Our researchers are from a particular class and they are predominantly white. They don't even think of themselves as being a part of the political ma… - Carl Hart

Make sure we warn people not to combine opioids with another drug. Set up free drug purity testing sites. People who are addicted to opioids and who are having a problem, and they need treatment. We should look around the world, places like Switzerland.

I worry that people who need prescription opioids for their pain will not be able to get their prescription opioids, because we are getting crazy about opioids, in general. Opioids are excellent medications to treat pain. And we can’t forget that. We also have seen, even before this—we know that, for example, black people are less likely to be prescribed opioids even when they need it, less likely than their white counterparts. And so, all of these sort of unintended consequences, they always happen when we get crazy about drugs. And we don’t even save people.

when people overindulge, like every day multiple times a day, it’s going to disrupt some of your psychosocial functioning. Now, that is a small number of people. Only a few people engage in behavior like that. And I assure you that if they engage in behavior like that, that’s not their only problem. They have multiple other problems.