POT, PORN AND PICKERS

Based on his books, one might assume that author Eric Schlosser was
born with a muckraking gene.

His 2001 best seller "Fast Food Nation" looked at how the domination
of fast food in the American diet has transformed the country
physically, politically, socially and financially. His follow-up,
"Reefer Madness," looks at three aspects of the nation's underground
economy -- pornography, marijuana, and migrant workers -- and what a
major role those black markets play in America.

Schlosser is actually a relative latecomer to journalism, having
written plays and novels and worked for a film company before he began
writing magazine articles.

"When I decided to try journalism, I decided to try a kind of
journalism that I liked reading, but I didn't find that a lot of
people were writing," he said in a recent interview. "I started doing
this kind of journalism when celebrity journalism was just reaching
its peak, and I just had no interest in any of that. I tried to do
something that was for me more interesting and more important."

Schlosser's brand of journalism largely eschews any sort of linear
narrative structure, instead constructing a web out of anecdotal
accounts, historical context, scientific facts and political analysis.
While he greatly favors facts over rhetoric to make his points, he has
been painted by some critics as a left-wing, anti-corporate polemicist.

"I'm not trying to write agitprop," he said. "What I'm trying to do is
make people think about these things. I'm absolutely being attacked
with being some kind of left-wing journalist. I was at the University
of Texas and people were calling me anti-American, but that just shows
us how far to the right our political debate has gone. 'Fast Food
Nation' was chosen as the best business book of the year by Fortune
magazine, and some of the best reviews of 'Reefer Madness' have come
from Business Week and the Financial Times."

While "Fast Food Nation" was a unified, original work of nonfiction,
"Reefer Madness" originated out of magazine articles that Schlosser
had written previously for the Atlantic Monthly and U.S. News & World
Report. Those articles have been expanded, updated, and tied together
by the concept of an American black market, running underneath a
mainstream economy that simultaneously condemns it and profits from
it.

The first section, "Reefer Madness," deals with anti-marijuana laws in
the United States, and the growing disconnect between a public that
increasingly favors decriminalization and a government that sees
nothing wrong with imposing long prison sentences for relatively minor
pot-related offenses. Schlosser wrote the first version of the
articles a decade ago and says things have only gotten worse.

"It's like this headless animal that continues to move forward," he
said. "The fervor behind the war on drugs in general is gone, but
there are still true believers in power. Opinion polls consistently
show that most people want medicinal marijuana made available and that
most Americans favor decriminalization of pot. But tell that to the
Justice Department."

The middle section of "Reefer Madness" looks at the plight of migrant
workers who pick strawberries in California, essentially working as
indentured servants. The book was written before President Bush
offered his proposal to grant illegal immigrants temporary "guest
worker" status. Schlosser thinks this is a terrible idea that
essentially extends the inequalities that immigrant agriculture
workers suffer into other industries, which will end up hurting both
immigrant and American workers alike.

"The constant argument from industry is that Americans won't do these
jobs," he said. "Well, Americans won't do these jobs at the wages that
are offered. If the wages were raised, Americans would line up for
these jobs. In Fast Food Nation,' I wrote about how there used to be a
waiting list at American meatpacking plants. And now there's a high
turnover rate because of the terrible pay and the terrible working
conditions."

Schlosser admits that he's not as passionate about the issue of
pornography, the subject of the book's final section, as he is about
marijuana laws and migrant workers' rights. But he says he was drawn
to writing about the story of Reuben Sturman, a Cleveland entrepreneur
who ended up running a hugely successful nationwide pornography
business until federal authorities finally shut him down.

In all three cases, Schlosser argues that America would be better off
acknowledging this shadow economy and bringing it out into the light,
rather than winking at it and allowing problems within it to fester.
He notes that gambling, once considered as sinful as pot smoking or
pornography, has become an essential part of many state budgets.

"Once it became clear that gambling could be a very, very profitable
activity, not only for corporations but the states, suddenly it wasn't
illegal any more, and organized crime lost all its gambling revenue,"
he said. "Thirty years ago, gambling was like pornography. They would
send you to prison for running a gambling operation, and now a lot of
state budgets are dependent on gambling revenue."

Schlosser's next book will look at another controversial growth
industry in the American economy -- the prison system.

Rob Thomas is an entertainment writer for The Capital Times and a
regular book reviewer.