BAREFACED HYPOCRISY DRIVES US DRUG LAWS

WHEN the author of bestselling expose Fast Food Nation turned his sights on
America's underground economy, he found a mountain of government hypocrisy
among all the pot and porn.

In Reefer Madness and Other Tales from the American Underground, his second
book, Eric Schlosser broadens his target from fast food and takes a swipe
at what he sees as the river of moral and economic contradictions that run
through America's so-called "free market" economy.

"The free market ideology is a myth," said Schlosser, whose Fast Food
Nation, a dig at the burger and fries industry, is still riding high on
some bestseller charts after more than a year.

"The Government is intervening all the time in the market, but on whose
behalf?" he asked in a recent interview in London. "Is it protecting
somebody who wants to smoke marijuana in their home, a migrant worker
forced to live in a cave, or, more likely, a multinational corporation
drilling for oil?"

Reefer Madness - a title taken from a 1930s morality movie that warned of
hellfire consequences from smoking cannabis - picks apart America's
long-running crusade against pot and porn at a time when governments in
much of the Western world are letting individuals decide for themselves.

In the book, Schlosser investigates three pillars of the American
underground, marijuana, the traffic in illegal immigrants and pornography,
and asks why some private pleasures are strongly punished while public
crimes can pass unnoticed.

"The average convicted killer spends 11 years in prison in the United
States and 110,000 people are killed every year by alcohol, but the
punishment for possessing even a small amount of marijuana can be life in
prison," Schlosser said.

"At a time of so-called orange and red terror alerts, the Government is
using scarce law enforcement resources to round up people making bongs and
roach clips and thousands are in prison for marijuana offfences."

Schlosser believes the hypocrisy of the market is laid bare when some
politicians and goverments demand "zero tolerance" on marijuana, but accept
millions of dollars from alcohol and tobacco lobbyists.

He says it is contradictions like that which are the real "reefer
madness". "Certain things cannot be sold because they are immoral, while
other things - such as the exploitation of illegal immigrants, their
poverty and poor health - hardly raise a moral qualm," he writes.

Schlosser interviews cannabis smokers and growers who have been shut away
for years in prison, but he remains convinced harsh laws against the drug
will soften.

"In the short term I'm pessimistic because the current Bush administration
is a radical administration," he said. "But in the long term I'm
optimistic. A lot of these laws and systems are not sustainable."