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Carl Hart Substance Abuse Summary

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Carl Hart is a professor at Columbia University whose focus is on drug addiction. He has a very original view point when it comes to addictions, because he grew up in a community plagued by substance use problems, had used and sold drugs in the past, as well as now being a scientist which allows him to understand a whole other side of substance use. In Hart’s talk he is trying to disband the belief that most people who are involved in substance use will abuse those substances; he shares the statistic that 80-90% of drug users are not addicts, but rather they are individuals that the public would see as contributing members of our society and would never assume that they take part in substance use (3:40-4:15). As he goes on to explain …show more content…

As a child I was always instructed to look down upon them and their clients who I frequently saw in the hallway and elevator. I believed as a child that I would never grow up to be like “them”, there was a constant othering and dehumanizing of these individuals drilled into me from a young age, but by the time I had hit thirteen years old I was a consistent drug user. It was at this time in the midst of my problematic drug use that I realized I was exactly who I had always been told to look down upon and that those individuals I always avoided and thought negatively about were people just like me who were trying to escape something. As someone who experienced substance abuse for almost four years before quitting due to an overdose, my values around substance use are based off what I would have wanted from others during that time in my life as well as from literature and statistics. I would love to see Canada moving to a similar system as Portugal, where their drug laws and treatment comes from a harm reduction stand point and is focused on what the individual needs. I believe there are many reasons to use substances and holding the view that substances are evil and those who use them follow suit is not benefitting

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