HASHISH TO ASHES

Fast Food Nation detailed a world ruled by the hamburger. No such
international perspective enlightens Schlosser's messy new book on
America's black economy, Reefer Madness

Reefer Madness... And Other Tales From The American Underworld By Eric
Schlosser

Over the past decade or so there seems to have been a dramatic increase in
the publication of a certain type of American book which seeks to imbue a
single cultural trend - say the growth of Prozac or label-clothing chains -
with a political significance that implicates us all.

Indeed such is the stated importance of these books that buying them
(rather than reading them) appears less an act of intellectual curiosity
than one of social responsibility. Perhaps that is why so many have become
bestsellers. At any rate, surely it is time someone wrote a book about the
global fall-out of this particular cultural trend.

A suitable choice for author might be Eric Schlosser, who knows the genre
well, having written Fast Food Nation and, now, Reefer Madness. The first
book was a classic of the form because its subject - the hegemony of the
hamburger - was both the symbol and the cause of all contemporary American
(and therefore planetary) ills. From obesity to the 'malling of the
landscape', from agricultural exploitation to corporate imperialism, fast
food was the easily digestible culprit. It was a clear, detailed argument
in no way impaired by its lack of originality.

The same cannot be said of Schlosser's second book. Its aim is to comment
on the nature of America's hidden or black economy, but what that comment
might be is hard to grasp. One problem is that Schlosser examines three
disparate markets (marijuana, illegal migrant labour and pornography) which
have little in common. Another is that the book feels out of date. The
title piece, for example, is an only slightly updated version of an article
that first appeared in Atlantic Monthly almost a decade ago. And the
section on pornography centres on a character, Reuben Sturman, who is now
dead and whose reign as the US's leading porn entrepreneur ended in the
early Nineties.

The approach to each subject also seems unrelated, as if their shared theme
emerged only after they were written. In the case of the essay on Sturman,
for instance, we get a riveting yarn about how a secretive businessman
avoided paying taxes. That his taxes were due on what was then a mostly
illicit operation seems only incidental.

Today, of course, pornography has become a mainstream business whose
profits go to tax-paying companies. Whether or not this is an improvement
Schlosser manages to avoid saying. He makes the obvious point that the
underground and legitimate markets are related - are usually separated, in
fact, by little more than temporary moral fashions - but he stops short of
defining that relationship.

It would have made for a more interesting thesis if Schlosser had examined
whether these parallel markets need one another. Does the success of a
black economy inevitably lead to its legitimisation or the failure of a
legitimate economy necessitate its movement underground?

Schlosser comes closest to confronting this question in his brief essay on
the migrant workforce in the Californian strawberry fields. He acknowledges
that the high-risk of strawberry cultivation encourages many growers to cut
their costs by employing Mexican workers. In the event, however, he prefers
to concentrate his attention on the raw deal that such migrants often
receive north of the border.

This may be a laudable stance but it tells us little that we did not know
or could not guess. 'A significant increase in the minimum wage,' Schlosser
argues, 'combined with tough penalties for companies that violate labor
laws, would greatly improve the lives of the poorest Americans.'

This is undoubtedly true. But what would it do for the poorest Mexicans?
The inescapable reason why Mexicans are prepared to suffer life in
California is because, however bad the working conditions, they are better
than those at home. In this sense the black economy is a global question
that requires multinational solutions. But this is a book whose concern is
only really with America. That may be a reasonable limitation, given that
what the US does today the rest of the world often follows tomorrow (the
very fact of this book's publication in Britain is a testament to that
reality). Yet without an international perspective it is hard to know what
circumstances lead to black markets.

Schlosser seems to suggest that an absence of government regulation is one
probable cause. In passing he notes estimates that put the black economy in
Britain at 12.5 per cent of GDP and in Italy at 27 per cent. What he does
not mention is that in Britain the black economy is blamed on too little
state regulation and in Italy on too much.

Notwithstanding its age, the strongest section of the book is the one
dealing with marijuana. Here the author is in command of his argument: put
simply, when demand for a product is high, prohibition has little or no
effect. In a book that features a diverting fact or figure on almost every
page (Schlosser is nothing if not a diligent sifter of statistics), the
title essay harvests a rich crop of legal absurdities regarding the trade
in marijuana.

Chief among these is the case of one Mark Young who was sentenced to life
imprisonment without parole for introducing a marijuana grower to a dealer.
There are many more. Under US law, we learn, 'a yacht can be seized if a
single joint is discovered on it' and in Oklahoma possession of 0.16
grammes of pot can end in a life sentence.

It is madness and there is ample proof here that the war on drugs does not
work. In selecting the 'soft' drug of marijuana, though, Schlosser has
opted for the soft option. If American drug policy is not working with
marijuana neither is it working with hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

Does that mean they too should be legalised, or at least decriminalised?
Schlosser does not say. In conclusion he merely states that a black market
is the unhealthy manifestation of the gap between public and private
morality. But as to what should fill that gap, he leaves us, like his
subject, in the dark.