Pubdate: Sun, 25 May 2003
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2003 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Ryan Bigge
Note: Book review of 'Reefer Madness - Sex, Drugs And Cheap Labor In The 
American Black Market' by Eric Schlosser, Houghton Mifflin, 310 pages, $34.95

MUCH IS HIDDEN

The Fast Food Nation Guy Tackles America's Underground Economy

The Black Market World Of Marijuana, Porn And Slaves

To understand this book, and by extension, its author, we turn to page 225 
of Reefer Madness. That's four pages after the end of the text proper, 
which examines America's underground economy through the lenses of 
marijuana cultivation, migrant agriculture workers in California and 
pioneering porn barons. From page 225 on we get nearly 60 pages of 
annotated footnotes, followed by a nine-page bibliography.

Schlosser writes in the conclusion of Part One that "a society that can 
punish a marijuana offender more severely than a murderer is caught in the 
grip of a deep psychosis ... We need a marijuana policy that is calmly 
based on the facts." After only a hundred pages or so, Schlosser delivers 
an astonishing amount of stats and data:

More than 20 states have smoke-a-joint, lose-your-licence laws. ("Indeed, 
being caught smoking a joint on the couch of your living room, with your 
car parked safely in the driveway, can lead to a harsher punishment than 
being arrested for driving drunk.") The U.S. federal government spends 
about $4 billion (U.S.) a year to fight the war on marijuana.

Annual marijuana arrests doubled during the non-inhaling Clinton years -- 
three times as many potheads as the Nixon era. In the early 1980s, 3 per 
cent of Fortune 200 companies had employee drug testing; 10 years later, 
the figure is 98 per cent. Early parole is sometimes granted to violent 
criminals to provide space for non-violent drug offenders whose mandatory 
sentences do not allow for parole. Finally, "a little known provision of 
the forfeiture laws rewards confidential informers with up to one-quarter 
of the assets seized as a result of their testimony."

These are only some of the depressing chunks of info that Schlosser flicks 
our way. But as compelling as his research might be, what propels one 
through the first section on marijuana and later section three, "An Empire 
Of The Obscene," is Schlosser's ability to drape his reportage around an 
actual human being. At his best, the result is a compelling narrative 
tension interlaced with a reference library's worth of details.

Save for a handful of pages, Schlosser does not editorialize. Some will 
disagree with such conclusions as "The market rewards only efficiency. 
Every other human value gets in the way. The market will drive wages down 
like water, until they reach the lowest possible level." Schlosser himself 
is impossible to dismiss.

Like your high school calculus teacher who begged you to "show your work," 
Schlosser explains the reasoning behind his facts and figures. In section 
two, "In The Strawberry Fields," he writes "Maintaining the current level 
of poverty among migrant farmworkers" -- an average of $7,500 (U.S.) per 
annum -- "saves the average American household about $50 a year." Flipping 
to his notes section, we discover that "the typical American household 
spends roughly $5,031 a year on food -- and about $500 of that is spent on 
fruits and vegetables. According to Philip L. Marting, the cost of farm 
labour represents less than 10 per cent of the retail price for fruits and 
vegetables." Extrapolating from this, Schlosser suggests doubling wages 
would cost little but provide an enormous benefit for thousands of Mexican 
immigrants in California.

The 2001 bestseller Fast Food Nation established Schlosser as a Serious 
Journalist, a species that appears endangered. Still, one wonders if 
Schlosser is crusader or killjoy for pointing out that "nearly every fruit 
and vegetable found in the diet of health-conscious, often high-minded 
consumers is still picked by hand: Every head of lettuce, every bunch of 
grapes, every avocado, peach and plum." Journalism should make good 
citizens feel uncomfortable, but unlike Fast Food Nation, Schlosser slips 
in a number of melodramatic, Michael Moore moments designed to tweak 
liberal guilt.

Schlosser chooses not to demonize farmers, but rather the laws that prevent 
meaningful reform from occurring. The laws governing the employers of 
illegal immigrants are mild and rarely enforced. A mere 200 federal 
inspectors are in charge of handing out first offence fines of $250. "Lax 
federal enforcement has amounted to a tremendous subsidy for fruit and 
vegetable growers, one that has distorted the economics of those 
industries." As Schlosser points out, mechanization occurs only when it 
costs less than paying a person to do the same work. "Mexicanization" is a 
by-product of rampant sharecropping and fierce anti-union manoeuvring.

As noted above, Schlosser offers actual solutions, a pleasant change from 
the usual wishy-washy and meandering conclusion typically found in books of 
this genre.

As for the demon weed, he believes it should be decriminalized: "Denying 
cancer patients, AIDS patients and paraplegics access to a potentially 
useful medication that's safer than most legally prescribed drugs is 
vindictive and inhumane."

And porn? Well, Schlosser points out that when obscenity laws were 
overturned in Denmark in 1969, a sharp increase in pornography consumption 
was "followed by a long, steady decline." Prohibition of porn functions 
much like alcohol, it seems.

But most of his third and final section isn't about the morality of 
pornography as much as it is a profile of Reuben Sturman, the father of the 
modern porno industry. Sturman is a fascinating, tax-hating anti-hero that 
most will curse at and cheer for simultaneously. ("In addition to the usual 
motives for tax evasion, such as greed, Reuben Sturman did not want to give 
the government any money that could be used in the war against him.")

Sturman's ability to win obscenity trial after obscenity trial is a history 
until now hidden. His insouciance toward the law never wavers. And his 
scheming is nonpareil: "When the IRS seized the contents of his Cleveland 
home and later seized his house in Van Nuys, Sturman secretly bought them 
back at government auctions, for a pittance, through foreign corporations."

Schlosser believes "the current demand for marijuana and pornography is 
deeply revealing. Here are two commodities that Americans publicly abhor, 
privately adore and buy in astonishing amounts." According to him, the 
underground and the surface economies are swirled together like red and 
blue on a barber's pole.

I conclude with the final sentences of Reefer Madness: "Black markets will 
always be with us. But they will recede in importance when our public 
morality is consistent with our private one. The underground is a good 
measure of the progress and the health of nations. When much is wrong, much 
needs to be hidden."

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Toronto's Ryan Bigge, a former managing editor of Adbusters magazine, is 
the author of A Very Lonely Planet: Love, Sex And The Single Guy (Arsenal 
Pulp).
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MAP posted-by: Jackl