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    Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the Black Market
    Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the Black Market
    Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the Black Market
    Audiobook9 hours

    Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the Black Market

    Written by Eric Schlosser

    Narrated by Eric Schlosser

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    In Reefer Madness, the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation investigates America's black market and its far-reaching influence on our society through three of its mainstays -- pot, porn, and illegal immigrants.
    The underground economy is vast; it comprises perhaps 10 percent -- or more -- of America's overall economy, and it's on the rise. Eric Schlosser charts this growth, and finds its roots in the nexus of ingenuity, greed, idealism, and hypocrisy that is American culture. He reveals the fascinating workings of the shadow economy by focusing on marijuana, one of the nation's largest cash crops; pornography, whose greatest beneficiaries include Fortune 100 companies; and illegal migrant workers, whose lot often resembles that of medieval serfs.
    All three industries show how the black market has burgeoned over the past three decades, as America's reckless faith in the free market has combined with a deep-seated puritanism to create situations both preposterous and tragic. Schlosser traces compelling parallels between underground and overground: how tycoons and gangsters rise and fall, how new technology shapes a market, how government intervention can reinvigorate black markets as well as mainstream ones, how big business learns -- and profits -- from the underground.
    With intrepid reportage, rich history, and incisive argument, Schlosser illuminates the shadow economy and the culture that casts that shadow.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMay 1, 2003
    ISBN9780743549608
    Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the Black Market

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    Reviews for Reefer Madness

    4/5

    389 ratings12 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Sort of an extensive article by an investigative reporter, about a quarter thirty percent marijuana, twenty strawberries and workers wages, and fifty pornography. The pornography is not immediately relevant and was quite outdated even when it was written in about 2001. The marijuana is recently becoming irrelevant as well.
    • 4/5
      I thought this book was incredbily well-written and interesting. It didn't seem like the type of book I would read but when I read it, I was hooked and couldn't stop. Plus, I picked up a lot of party trivia. For example, did you know that the first law in the United States on marijuana was that every household had to grow it? Of course, they used it to make hemp, which was a huge commodity back then, but that's the level of "Snapple-cap/Jeopardy" facts you can pick up... well, at least my stoner friends thought it was cool! haha ;)
    • 4/5
      This one definitely showed the other side of marijuana, illegal aliens, and porn, but it was already 11 years out of print when I read it, so the data isn't so fresh. I enjoyed the writing and would read others of Eric's works.
    • 5/5
      Very informative and absolutely infuriating. This should be required reading for everyone.
    • 1/5
      Such an interesting topic, but written in such a sensational, dumbed-down style -- what a shame! It was like a tabloid version of this study; the style felt like the author was trying to shock more than inform (and that's excluding the fact that most of this information I already knew).
    • 4/5
      Excellent reporting of the underside of the economy. "If the market does indeed embody the sum of all human wishes, then the secret ones are just as important as the ones openly displayed." The Black Markets covered by Schlosser are perfect examples of a free-market economy, without regulations. The efforts to ban such markets, and the failures to do so, are detailed in the essays. Informative and well written.
    • 4/5
      Great book, easy to read. At some point in the Porn chapter I got a little bored, but I am unsure why as when I picked the book back up I had it finished in 3 days. The strawberry chapter was infuriating and I haven't eaten them since. The Pot chapter was incredible and frustrating and he did a great job telling stories of people and giving me new information.
    • 5/5
      This is a powerful book. Broken into 3 parts, it deals with the history of our approach to marijuana use; our use of illegal immigrants, specifically in the strawberry fields of California; and the development of porn in our country, how it grew, and how our government's attempt to suppress it only continued to spark the flame.Eric Schlosser's meticulous research is written in an easy to understand form. He states the facts without any bias. For instance, you'll learn that a young man, with no prior record, arrested for marijuana possession can receive a longer prison sentence than a convicted murderer or rapist. And, while our country is in an uproar over illegal immigrants, our government allows these people to be used like slaves when convenient. When they are no longer needed, they are rounded up like cattle and sent back to Mexico. In the end, whether you agree with his conclusions or not, a new light is shed on a world most of us pay no attention to. And perhaps tells us that we need to get more involved.
    • 5/5
      We have been told for years to bow before "the market." We have placed our faith in the laws of supply and demand. What has been forgotten, or ignored, is that the market rewards only efficiency. Every other human value gets in its way. The market will drive wages down like water, until they reach the lowest possible level. pg 108
    • 4/5
      Very interesting and though provoking. However, I got to bored to complete the book.
    • 4/5
      Three decent essays posing as a coherent book.There's a broad unifying theme—the premise of examining "what happens in the black market." But the approach that Schlosser takes towards this content—what we could consider his methodology—varies widely from piece to piece, rendering the examination oddly diffuse, short on unifying vision.Compounding the problem is the fact that each piece comprising the book seems drawn from a different genre: the "drugs" chapter is essentially a persuasive piece, a call for marijuana-law reform, and the goal of examining "what happens" in the drug market is mostly subordinated to the making of that argument. (This isn't to say that growers, dealers and buyers don't make their appearances—but Schlosser's more interested in focusing on the few penalized growers that will help him to make his case rather than trying to draw a larger, richer picture of the market as a whole.) By contrast, the "Sex" chapter is built around the model of the biographical profile, looking at the figure of pornography magnate Reuben Sturman (1924-1997). Sturman was a colorful guy, and Schlosser makes his tale engaging reading, but I'm not convinced that Sturman embodies the vicissitudes of the porn industry so perfectly that one can pass off Sturman's life story as an exploration of the market.None of this is intended to knock the pieces themselves, which are clear, well-paced, and nicely detailed, essentially bedrock models of good journalism. But as a book it doesn't live up to the promise of its organizing principle.
    • 5/5
      This is a great book to go along with Fast Food Nation and Nickel and Dimed in America. All of these books discuss and demonstrate how corporate America while critical needs to be checked and government needs to step up to the plate. It is scary sometimes how close people are living to the edge. How lucky are we that we actually have the time, energy and money to buy and read these books?