FROM FAST FOOD TO THE BLACK MARKET

Eric Schlosser recently had a drink with Morgan Spurlock -- the creator of
Super Size Me!, the new documentary in which the filmmaker consumes nothing
but McDonald's food for a month to gruesome effect -- to discuss the perils
of attacking the golden arches. In the best-selling Fast Food Nation,
Schlosser exposed the fast-food industry in all its fat-shovelling,
food-safety-flaunting, labour-exploiting glory. Thus, he seemed the right
mentor to pass along wisdom to Spurlock.

Schlosser says he told the filmmaker to prepare himself for a super-sized
counterattack.

"I told him who was going to come after him. It was just amazing to see the
personal attacks on him," the author says, "McDonald's is an incredibly mean
company. I'm sure some of the executives are nice guys, but in terms of
their corporation and their culture, they're incredibly mean."

The 44-year-old author was seated at a booth in a Toronto diner last week,
in town to discuss Reefer Madness, his latest book, which has just come out
in paperback. The work contains a trilogy of essays exploring the various
facets of the underground economy, which he argues represents as much as 20%
of the total American economy. One piece explores the marijuana trade.
Another focuses on migrant workers in California. The third is about the
porn industry.

All of the essays began as separate magazine articles, but Schlosser says he
soon realized the topics were related.

"I was in Indiana looking at the marijuana industry there. And I realized
how huge, huge, huge it was. That's when I became interested in the
underground economy," Schlosser says.

"I was living in New York City and you just assume there will be an
underground. But in Indiana, in that All-American landscape, you don't
assume it's there at all. So that really opened my eyes to this alternative
economy and culture."

The writer says he approached each of his topics from a position of relative
ignorance.

"I didn't approach marijuana as a campaigner for legalization. That piece
started when the editor of Atlantic Monthly asked me 'Is there anyone in
prison for marijuana?' and I had no idea. I was completely ignorant of the
history of pot. I knew nothing about the drug laws."

Schlosser soon found the answer to his editor's question was "Yes." Indeed,
the pot portion of his book opens with the story of Mark Young, a man
convicted to life without parole in Indiana for brokering the sale of 700
pounds of marijuana. The author notes that Young's sentence is higher than
the average penalty in his state for other crimes, including armed robbery,
rape and even murder.

Despite these apparent inequities, Schlosser did not come away from his
research convinced marijuana should be legalized. Instead, he feels it
should be simply decriminalized and reduced to a ticketable offence similar
to speeding. The author says his moderated stance is rooted in pragmatism.

"Right now, you can get a life sentence without parole for having a
relatively small amount of marijuana. That's extreme. But if you legalize
it, it would allow for marijuana to be mass-marketed and sold. To go from a
culture where you can get life without parole to one where it can be
advertised during the World Series is crazy," he says.

"But decriminalizing marijuana so you can possess small quantities for
personal use and grow small quantities for personal use would take a lot of
financial pressure off of the prison system and take profits out of the
black market. And then, five or 10 years down the road we can look at other
changes."

Opinion polls suggest the majority of Americans agree with Schlosser. He
concludes Reefer Madness with a plea to readers, noting they can effect
changes to the drug laws through voting and activism. Still, he admits it's
hard to find an American politician willing to champion more lenient pot
penalties.

"On so many subjects in the United States, so many points of view are taboo.
Richard Nixon, who in the '60s was so despised by the hippie counterculture,
was far more liberal than the mainstream Democrat party today," he says. His
book backs the claim, noting that three times as many people were arrested
under marijuana laws during Bill Clinton's presidency than during the Nixon
administration.

Like marijuana, Schlosser says the problems associated with illegal workers
or pornography could also be lessened if these underground economies became
mainstream.

"In terms of pornography, things like child pornography or violent
pornography should remain underground and illegal. But they represent a
tiny, tiny portion of the market," he says.

"With migrant workers, you want a work force that is above board. You don't
want a black market in labour. It affects all workers by bringing wages down
and it really punishes companies that obey the law. As soon as there's a
company that can break the law -- by cheating -- the people who obey the law
are punished."

As he promotes Reefer Madness, Schlosser continues the campaign started by
his previous book. Undeterred by becoming Ronald McDonald's arch-nemesis
after publishing Fast Food Nation, he is now working on a new book designed
to bring the book's message to pre-teens.

"I gave a reading last night, and there was someone there who was 11 years
old and had read the book. I guarantee you, when I was writing Fast Food
Nation, I didn't have 11-, 12-, or 13-year-old kids in mind," he says. "Now
that it's come out, I think it would be useful to have this information
available to the people who are really being targeted by these companies.
And we're going to try to do it in a way that respects their intellect. It's
not going to be a pop-up book or a picture book."

After completing his new food treatise, Schlosser plans to write a book
about prisons. Then, he hopes to return to his first passion. Before
becoming an investigative journalist, he was an author and playwright
(Indeed, one of his works was recently produced in London.) After focusing
on facts for so long, Schlosser says he'd like to return to fiction.

"I really would," he says. "After this prison book, I might take a break
from the dark side of American culture and just write fiction for a change."