Publish to Newswire
Add an EventFrom the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature
With pot and porn outstripping corn, America's black economy is flying high
Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labour in the American Black Market
Marijuana, pornography and illegal labour have created a hidden market in the United States which now accounts for as much as 10% of the American economy, according to a study. As a cash crop, marijuana is believed to have outstripped maize, and hardcore porn revenue is equal to Hollywood's domestic box office takings.
Despite laws that punish marijuana cultivation more strictly than murder in some states, Americans spend more on illegal drugs than on cigarettes. And despite official disapproval of pornography, the US leads the world in export of explicit sex videos, according to Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labour in the American Black Market, by Eric Schlosser.
Although the official American economy has been suffering a downturn, the shadow economy is enjoying unprecedented levels of success, much in the way that the prohibition period fuelled the illegal markets in the 30s. Schlosser found that three specific industries accounted for a major portion of this boom.
No aspect of farming has grown faster in the US over the past three decades than marijuana, with one-third of the public over the age of 12 having smoked the drug.
While the nation's largest legal cash crop, maize, produces about $19bn (£11.9bn) in revenue, "plausible" estimates for the value of marijuana crops reach $25bn. Steve White, a former coordinator for the US drug enforcement administration's cannabis eradication programme, estimates that the drug is now the country's largest cash crop.
Marijuana Belt
Schlosser writes: "Although popular stereotypes depict marijuana growers as ageing hippies in northern California or Hawaii, the majority of the marijuana now cultivated domestically is being grown in the nation's mid-section - a swath running from the Appalachians west to the Great Plains. Throughout this Marijuana Belt drug fortunes are being made by farmers who often seem to have stepped from a page of the old Saturday Evening Post."
Some of the most expensive crops are grown indoors on the west coast using advanced scientific techniques but the American heartlands account for the largest volume. Some estimates suggest 3 million Americans grow marijuana, although mostly for their own or their friends' use, but between 100,000 and 200,000 are believed to do so for a living.
The laws against the drug are strict. There were 724,000 people arrested for marijuana offences in 2001 and about 50,000 are in prison. Commercial growers can serve sentences far longer than those for murder, but the high risks appear to have had little effect on production or availability: 89% of secondary school students surveyed indicated that they could easily obtain the drug.
The annual number of hardcore video rentals in the US has risen from 79m in 1985 to 759m in 2001. Hardcore pornography in the shape of videos, the internet, live sex acts and cable television is now estimated to generate around $10bn, roughly the same amount as Hollywood's US box office receipts.
Americans spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, regional theatres and orchestra performances combined. The industry has mushroomed since the 70s, when a federal study found that it was worth little more than $10m.
Now the US leads the world in pornography; about 211 new films are produced every week. Los Angeles area is the centre of the film boom and many of those in the trade are otherwise respectable citizens.
Nina Hartley, a porn star, told Schlosser: "You'd be surprised how many producers and manufacturers are Republicans."
The majority of women in the films earn about $400 a scene. At the moment, there is a surplus of women in California hoping to enter the industry.
The internet has provided a fresh and profitable outlet. In 1997 about 22,000 porn websites existed; the number is now closer to 300,000 and growing.
More than a million illegal farmworkers are estimated to be employed in the US, with the average worker being a 29-year-old from Mexico.
Surplus labour
The total number of illegal immigrants is estimated at about 8 million and many are being paid cash in a shadow economy.
Many live in primitive conditions: a survey in Soledad, in the heart of California's agricultural territory, found that 1,500 of them, one-eighth of the town's official population, were living in garages. There are mutual economic benefits.
"Migrant work in California has long absorbed Mexican surplus labour, while Mexico has in effect paid for the education, health care and retirement of California's farmworkers," writes Schlosser. "Maintaining the current level of poverty among migrant farmworkers saves the average American household around $50 a year."
The advantages to the employer are clear, most notably in LA county, where an estimated 28% of workers are paid in cash.
Schlosser believes that the shadow economy will continue to thrive as long as marijuana and pornography remain illicit.
"A society that can punish a marijuana offender more severely than a murderer is caught in the grip of a deep psychosis," he concludes. "Black markets will always be with us. But they will recede in importance when the public morality is consistent with our private one. The underground is a good measure of the progress and the health of nations. When much is wrong, much needs to be hidden."
· Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labour in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser, published by Houghton Mifflin
Despite laws that punish marijuana cultivation more strictly than murder in some states, Americans spend more on illegal drugs than on cigarettes. And despite official disapproval of pornography, the US leads the world in export of explicit sex videos, according to Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labour in the American Black Market, by Eric Schlosser.
Although the official American economy has been suffering a downturn, the shadow economy is enjoying unprecedented levels of success, much in the way that the prohibition period fuelled the illegal markets in the 30s. Schlosser found that three specific industries accounted for a major portion of this boom.
No aspect of farming has grown faster in the US over the past three decades than marijuana, with one-third of the public over the age of 12 having smoked the drug.
While the nation's largest legal cash crop, maize, produces about $19bn (£11.9bn) in revenue, "plausible" estimates for the value of marijuana crops reach $25bn. Steve White, a former coordinator for the US drug enforcement administration's cannabis eradication programme, estimates that the drug is now the country's largest cash crop.
Marijuana Belt
Schlosser writes: "Although popular stereotypes depict marijuana growers as ageing hippies in northern California or Hawaii, the majority of the marijuana now cultivated domestically is being grown in the nation's mid-section - a swath running from the Appalachians west to the Great Plains. Throughout this Marijuana Belt drug fortunes are being made by farmers who often seem to have stepped from a page of the old Saturday Evening Post."
