically justified. To punish crack users more harshly than powder users is analogous to punishing those who are caught smoking marijuana more harshly than those caught eating marijuana-laced brownies.
At the same time, some began raising concerns that crack-powder laws disproportionately targeted blacks. Congress directed the U.S. Sentencing Commission to issue a report examining the federal cocaine laws. The commission is the federal agency responsible for, among other tasks, reducing unwarranted sentencing disparities. In February 1995, it issued its report. The report examined pharmacology, the ways the drug is taken, societal impacts, cocaine distribution and marketing, cocaine-related violence and crime, the legislative history of cocaine penalties and constitutional challenges, and data related to federal drug offenses. It was thorough. It found that nearly 90 percent of those sentenced for crack cocaine offenses were black, even though the majority of users of the drug were white. This conflicted with most people’s perception because news reports and popular media almost always showed black crack smokers. As a result of these findings, the commission submitted to Congress an amendment to the sentencing guidelines that would have equalized penalties for powder and crack cocaine offenses, that is, the crack-powder ratio would have gone from 100:1 to 1:1. Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed legislation disapproving the guideline amendment. In a statement Clinton explained the rationale for his decision to block the amendment: “We have to send a constant message to our children that drugs are illegal, drugs are dangerous, drugs may cost you your life—and the penalties for dealing drugs are severe.” He continued: “I am not going to let anyone who peddles drugs get the idea that the cost of doing business is going down.” Subsequent reports and recommendations by the commission in 1997, 2002, and 2007 were equally unsuccessful in bringing about meaningful changes to the cocaine laws.
Many prominent individuals criticized the unwillingness of lawmakers to eliminate the cocaine sentencing disparity. In 1997, Michael S. Gelacak, then vice chairman of the Sentencing Commission, wrote, “Congress and the Sentencing Commission have a responsibility to establish fair sentencing standards that protect the public. . . . We have jointly failed in our approach toward crack cocaine sentences, and the result is seriously disparate sentences. We should not lose sight of that overriding reality. . . . The only real solution to the injustice is to eliminate it.” Ten years later, even presidential candidate Barack Obama had added his voice to the growing chorus of criticism: “[L]et’s not make the punishment for crack cocaine that much more severe than the punishment for powder cocaine when the real difference between the two is the skin color of the people using them. Judges think that’s wrong. Republicans think that’s wrong. Democrats think that’s wrong, and yet it’s been approved by Republican and Democratic Presidents because no one has been willing to brave the politics and make it right. That will end when I am President.”3 On August 3, 2010, President Obama signed legislation that decreased, but did not eliminate, the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses. The new law reduced the sentencing disparity from 100:1 to 18:1.
Some celebrated this change as a significant step toward ending a historic wrong. I am not one of them. In 1964, when asked whether the United States had made sufficient progress toward racial equality, Malcolm X said, “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there is no progress. . . . The progress is healing the wound.” Accordingly, I think the sentencing differences should be completely eliminated because there is no scientific justification for the differential treatment of crack and powder cocaine under the law. This seems the ethical thing to do in light of the evidence and ONDCP’s claim to rely on science and evidence.
I sat there in the methamphetamine roundtable and wondered whether the same mistakes would be made with this drug as were made with crack cocaine. There certainly were plenty of signs suggesting this. Like with crack cocaine in the mid-1980s, a relatively small number of individuals from a derided group were seen as users of methamphetamine. They were white but gay, poor, or rural. In 2005, about a half million people reported that they had used methamphetamine in the past thirty days (an indication of “current use”). This number is small when compared with the 15 million people who smoked marijuana within the same period. Whenever a “new” drug is introduced to a society and a relatively small number of marginalized individuals use that drug, incredible stories about the drug’s effect can be told and accepted as fact. This is so because few people have the experience with the drug to challenge questionable claims. We saw this in the 1930s when authorities said that marijuana caused people to become psychotic and commit murder. These claims were often unchallenged and taken as fact. In fact, they were a major reason that the federal law (Marihuana Tax Act of 1937) essentially banning marijuana was passed. At the time, marijuana use was confined to a small number of minorities and “hipsters.” Of course, today, if an individual says that marijuana use leads to insanity and murder, he or she would not be taken seriously.
Another similarity with the “crack scare” of the 1980s was the increasing number of stories written about methamphetamine in the national press. On August 8, 2005, Newsweek ran a dramatic cover story called “The Meth Epidemic.” Use of this drug, according to the magazine, had reached epidemic proportion. The evidence suggested otherwise. At the height of methamphetamine’s popularity, there were never more than a million current users of the drug. This number is considerably lower than the 2.5 million cocaine users, the 4.4 million illegal prescription opioid users, or the 15 million marijuana smokers during the same period. The number of methamphetamine users has never c
ome close to exceeding the number of users of these other drugs.4
Coverage was filled with accounts of desperate users turning to crime to support their use of the “dangerously addictive” drug. Many articles focused on the “littlest victims.” The New York Times headlined one story, DRUG SCOURGE CREATES ITS OWN FORM OF ORPHAN, describing an apparent rise in related foster care admissions and reports of addicted biological parents who were impossible to rehabilitate. The paper quoted a police captain who said methamphetamine “makes crack look like child’s play, both in terms of what it does to the body and how hard it is to get off.”5 The paper also claimed, “Because users are so highly sexualized, the children are often exposed to pornography or sexual abuse, or watch their mothers prostitute themselves.”6 Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called it “the most dangerous drug in America,” and President George W. Bush proclaimed November 30, 2006, National Methamphetamine Awareness Day. Back in 1986, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed the entire month of October Crack-Cocaine Awareness Month. The parallels were frightening.
At the end of the ONDCP discussion, we were asked to meet with writers in small groups to answer any lingering questions. Dozens lined up to meet with the police officer and attorney. They wanted to hear more about how methamphetamine caused gay men to engage in sexual practices that increased HIV rates; how it kept people up for consecutive days without sleeping; how the drug made people behave irrationally; and how it ruined people’s teeth and made them unattractive. While some of the writers were undoubtedly there simply seeking a sexy story to sell, I think most genuinely wanted to learn about the drug and, if needed, to warn the public about its dangers. They weren’t thinking about separating anecdote from evidence. They had just heard from a U.S. attorney and a cop that this drug was nasty stuff. The government invited both of these individuals as experts on the topic. As a result, there didn’t seem to be a need to separate fact from fiction. Of course the information was factual. Otherwise, it would not have been presented in a forum sanctioned by the government, would it?