Review of "Reefer Madness"

By: Art Jannicelli
www.WhatTheHellAmIDoingHere.com

I've also been busy with reading. I just finished reading REEFER MADNESS by Eric Schlosser. It is an investigative study of the American black markets in Marijuana, Porn, and illegal immigrant labor. I would reccomend this book to anyone.

If you believe in the legalization of Porn and Marijuana this will book will educate with some information to quote and if you oppose these things it will give you some strong evidence to consider. One of the main arguments he makes that I strongly agree with is that part of the popularity of Pot and Porn is the fact they are "Obscene". Both of these "obscene" items also have never been proven to be harmful. In both cases you also learn that people are being prosecuted for highly subjective religiously based laws and lives are being ruined for distribution of the "obscene" that has never been proven to be harmful.

Both Pot and Porn have been studied by the government and found to be relatively armless and the allegations against them to be unfounded. Pot was found to be less dangerous then Alcohol or cigarettes. To OD on Pot you would have to smoke 100lbs a minute for 15 minutes! In the case of Porn, "sex offenders were less likely to have used pornography than the average man and more likely to have been raised in a conservative household. In both of these cases when they have been legalized in Europe they saw a huge spike in popularity and then gradually consumption has fallen over time to below levels before their legalization. Schlosser then argues that what we need is fewer laws that are strictly enforced and allow people to do whatever they want to themselves in the privacy of their homes.

Schlosser also attacks illegal immigrant labor from the standpoint that it is very harmful to the US economy. He argues that what we are seeing globally is the "Mexicanization" of agriculture. The problem is America can never win at this because its actually even cheaper to move the farms to Mexico and not import workers at all. He argues that we are in a downward spiral to have 5 dollars a day for all workers globally. He has a great quote from FDR in 1933, "No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By living wages I mean more than a subsistence level -- I mean the wages of a decent living." The gravity of his book is well outlined in the last sentence of the book "The underground is a good measure of the progress and the health of nations. When much is wrong, much needs to be hidden.

This book was far better then Fast Food Nation it was much more focused. His next book ought to be awesome. It is on the American Prison system. That should be a truly shocking piece. I have a toured a prison, after that experience I think every American should tour a Prison before ever saying "Throw away the key..."