Drug reformers get seduced by politicians who co-opt our language but who make no meaningful change. And when we don't hold politicians accountable, we contribute to harm.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the need to hold politicians accountable for genuine reform rather than just accepting empty rhetoric.
Carl Hart emphasizes the dangers of allowing politicians to manipulate language associated with drug reform without delivering real changes. He argues that merely discussing reform is insufficient; active accountability from the public is necessary to prevent further harm and ensure that meaningful progress is made in addressing issues related to drug policy and its societal effects.
In practice
In a discussion about drug policy at a community meeting to stress the importance of public accountability.
Drug reformers need to be hyper-vigilant. I understand that when you've been oppressed so long, so thirsty for truth, that when someone comes along and gives you a sip of water, you think that they're the savior. But in that water there may be cyanide.
Too often, ill-informed rhetoric has led to emotional hysteria that obfuscates solid evidence regarding the real problems faced by poor people and, in overwhelmingly great proportions, by black people.
You don't have money, you can't do science. But that's part of the price that I pay.
What was it Catelyn Stark had called them, that night at Bitterbridge? The knights of summer. And now it was autumn and they were falling like leaves.
Globalization is exposing new fault lines - between urban and rural communities, for example.
You know, small children take it as a matter of course that things will change every day and grown-ups understand that things change sooner or later and their job is to keep them from changing as long as possible. It’s only kids in high school who are convinced they’re never going to change. There’s always going to be a pep rally and there’s always going to be a spectator bus, somewhere out there in their future.
Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring.
Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.
The great and unlooked for discoveries that have taken place of late years have all concurred to lead many men into the opinion that we were touching on a period big with the most important changes.
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