Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser changed how we look at a hamburger with a scathing narrative that featured descriptions of hazardous butchering facilities and exploited minimum-wage workers. This latest book promises to do the same with the way we think about, if not use, marijuana, handpicked fruit, and pornography. In a series of essays, Schlosser examines the United States' underground economy, or black market, which in his estimate represents as much as 10 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. He illustrates how mandatory drug sentencing not only fails to diminish substance abuse but also results in nonviolent pot growers serving more time than killers. He depicts the hardscrabble existence of California's largely illegal immigrant strawberry pickers, some of whom sleep in caves just a few miles away from affluent homes. And he observes that some of the largest profits from the pornography go to the hotel-owning conglomerates that rake it in from in-room pay-per-view charges. As a whole, the collection comes off as a compendium of Schlosser's earlier magazine articles rushed into book form (indeed, much of the book was published originally in Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, and U.S. News & World Report), but it is an eye-opening read from an author who has the magical ability to make us think. Katherine Hottinger
FROM THE PUBLISHER
America's black market is much larger than we realize, and it affects us all deeply, whether or not we smoke pot, rent a risque video, or pay our kids' nannies in cash. In Reefer Madness, the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation turns his exacting eye on the underbelly of the American marketplace and its far-reaching influence on our society. Exposing three American mainstays -- pot, porn, and illegal immigrants -- Schlosser shows how the black market has burgeoned over the past several decades. He draws compelling parallels between underground and overground: how tycoons and gangsters rise and fall, how new technology shapes a market, how government intervention can reinvigorate black markets as well as mainstream ones, and how big business learns -- and profits -- from the underground. Reefer Madness is a powerful investigation that illuminates America's shadow economy and the culture that casts that shadow.
SYNOPSIS
In his latest book of investigative journalism, Schlosser author of Fast Food Nation) presents three central players of the American black market—pornography, pot, and illegal immigrants—based on research he carried out for articles in Rolling Stone and the Atlantic Monthly. Writing in terrifically engaging prose, Schlosser details the business practices, schemes, criminal records, lifestyles and/or victimization of those involved, and relates the history of each enterprise, the role played by the US war on drugs and the process of US immigration, and the impact on the nation of the underground economy. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Time Magazine
Schlosser isn't attacking the pot industry here; he's going after the institutional hypocrisies that force it underground while leaving far more damaging practices, like the abuse of migrant workers, to fester openly. What ties Reefer Madness together is Schlosser's passionate belief that America is deeply neurotic, a nation divided against itself into a sunny, whitewashed mainstream and a lusty, angry, deeply denied subconscious. He just might be the shrink America needs. — Lev Grossman
The New York Times
Schlosser's argument walks a difficult, winding path. Porn, he says, should be made legal across the board, and pot as well. Both actions would throw light upon the darkness of the black market and thus reduce America's gross national pretense of virtue. At the same time, though, he writes, ''All those who now consider themselves devotees of the market should take a good look at what is happening in California. Left to its own devices, the free market always seeks a work force that is hungry, desperate and cheap.'' Which is true enough. As Schlosser smartly notes: ''The sort of black market labor once narrowly confined to California agriculture is now widespread in meatpacking, construction and garment manufacturing. The growth of the underground has lowered wages, eliminated benefits and reduced job security in these industries.'' — Sam Difton
The Los Angeles Times
At its most compelling, Reefer Madness is a great, muckraking ride. There's no hype in Schlosser's prose. Instead, he lets a cascade of facts make his points. — Emily Bazelon
The Washington Post
Schlosser attacks this big theme with admirably thorough reporting and a refreshingly clear, no-nonsense writing style. — Philippe Bourgois
Publishers Weekly
From the bestselling author of Fast Food Nation comes this captivating look at the underbelly of the American marketplace. In three sections, Schlosser, an Atlantic Monthly correspondent, examines the marijuana, migrant labor and pornography trades, offering compelling tales of crime and punishment as well as an illuminating glimpse at the inner workings of the underground economy. The book revolves around two figures: Mark Young of Indiana, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for his relatively minor role in a marijuana deal; and Reuben Sturman, an enigmatic Ohio man who built and controlled a formidable pornography distribution empire before finally being convicted of tax evasion, after beating a string of obscenity charges. Through recounting Young's and Sturman's ordeals, and to a lesser extent, the lives of migrant strawberry pickers in California, Schlosser unravels an American society that has "become alienated and at odds with itself." Like Fast Food Nation, this is an eye-opening book, offering the same high level of reporting and research. But while Schlosser does put forth forceful and unique market-based arguments, he isn't the first to take aim at the nation's drug laws and the puritanical hypocrisy that seeks to jail pornographers while permitting indentured servitude in California's strawberry fields. Nevertheless, this is a solid-and timely-second effort from Schlosser. As world events force Americans to choose values worth fighting for, Schlosser reminds readers, "the price of freedom is often what freedom brings." Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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