Harry G. Levine

     Professor

     Department of Sociology

     Queens College, City University of New York

     Flushing, New York 11367

      718- 997-2800  /  Email: Harry.Levine@QC.cuny.edu

 

 


Harry G. Levine received his PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and his B.A. from Brandeis University. In recent years he has taught Introduction to Sociology, Drugs and Society, the History of Food, and Sociological Theory.

 

Much of his research has focused on drugs, alcohol and food in historical context. He has won awards for his writing about the history of addiction, about alcohol prohibition and regulation, and about crack cocaine and the war on drugs. In 2007 he won the Lindesmith Award for Distinguished Scholarship.

 

His current research examines the epidemic of marijuana arrests in New York City and through out the U.S.  —disproportionately of young blacks and Latinos, who use marijuana at lower rates than young whites. This work has been cited in editorials and news stories in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, and many other publications.

 

Marijuana-Arrests.Com – new website

A small library of work on:  race and policing policy, stop and frisks, arrest and ticket quotas, illegal searches, criminal records, collateral consequences, marijuana possession arrests, and the NYPD .  Photos, graphs, tables, testimony, reports and excerpts from many newspaper stories.

 

Selected Publications (most are a pdf which can take a moment to load)

Testimony to the New York State Senate Regarding Marijuana Arrests – June 2011
Includes new data showing NYPD arrests by precinct and arrests in 13 counties and cites in NY State

$75 Million A Year: The Cost of New York City's Marijuana Possession Arrests March 2011
Report released with the Drug Policy Alliance about the cost of arresting and prosecuting 50,000 people a year

Arresting Blacks for Marijuana in California, 2007-2009. Oct 2010.
Report released with California NAACP about arrests of  blacks for marijuana possession in 25 California Counties and 25 California Cities where blacks are arrested at 4, 6, 8 and even 12 times the rate of whites.
Arresting Latinos for Marijuana in California, 2007-2009. Oct 2010.
Report released with Latino civil rights organization about the disproportionate arrests of Latinos for marijuana possession in 33 California cites.

The Epidemic of Pot Arrests in New York City – Aug 09 / Alternet
Op-ed with 2008 arrest data and info on racially-biased pot arrests nationally

 Marijuana Arrest Crusade: Racial Bias and Police Policy in New York City, 1997-2007 – Pdf -  May 08
New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) report, 100 pages /


Drug Arrests and DNA: Building Jim Crow's Database – 2000 word "abstract" in GeneWatch - Dec 08
Drug Arrests and DNA: Building Jim Crow's Database – full paper with graphs and notes – Jan  09

Pastrami Land: The Jewish Deli in New York City   Contexts Magazine / July 07 

Troy Duster: A Biography in History American Sociological Association / Footnotes (Oct 2004)

Regard Yourself As a Writer: Unconventional Advice For New Sociology Graduate Students (Still circulating, comments welcomed)

The Secret of World-Wide Drug Prohibition: The Uses and Varieties of Drug Prohibition  The Independent Review, Fall 2002

Global Drug Prohibition: Its Uses and Crises  (Revised version of the above with some new material for a European audience, The International Journal of Drug Policy, Spring 2003

Crack In The Rearview Mirror: Deconstructing Drug War Ideology  Social Justice, 2004

Crack In America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice University of California Press, 1997

Crack in Context: America's Latest Demon Drug Chapter 1 of Crack in America

Safe Treyf: New York Jews and Chinese Food  From: The Taste of American Place: A Reader on Regional and Ethnic Foods (1997)

Global Drug Policy: A Retreat from War Contexts (new ASA magazine) Fall 2002

Blame Canada: The Specter of Marijuana Decriminalization in Canada Pacific News Service, July 2002

Drug Commissions, The Next Generation: To Boldly Go......  International Journal of Drug Policy (1994)

Alcohol Prohibition and Drug Prohibition: Lessons from Alcohol Prohibition for Drug Prohibition (Nov 2004)

Temperance Cultures: Concern About Alcohol Problems in Nordic and English-Speaking Cultures   The Nature of Alcohol and Drug-Related Problems, 1992

The Birth Of American Alcohol Control: Prohibition, the Power Elite, and the Problem of Lawlessness  Contemporary Drug Problems,  1985

The Discovery of Addiction: Changing Conceptions of Habitual Drunkenness in America  From: Journal of Studies on Alcohol (a golden oldie from 1978)

Also – Media Coverage of Pot Arrests in New York City in 2009-2011  – various stories –

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


3/2012