The scientist and award-winning author on keeping kids safe--and why he says the police are a bigger concern for his sons than drugs

The Drug Policy Alliance, the nation’s most influential organization working to end the war on drugs and its resulting mass incarceration and criminalization, initiated the “Telephone Townhall” series last year to increase public understanding about the myths about drugs that drove the explosion of laws and sentencing schemes that cemented the United States as the world’s largest incarcerator.

Last week, Dr. Carl Hart, world-renowned neuroscientist and Associate Professor of Psychology at Columbia University—and the first African American to be tenured in the sciences at the school, participated in one of these conversations. His textbook on drugs, Drugs, Society, and Human Behavior, is the most widely used in the nation today, and his award-winning, best-selling memoir, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and...