"Seminar on Drugs, Law and Policy". Taught by Jeffrey Fagan, Columbia Law School, New York, NY. Spring 2000.
Course Description
The use of intoxicants has been practiced in virtually all cultures and in all epochs of history. In the U.S., the control and regulation of drug use has been a recurring legal and social problem. Beginning with widespread alcohol abuse in colonial New York, through the opium dens of the 19th century, and continuing in the contemporary cocaine crises of the late 20th century, the control of intoxicants has engendered important social experiments such as the Harrison and Volstead Acts, widespread drug testing, and a significant expansion in the incidence of incarceration. Contemporary drug policy has raised significant constitutional issues, such as search and seizure, and issues of distributive justice. In this seminar, we will examine the social and historical processes of the construction of "drug problems," survey the phenomena of drug and alcohol use, assess the legal and social theories underlying efforts to control it, and consider law and broader social policies to control drugs and drug problems.
Students in the seminar will produce a comprehensive, thoroughly researched paper on specific aspects of law and social policy to control drug and alcohol use.
Reading List
Course Outline
| Part I. Theory: Constructing Drug and Alcohol Problems |
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Intoxication: why people use drugs and alcohol
Historical shifts in the definition of "drug" problems
Drugs, alcohol and violence
Gender, drugs and alcohol Race and drugs
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| Week 1 |
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Course Overview
Excerpts from the 1967 President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, Report of the Task Force on Narcotics and Drug Abuse.
Film
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Week 2
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Siegel, R.K., 1989. The fourth drive. Chapter 10 in Intoxication: In Pursuit of Artificial Paradise. New York: Dutton
Johnson, B.D., et al., 1990. Drug abuse in the inner city: Impact on hard drug users and community. Drugs and Crime -- Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research 13: 9-69 (1990).
Fagan, J., 1990. Intoxication and aggression. Drugs and Crime -- Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research 13: 241-320 (1990).
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Week 3
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Roberts Dorothy E., 1997. Representing Race: Unshackling Black Motherhood. 95 Mich. L. Rev. 938.
Amicus Curiae Brief: Cornelia Whitner v. The State of South Carolina, Summer 1998, 9 Hastings Women's L.J. 139.
Zimmer, L.P., and Morgan, J.P., 1997. Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts, Pp. 7-46. New York: The Lindesmith Center.
Fagan, J., 1994. Women and drugs revisited: Female participation in the cocaine economy. Journal of Drug Issues 24 (2): 179-226.
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| Part II. Epidemiology: Patterns of Drug and Alcohol Use |
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Who uses drugs?
Who drinks?
Becoming an addict
"Gateways" and other progressions
Controlled drug use, drinking
Desisting from drugs and alcohol
Drug selling
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Week 4
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Kandel, D.B., 1991. The social demography of drug use. The Milbank Quarterly 69: 365-414.
Kaplan, J., 1983. Heroin as a social problem. Chapter 1 in The Hardest Drug. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Becker, H.S., 1967. History, culture and subjective experience: An exploration of the social bases of drug-induced experiences. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 8: 163-78.
Kantor, G.K., and Straus, M.A., 1987. The "drunken bum" theory of wife beating. Social Problems 34: 213-231
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Week 5
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Waldorf, D., 1983. Natural recovery from opiate addiction: Some social psychological processes of untreated recovery. Journal of Drug Issues 13: 237-80.
Reinarman, C., et al., 1996. The contingent call of the pipe: Binging and addiction among heavy cocaine smokers. Chapter 4 in Crack in America, edited by C. Reinarman and H. Levine. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
Morgan, J., and Zimmer, L., 1996. The social pharmacology of smokeable cocaine: Not all it's cracked up to be. Chapter 7 in Crack in America.
French, J.,1993. Pipe dreams: Crack and the life in Philadelphia and Newark. In Crack Pipe as Pimp: An Ethnographic Investigation of Sex-for-Crack Exchanges, edited by M.S. Ratner. New York: Lexington Books.
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Week 6
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Fields, A., 1986. Weedslingers. In Teen Drug Use, edited by G. Beschner and A. Friedman. Lexington MA: Lexington Books.
Bourgois, P., 1989. In search of Horatio Alger: Culture and ideology in the crack economy. Contemporary Drug Problems 16: 619-650.
Goldstein, P.G., et al., 1990. Crack and homicide in New York City, 1988. Contemporary Drug Problems 16: 651-687.
Fagan, J.A., 1992. Drug selling and licit income in distressed neighborhoods: The economic lives of street-level drug users and dealers. Pp. 99-142 in Drugs, Crime and Social Isolation: Barriers to Urban Opportunity, edited by G.E. Peterson & A.V. Harrell. Washington DC: Urban Institute Press.
