Reefer madness : sex, drugs, and cheap labor in the American black market / Eric Schlosser.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 284-292) and index.

Publisher description: Eric Schlosser offers an unprecedented view of the nexus of ingenuity, greed, high-mindedness, and hypocrisy that is American culture. He reveals the vast and 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 resembles that of medieval serfs. All three industries show how the black market has burgeoned over the past quarter century, as America's reckless faith in the free market has combined with an irrational 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.