This Heroin-Using Professor Wants to Change How We Think About Drugs

Prof. Carl Hart saw drugs as destroyers of communities. Then he saw the positive side. “We have miseducated the public,” he said.

Carl L. Hart, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, fielded questions the other day about his new book, which makes an unconventional case for drug use. Dr. Hart, are you on anything now? “No. I’m in interview season now,” he said on a recent afternoon. “Why would you waste your substance on an interview? You have to concentrate and focus.”