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."

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).