Columbia University professor of psychology Carl Hart visited Tulane University this Thursday to deliver a Murphy Institute Center for Ethics Public Lecture on recreational drug policy.
The event, entitled “Drug Use for Grown-ups: Where Liberty, Policy, and Science Collide,” filled the seats of Kendall Cram Lecture Hall. Faculty and students from Tulane’s departments of psychology, philosophy and political economy, among others, were many of the attendees.
The thesis Hart advances is not uncontroversial, as he has himself acknowledged. It is essentially that drugs — even so-called “hard drugs” like cocaine and heroin — should be decriminalized. According to Hart, the effects of these drugs are generally positive when used in an informed and responsible manner, and the number of drug-related deaths are “wildly exaggerated.”…