Research Interests

Law, crime, and social justice; drugs in society; political sociology.

Biography, Education and Training

B.S., Babson College
M.A., San Francisco State University
Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara

Selected Publications

• "Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice," with H.G. Levine et al (University of California Press, 1997)
• "Cocaine Changes: The Experience of Using and Quitting," with D. Waldorf and S. Murphy (Temple University Press, 1991)
• "American States of Mind: Political Beliefs and Behavior" (Yale University Press, 1987)
• "The War on Drugs" Oxford Encyclopedia on American Social History (Oxford University Press, 2012) with H.G. Levine
• "Does Cannabis Cause Poverty, Too? Beyond the Malevolence Paradigm," Addiction 106 (2011)
• "Medical Marijuana Patients: Population Characteristics from Nine California Clinics," Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 43/2 (2011), with H. Nunberg, T. Heddleston, F. Lanthier
• "Signs and Shapes of a Culture of Tolerance: Ethnographic Impressions from Amsterdam," Sustain: Journal of Environmental and Sustainability Issues 21 (2009)
• "Cannabis Policies and User Practices: Market Separation, Price, Potency, and Accessibility in Amsterdam and San Francisco," International Journal of Drug Policy 20 (2009)
• "Policing Pleasure: Food Drugs, and the Politics of Ingestion," Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 7/3 (2007)
• "5 Myths About That Demon Crack: The Supreme Court's Sentencing Problem." Washington Post, October 14, 2007
• "Addition as Accomplishment: The Discursive Construction of Disease," Addiction Research and Theory 13 (2005)
• "Crack in the Rearview Mirror: Deconstructing Drug War Mythology," Social Justice 31 (2004) with H.G. Levine
• “The Limited Relevance of Drug Policy: Cannabis in Amsterdam and San Francisco,” American Journal of Public Health 94 (2004), with P. Cohen and H. Kaal
• “Cannabis Control: Cost Outweigh Benefits,” British Medical Journal 324 (2002)
• “An 11-Year Follow Up of a Network of Cocaine Users, “British Journal of Addiction 84, (1918), with S. Murphy and D. Waldorf
• “Social Organization and Differential Association: A Longitudinal Study of Violent Offenders,” Crime and Delinquency 34 (1988, with J. Fagan
• “The Social Construction of an Alcohol Problem: The Case of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and Social Control in the 1980’s.” Theory and Society 17 (1988)
• “Culture, Cognition, and Disinhibition: Sexuality and Alcohol in the Age of AIDS,” Contemporary Drug Problems 14 (1987), with B. C. Leigh
• “Causality, Context, and Contingency: Relationships Between Drug Abuse and Violent Delinquency,” Contemporary Drug Problems, 12 (1985), with J. Watters and J. Fagan
• “Unemployment and Economic Crisis,” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 28 (1983)
• “On the Cultural Domestication of Intoxicants,” in Intoxication and Society: Problematic Pleasures of Drugs and Alcohol, J. Herring, D. Weinberg, P. Withington, eds. (London: Palgrave McMillan, 2012)
• “Cannabis in Cultural and Legal Limbo: Criminalisation, Legalisation, and the Mixed Blessing of Medicalisation in the USA,” in The Drug Effect: Health, Crime and Society, S. Fraser and D. Moore, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
• “Law, Culture, and Cannabis: Comparing Use Patterns in Amsterdam and San Francisco,” in Pot Politics: Marijuana and the Costs of Prohibition, M. Earleywine, ed., (Oxford University Press, 2007), with P. Cohen
• “Twelve-Step Movements and Advanced Capitalist Culture: On the Politics of Self Control in Postmodernity,” in Social Movements and Cultural Politics, M. Darnovsky, B. Epstein, and R. Flacks, eds. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995)
• “From Prohibition to Regulation,” in Confronting Drug Policy: Illicit Drugs in a Free Society, R. Bayer and G. Oppenheimer, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 1993)