Notes from the underground

How come porn is legal but dealing pot can get you a life sentence? Because the free market is a myth, says author Eric Schlosser.

By Katharine Mieszkowski

May 15, 2003 | In the United States, growing and selling the nation's largest cash crop can earn a farmer $70,000 a bushel, and life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to Eric Schlosser's new book, "Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market." But while growing a weed may draw a life sentence, "legitimate" agribusiness is equally suspect -- depending on illegal, migrant workers making as little as $5 a day to pick and pack stigma-free strawberries.

Eric Schlosser made his reputation with his gross-out, muckraking exposé "Fast Food Nation." Now, in his follow-up, a collection of three interlinked essays, Schlosser traces the estimated 10 percent of America's gross domestic product that exists in the "shadow economy": illicit, tax-free and underground.

Reporting from marijuana farms in Indiana and migrant labor shantytowns in California, Schlosser explores the question of what the black market can tell us about the free market. He concludes that what society considers illegal, immoral and shameful today has a lot to do with who is buying and who is selling. Yesterday's cardinal sin, for example, pornography, is today's legal, mainstream, titillating good time, brought to you by AOL Time Warner, Sheraton and Marriott.

In an interview with Salon, Schlosser explained what Bill Bennett's gambling habit has to do with that fat joint you've been saving to puff right before seeing "The Matrix Reloaded."

You report that 20,000 Americans are in federal prison for pot offenses, yet 20 million Americans smoke pot every year. Why do you think the public accepts the crackdown on pot?

I think a lot of it has to do with who is paying the price of the laws, and how much it affects middle-class America. People who have gotten just insanely long sentences for pot tend to be poor people and working people. It's remarkable how -- if your father is a congressman -- you're not likely to get one of those big, long sentences for pot.

I write in the book about one congressman's son who may have been tied to a conspiracy that shipped about 30,000 pounds of pot. It looked like he wasn't going to get any time at all, until he started failing his drug tests for cocaine while out on bail. He wound up getting two and a half years.

So, many people might not be aware how strict the laws actually are?

I wasn't aware at all. When I started reporting this in 1993, I had no idea that you could get life without parole for a nonviolent marijuana crime. Now, that was a while ago, and there's been more news about it since then, but I can guarantee you that most Americans who smoke pot have no idea what the possible penalties are.

Since the book went to the printer, I got sent a clipping from Alabama. This principal of an Alabama high school was pissed off that kids were smoking pot. So, he invited in cops ... One of the undercover agents at the school bought three ounces from a high school senior who had never been arrested for any crime, had never been charged with any crime before in his life.

He sold three ounces to an undercover cop, and they made an example of him. He got 26 years. That's a lot of time for pot, and it's based on this very moralistic view of what's permissible, and what's not permissible. I'm not telling anyone to go smoke pot, and I'm not waving the cannabis flag high. I'm just trying to look at this almost like an anthropologist from a different planet, and see what is going on here.

What do you think it's about?

It's clearly not about the plant. It's about other stuff. I mean, I'm sure you've been reading about Bill Bennett's gambling. And his explanation, I think, is a beautiful one when applied to many other things in life.

When asked about his gambling, he said: It's like drinking. If you can't handle it, don't do it. That's fine for him to say about gambling, which was illegal across the United States, everywhere except Nevada, as recently as 1978, but he clearly has no problem with marijuana offenders getting massive prison sentences. I think that smoking pot is probably not as harmful for you as compulsive gambling.

These are very arbitrary decisions about where the market is free, and where the market is restricted.

Next Page: Why do Democrats punish drug offenders more harshly than Republicans?

• View blog reactions