Levitt, S., and Venkatesh, S., 1999. An economic analysis of a drug selling gang's finances. NBER Working Paper No. 6592. Cambridge MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
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| Part III. Social Control: Drug and Alcohol Laws |
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Historical landmarks: The Harrison and Volstead Acts, Harry Anslinger and marijuana
Interdiction - supply reduction
Prosecuting wholesale markets
Policing retail markets Policing users - demand reduction
Symbolic and substantive laws - Mandatory minimums
Deterrence through drug testing
MADD and the war on drunk drivers
Drug wars
Comparative Case Studies
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Week 7
Social Construction of Drug Laws and Problems |
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Musto, D.F., 1987. The history of legislative control over opium, cocaine, and their derivatives. Pp. 37-73 in Dealing with Drugs, edited by R. Hamowy. San Francisco: Pacific Institute for Research on Public Policy.
Levine, H.G., and Reinarman, C., 1993. From prohibition to regulation: Lessons from alcohol policy for drug policy. Pp. 160-93 in Confronting Drug Policy, edited by R. Bayer & G.M. Oppenheimer. New York: Cambridge University Press.
DiChiara, A., and Galliher, J.F., 1994. Dissonance and contradictions in the origins of marijuana decriminalization. Law and Society Review 28: 41-77.
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Week 8
Drug Testing |
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145 A.L.R. Fed 335 (1998) "Supreme Court's Views on Mandatory Testing for Drugs or Alcohol. " This reading summarizes relevant case law and 4th amendment issues.
30 Rutgers L.J. 473 (1999) "Liability of a Laboratory for Negligent Employment or Pre-Employment Drug Testing." This articles details the procedures of a drug testing laboratory and the possibilities for mechanical or human error. Also discusses relevant tort theory.
16 Alaska L. Rev. 297 (1999) "The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly: Drug Testing by Employers in Alaska." Overview of the legal implications of drug testing. Considers drug testing legislation at the state and federal level, from both the employee's and the employer's perspective. Describes the political climate that spawned the current abundance of drug testing legislation. Concludes that perceived workplace drug crisis prompting such legislation rests on faulty premises and should be reconsidered.
"Technology in Criminal Justice Creating the Tools for Transformation." This is an address given by Jeremy Travis, Director of the NIJ, March 13, 1997. It provides perspectives on the role and utility of drug testing technology in the criminal justice system.
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Week 9
Drugs, Privacy, and AIDS |
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Speaker: Ron Bayer, Columbia University School of Public Health
Gostin, L.O., and Hodge, J.G., Jr., 1998. Piercing the Veil of Secrecy in HIV/AIDS and Other Sexually Transmitted Diseases: Theories of Privacy and Disclosure in Partner Notification, 5 Duke J. Gender L. & Pol'y 9
O'Toole, E.M., 1995/1996. Note: Hiv?specific Crime Legislation: Targeting an Epidemic for Criminal Prosecution, 10 J.L. & Health 183.
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| Part IV. Punishment and the Impacts of Law |
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Constitutional issues
Distributive justice
Procedural justice
Social norms and legitimacy
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Week 10
Distributive Justice |
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Human Rights Watch--"Cruel and Usual--Disproportionate Sentences for New York Drug Offenders"; March 1997
. Sara Sun Beale"What's Law Got To Do With It? The Political, Social, Psychological and Other Non-Legal Factors Influencing the Development of (Federal) Criminal Law" Buffalo Criminal Law Review (1997)
The Record of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York--"A Wiser Course: Ending Drug Prohibition"--June 1994
Justice Policy Institute, "New York State of Mind?: Higher Education vs. Prison Funding in the Empire State, 1988-1998"
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Week 11
Procedural Justice and Street-level Drug Law Enforcement |
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Tracy Meares, Social organization and drug law enforcement, 35 Am.Crim.L.Rev. 191 (1998).
Michael Letwin, Report from the Front LineThe Bennett Plan, Street-Level Drug Encorcement in New York City, and the Legalization Debate, 18 Hofstra L.Rev. 795 (1990).
Erika Johnson, A Menace to SocietyThe Use of Criminal Profiles and its Effects on Black Males, 38 How. L.J. 629 (1995).
Carolyn Wolpert, Considering Race and CrimeDistilling Non-Partisan Policy from Opposing Theories, 36 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 265 (1999).
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| Part V. Reducing Harm, Drug Legalization |
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Compartive Studies
Drug treatment
Restricting alcohol availability
Needle exchange
Methadone problems
Drug legalization - pro's and con's
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Week 12
Comparative Studies
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Week 13
Drug Courts and Drug Treatment
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Belenko, S., 1998. Research on drug courts: A critical review. National Drug Court Institute Review 1:2-43.
Gostin,L.O., 1993. Compulsory treatment for drug dependent persons: Justifications for a public health approach to drug dependency. Pp. 258-290 in Confronting Drug Policy.
Simpson, D.D., et al., 1999. A national evaluation of treatment outcomes for cocaine dependence. Archives of General Psychiatry 56: 507-514.
Dorf, M., and Sabel, C., 2000. Drug Treatment Courts and Emergent Experimentalist Government. Vanderbilt L. Rev. (In press)
Hon. Peggy Fulton Hora, Hon. William G. Schma, & John T.A. Rosenthal, 1999, Therapeutic jurisprudence and the drug treatment court movement: Revolutionizing the criminal justice system's response to drug abuse and crime in America, 74 Notre Dame L. Rev. 439.
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Week 14
Harm Reduction
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Week 15
Drug Legalization Issues |
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