The Rational Choices of Crack Addicts
Those addicts seemed enslaved by crack, like the laboratory rats that couldnt stop pressing the lever for cocaine even as they were starving to death. The cocaine was providing such powerful dopamine stimulation to the brains reward center that the addicts couldnt resist taking another hit.
At least, that was how it looked to Dr. Hart when he started his research career in the 1990s. Like other scientists, he hoped to find a neurological cure to addiction, some mechanism for blocking that dopamine activity in the brain so that people wouldnt succumb to the otherwise irresistible craving for cocaine, heroin and other powerfully addictive drugs.
But then, when he began studying addicts, he saw that drugs werent so irresistible after all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/science/the-rational-choices-of-crack-addicts.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1379446511-dR6fD0R7xhEXLvcHNa6dbw
jollyreaper2112
(1,941 posts)It's removing a perfectly good, scientifically-sound basis for discriminating against black and poor people. Why wasn't this man's funding cut with the sequester?
This post sarcasm-enriched(tm).
KT2000
(20,577 posts)very interesting information. He is all about dispelling myths that prop up the war on drugs and replacing it with the truth.
He said that the majority of heroin deaths are caused by taking barbiturates or alcohol while doing heroin.
There never was a crack baby epidemic.
and more
He is a brave guy to go up against the party line, IMHO.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)the British neuropsychopharmacologist who also went against the "party line" by pointing out that ecstasy is less dangerous than horseback riding (because of this, he was forced out of his position on the government advisory board).