Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser

This is another great book by Eric Schlosser (you may remember him from Fast Food Nation). As the title says, it's about the sex industry, illegal labor, and drugs (only marijuana though). It's a lot like FFN in that it's an expose of industries you don't really know that much about besides the hype and lies that their opponents publicize about them.

His first subject is the marijuana trade. Schlosser gives a long and detailed history of the use and abuse of marijuana in this country. Most people probably don't know that at one time it (like most other drugs) was legal, and even fairly commonly used. Schlosser talks about plenty more that most people probably don't know about, like the incredible harshness of laws against people who are convicted of growing or selling it, as well as the scientific debate over the true effects of marijuana on a person's health. What may come as a shock to many is that it is widely acknowledged by scientists (even government appointed panels) that marijuana is much less dangerous a drug than alcohol, with less harmful side-effects and no evidence of life-threatening conditions caused by abuse (liver failure for alcohol vs. possible chronic bronchitis for marijuana). Despite knowing this, certain lawmakers and prominent people continue to push for harsh regulation of the drug for their own political reasons. I'll spare you the details because if you want to know more, that's what this book is for.

The second section, and the shortest, is about illegal labor, and thus illegal aliens. This is a section that really has the emotional punch. There's no way you can not sympathize with the guys he talks about; the ones who are responsible for the profits of so many farmers (and a significant chunk of California's economy) who at the same time are treated as second-class humans, and while being exploited by their employers are punished by America's laws. One of the things you might learn from this book is that these migrant laborers are nothing new; they've provided most of the muscle for farmers in the West since those states have been part of the US. The only thing that's new is that we made them illegal. While a lot of politicians and pundits talk about these people competing with native-born Americans for low-wage jobs, the truth is that those low-wage farming jobs have never been a source of income for most Americans. The only time there were a lot of native migrant farm laborers was in the Dust Bowl era. And that phenomenon ended when the that period did. Well, there is one other new thing occurring: more industrial employers are taking on illegal immigrants as laborers because they will work in illegal conditions (and if you know how far the protections of OSHA have fallen, you know that's really bad). Aside from farms, illegal immigrants are now working in meat-packing plants, the most dangerous job in America. Injuries and even death are common in those plants (a subject discussed more thoroughly in Fast Food Nation). I can almost guarantee you that after reading this book, you won't be asking why we're not doing more to keep illegals out; you'll be asking why the people who use those laborers aren't in jail.

The third part of the book deals not with the sex industry exactly, but rather the porn industry (including adult films, books, toys, etc). As Schlosser tells it, that basically boils down to one man: Ruben Sturman. If you've never heard of the name, that's not surprising. This was a man who had imaginary people as heads of companies that actually did business for him, and almost none of the money went through traceable means to him. Really, this is a story of a decades-long conflict between a businessman and government regulators. Sturman himself was no Hugh Heffner or Larry Flynt. He didn't indulge in his own product or have a promiscuous sex life. He only visited the set of one of his movies, and left because it was boring. He was eventually caught for tax evasion, but in the end I could hardly fault him for hiding his money from the government when they went after him on obscenity charges obsessively. When you hear how many times and ways they tried to prosecute him, you'll think it's ridiculous too. Along the way, you find out how he built an empire of porn from coast to coast (from Cleveland, of all places!) and how it reflected the fight between the government pornographers.

What's really funny is that although they finally caught him on tax evasion, that investigation was only started because they were trying to catch him on obscenity charges, something the federal government had been trying to do since he distributed "smut" books (stuff that's practically tame compared to the paperback romances we have on the shelf at the library). By the time they caught Sturman, Larry Flynt had won his fight over the constitutionality of porn and there were adult theaters open all over America. For a long time, they'd tried to claim that "adult bookstores" were somehow connected to the mob, but Sturman has always denied that charge and federal investigators of the mafia also rejected that idea. I think this section is interesting for the human story, but also because it details the rise and spread of pornography in America. Something that might surprise you in this section is Larry Flynt's prediction that if porn is freely available, people will stop wanting it. Sounds strange, but there are some numbers from Denmark to back that up (or some country, if I'm forgetting the right one).

That kind of parallels another argument he made about drugs. Evidently Spain and Portugal have legalized drugs and evidently are showing a decline in usage (as well as drug crime). I don't enough to say more about that.

In the end, Schlosser wraps up with his recommendations (legalize marijuana, let people have their porn, and criminilize the employers of illegal aliens, not the immigrants). The book's parts, while all reflecting illegal or shady sides of the American economy, have little in the way of a unifying theme. The introduction of the book talks as if this is more of an economic study on those segments and hands out some numbers and statistics. While these are certainly interesting and in-depth discussions of some important issues, they're really not economic studies, although he does talk about exactly how much money is represented in these industries (and it's a freakin' huge amount of money).

Schlosser is a fairly good writer, but he's more of a journalist type than Morgan Spurlock is, so you have to expect it to be quite a bit drier. While it's always enlightening and interesting, I'm not sure I'd call it entertaining exactly. This is a pretty heavy book (figuratively, that is), and I don't recommend it as casual reading if you're only going to pay half-attention to it. But I do strongly recommend taking the time to read it and appreciate it properly. At the very least, people need to know what he says about marijuana and illegal immigrants. So there it is. Read it!