This page contains links and supplemental course material that may be useful to students enrolled in Dr. Stephen Ostertag's Criminology course at Tulane University.

Dragnet - "The Big 17" - An episode of the the Dragnet police drama series that depicts a point of view that drug use, in this case, marijuana and heroin, leads to violent behavior. Los Angeles Police Chief W. H. Parker is credited as a technical advisor of the show. This video is included here to demonstrate the police-centric, social construction of drug scares. Research has consistantly shown that neither of these drugs cause violent behavior, and indeed cause docile behavior. Furthermore, most "drug-related" crime is the result of the black-market environment in which illicit drug enterprises operate rather than a perpetrator being high at the time.