Some of the most expensive crops are grown indoors on the west coast using advanced scientific techniques but the American heartlands account for the largest volume. Some estimates suggest 3 million Americans grow marijuana, although mostly for their own or their friends' use, but between 100,000 and 200,000 are believed to do so for a living.
The laws against the drug are strict. There were 724,000 people arrested for marijuana offences in 2001 and about 50,000 are in prison. Commercial growers can serve sentences far longer than those for murder, but the high risks appear to have had little effect on production or availability: 89% of secondary school students surveyed indicated that they could easily obtain the drug.
The annual number of hardcore video rentals in the US has risen from 79m in 1985 to 759m in 2001. Hardcore pornography in the shape of videos, the internet, live sex acts and cable television is now estimated to generate around $10bn, roughly the same amount as Hollywood's US box office receipts.
Americans spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, regional theatres and orchestra performances combined. The industry has mushroomed since the 70s, when a federal study found that it was worth little more than $10m.
Now the US leads the world in pornography; about 211 new films are produced every week. Los Angeles area is the centre of the film boom and many of those in the trade are otherwise respectable citizens.
Nina Hartley, a porn star, told Schlosser: "You'd be surprised how many producers and manufacturers are Republicans."
The majority of women in the films earn about $400 a scene. At the moment, there is a surplus of women in California hoping to enter the industry.
The internet has provided a fresh and profitable outlet. In 1997 about 22,000 porn websites existed; the number is now closer to 300,000 and growing.
More than a million illegal farmworkers are estimated to be employed in the US, with the average worker being a 29-year-old from Mexico.
Surplus labour
The total number of illegal immigrants is estimated at about 8 million and many are being paid cash in a shadow economy.
Many live in primitive conditions: a survey in Soledad, in the heart of California's agricultural territory, found that 1,500 of them, one-eighth of the town's official population, were living in garages. There are mutual economic benefits.
"Migrant work in California has long absorbed Mexican surplus labour, while Mexico has in effect paid for the education, health care and retirement of California's farmworkers," writes Schlosser. "Maintaining the current level of poverty among migrant farmworkers saves the average American household around $50 a year."
The advantages to the employer are clear, most notably in LA county, where an estimated 28% of workers are paid in cash.
Schlosser believes that the shadow economy will continue to thrive as long as marijuana and pornography remain illicit.
"A society that can punish a marijuana offender more severely than a murderer is caught in the grip of a deep psychosis," he concludes. "Black markets will always be with us. But they will recede in importance when the public morality is consistent with our private one. The underground is a good measure of the progress and the health of nations. When much is wrong, much needs to be hidden."
· Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labour in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser, published by Houghton Mifflin
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!
Donate
$230.00 donated
in the past month
Get Involved
If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.
Publish
Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.
Topics
More
Search Indybay's Archives
Advanced Search
►
▼
IMC Network
I invite discussion on this.
As to the marijuana, all drugs should be legal. That would send the "street value" of drugs and get them off the street. Marijuana happens to have medicinal value. As to the other currently illegal drugs, if people want to put garbage in their bodies, which they already do with alcohol, tobacco and junk food, they can and will. The only reason any drug is illegal is to promote the prison industry, a jobs program for the hoodlum sector of the workingclass, and to terrorize the workingclass, making labor organizing difficult.
I think the saddest is the pornography. I am subject to a daily barrage of pornographic E-mails which I find disgusting and embarrassing. Obviously, it is the profits that are fueling the existence of this trash. I am not about to pay any money for any special program to block this trash. I figure this is further evidence of a bankrupt social order.
The pornography is a sign of the decline of education and culture in this society. It is the military that is the biggest promoter of pornography, and other forms of exploitation of primarily women, namely prostitution. The budget cuts we are witnessing all adversely affect education and culture, while the military, prisons and police receive more money. It is certainly time to cast this bankrupt society into the dustbin of history.
I think it is interesting that the writer connected illegal drugs and pornography to cheap labor. We are dealing with the problems of the private profit system, that is literally rotting on its feet.
Whatever they say in public, in private a LOT of people enjoy it. Those who don't should mind their own business. What people do in the privacy of their own homes is nobody's business but their own, least of all the government's. Laws against pornography are like laws against sodomy, an egregious affront, and an insult to liberty.
Sex should be celebrated, not repressed. Sexual repression is a method of social control. If they can get you to do something as totally unnatural as not enjoy sex, they can get you to do anything. That's why they don't want you doing it without permission. They don't want you doing ANYTHING without permission. If you're against pornography, that's what you're for, a world where everything not required is forbidden, and nature itself is repressed.
This is not to say that there is any reason that you, personally, should like looking at pornography. Some people do, some people don’t. People like what they like. There is no accounting for taste. If porn doesn’t click your bic, then don’t look at it. But don’t put down people who do. It’s purely a matter of taste. Some people like catsup. Some people like mayonnaise. Others like mustard. What’s the big deal?
The connection between pornography, illegal labor, and marijuana cultivation is that they are all large industries on the "black" market. Prohibition didn't work in the 20's and the "war on drugs" today costs us billions of dollars every year that could be spent on education or health care, not to mention the social reprocutions of incarcerating minor drug offenders and otherwise respectable citizens. It's easier to get marijuana than alcohol now. The fact the the DEA is raiding peaceful cannibus clubs and holding sick patients at gunpoint all over California right now is implorable. As if it hasn't been obvious something needs to be done for decades, this is by far the most disturbing example of the desperation of the powers at be to save the failed supply side policy and refuse to admit it is wrong.
So its like this: Why hasn't this shit been changed already? And what do we do to end this ridiculous war?
I think its obvious that the powers at be aren't listening. And I feel like anyone on this website probably already sympathizes if not totally agrees already with my position. So what do we do guys?