cannabisnews.com: Much is Hidden





Much is Hidden
Posted by CN Staff on May 26, 2003 at 15:38:31 PT
Book Review By Ryan Bigge
Source: Toronto Star 
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).Note: The Fast Food Nation guy tackles America's underground economy The black market world of marijuana, porn and slaves, by Ryan Bigge. Reefer Madness:Sex, Drugs And Cheap Labor In The American Black MarketBy Eric SchlosserHoughton Mifflin, 310 pages, $34.95 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)Author: Ryan BiggePublished: May 25, 2003Copyright: 2003 The Toronto Star Contact: lettertoed thestar.com Website: http://www.thestar.com/ Related Articles:Sex, Drugs and Cheap Vegetableshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16295.shtmlReefer Madness: Notes From the Underground http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16240.shtmlSmoking Out America's 'Reefer Madness' http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16185.shtmlPot, Porn, and Strawberries http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16174.shtml
Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help




Post Comment