Reefer Madness

Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market

By: Eric Schlosser

Narrated by: Eric Schlosser

Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

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 - perhaps 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. Through pot, porn, and migrants, 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.

©2003 Eric Schlosser (P)2003 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved. AUDIOWORKS is an imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster Inc.

Critic reviews

"Like Fast Food Nation, this is an eye-opening book, offering the same high level of reporting and research." (Publishers Weekly)
"Schlosser's precise outrage is as compelling off as on the page." (AudioFile)

Not What It Could Have Been

This book does not live up to the standard Schlosser set in Fast Food Nation, which I read last year. Made up of three essays, one on Marijuana one on illegal immigrant labor, and one on the porn industry. The premise of the book is that Schlosser will describe the underground economy of which these three topics play a major role. But the essays actually tell nothing about economics and right away get into political topics on which Schlosser is not at all shy in stating is own preference. In each topic, Schlosser actually use one or two case studies, but the overall point of these case studies is not at all clear.

By far, the most interesting topic is the porn industry, if only because this topic is just not covered much. Rather than an economic study, it should be relabeled a history of the porn industry. Even here, though, the material is not really a complete history, but rather a couple cases that Schlosser has followed up on, and the central topic is the government's war against porn producers. Schlosser's own reading is also uninspiring, but I think that is really just a result of material that is neither academically rigorous nor exciting or relevant as investigative reporting (which is what Schlosser is really aiming at).

Bored to death

Well researched with lots of facts, but read with dejection like a monotonous shopping list.

If insipid droning is your kind of thing, I strongly recommend this book.

Reefer Madness is fatalistic but in a very unique, unexciting kind of way.

informative and interesting

informative and interesting throughout

Make it stop

This book is very very very very repetitive. You will here the same ideas and same examples multiple times. Don't bother.

Not half as good as Fast Food Nation

I bought this book with hig expectations. I was very impressed with the previous book by this author "Fast Food Nation" . I found this book a little too tedious and lengthy. I think an abriged version of this book might be a better "read". But, the biggest letdown was the narration. The narator of Fast Food Nation was very good, he kept the listner engaged with his enthusiatic style. Eric the author himself narrates this book and I found him very monotonous and boring.

so what's the point???

This book is full of information on the underground market surrounding migrant workers, drugs, and porn but there is very little synthesis or analysis of what should be done to stem these actvities. In each of the three essays, the author details the issue's history and lists numerous facts about the topic, but then fails to come to any solid conclusion about what should be done to end this madness. After the first hour or so I just kept thinking, "What's your point?". I thought that he would wrap things up in the end so I plowed on through hoping for a conclusion. Unfortunately, this never happened. He listed several plausible reasons for decriminalizing marijuana and porn but never went beyond saying that it was working in European countries. It left me feeling unsatisfied. After all the research that went into this book, I expected more in the way of a conclusion, a suggestion or a plan for dealing with these abominations, but got none.

Don't waste a credit

A slanted shallow one sided view of the drug problem. It appears the author has had a little too much of the "reefer" he writes about. The premise of a tremendous underground economy is believeable. His stories of all the poor persecuted marijuana growers is too much too stomach. Stay away from this.

Boring - Skip this one.

This is the first book I've ever stopped listening to out of boredom and I've been a member for years. It's not that the author doesn't have points to make. It's that he takes so long to make them, and they hardly qualify as revelations.

Skip this title.

boring

What disappointed you about Reefer Madness?

the narrator is very monotone and the topic is very misleading. I expected this book to be about the history of Drugs. All it is about some guy who complains that pot is illegal.

What didn’t you like about Eric Schlosser’s performance?

he actually helps make this book boring.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

I have no sympathy for people who produce drugs.