The American black market tells a lot about our nation’s character, and it is not a pretty story either. In the United States, corn and soybeans rank with marijuana as one of the country’s biggest cash crops. Health conscious Americans devour berries, lettuce and other produce without realizing that they are handpicked by illegal immigrants who quite frankly live like feudal serfs. Of course, black markets are not something new in the United States, but there has been an explosion of black markets in America in the past 30 years. In his book, “Reefer Madness,” Eric Schlosser correctly asserts that financial hardship and greed are partly to blame for this. Every American, even those who do not smoke marijuana or take advantage illegal immigrants, is affected by America’s black market. Today, the underbelly of the marketplace for drugs and sex in the United States has a profound and radical influence on the American society.
There was a time when so many family farms managed to save their family farms from economic ruin by growing marijuana. However, in today’s era when Americans cower from the fear of violence, our legal system is sentencing small-time marijuana dealers to lifelong imprisonment while violent offenders get to roam the streets after serving brief sentences, only to use their newfound freedom to commit more crimes. It was Ronald Regan who launched the war on drugs in 1982, which all began with his claim that “I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast” (Daniel, 2012). Of course, little did Regan know, scientists would be discovering otherwise (Liput, Hammell, Stinchcomb & Nixon, 2013), and the alleged health concerns linked to marijuana use are only half of the problem.
Today, the entire American criminal-justice system reverberates from the effects of Regan’s war on drugs. Today, Contrary to what many Americans believe, due to the policies directed against marijuana “there are more people in prison today for violating marijuana laws than at any other time in American history” (Schlosser, 2004, p.14). Today, the American criminal-justice system is incarcerating more people in prisons all over the country for marijuana than they are for crimes like, manslaughter, murder or rape. A mere concern for public health is not justifiable explanation of these severe punishments of marijuana-related offenses. The American criminal-justice system in states where medical marijuana laws have not been passed has even imprisoned people suffering from AIDS, cancer, epilepsy, and multiple sclerosis in recent years for using marijuana as a medicine.
The debate over the health hazards of using marijuana for leisure purposes might never be resolved, and it is more of a personal choice, but decriminalizing would help protect people who can actually benefit by using marijuana as medicine from suffering the brunt of the law. Returning to the fact that was earlier mentioned, marijuana was once and remains to be one of the largest cash crops in the United States. It would be a biased assertion to deny that marijuana use is not unhealthy in any way, but it is illogical why drug-education programs in terms of promoting marijuana-free lives cannot replace the scare tactics of the current American laws that criminalize marijuana possession and use. It is actually ironic that in a country where a cash crop such as marijuana is illegal, yet the business of produce cultivation relies on illegal immigrant workers who are poorly paid.
If marijuana is a commodity of value in the American black market, then illegal immigrants are the invaluable black market labor. In comparison to marijuana, there are many crops that seem wholesome, such as the example of strawberries in Schlosser’s book, but most of them have their own shadowy story. Growers either keep their workers off the books or under pay them in order to efficiently cut their crops. These workers who do the picking refrain from reporting such abuse by their bosses to the IRS or to the Labor Department because a majority of them are illegal immigrants. The life of these immigrants rots, while the fruits of their labor go to the large growers. This greedy short-term solution brings tremendous problems, such as clash of culture, higher criminal rate, illegal immigration, and the heavy dependence of the agriculture industry on illegal cheap workers, which could lead to future problems.
Indeed, Schlosser's claim that “The lines between the black market and the mainstream [] shift” is quite accurate. However, when it comes to the plight of illegal immigrants, including those who are enslaved, he makes the mistake of recommending the need for more economic intervention. It is government intervention that created this whole problem, particular the political act of making immigrant labor illegal in the first place. In this case, this problem was apparently and directly caused by the intervention of the government in the economy. Regardless of Schlosser’s overlooking this and believing that this problem can be resolved by the government, the fact remains that the notion that “The government is good at one thing: It knows how to break your legs, then hand you a crutch and say, ‘See, if it weren’t for the government you wouldn’t be able to walk’” ("Great minds: Be," 2013) seems quite perfectly fitting here.
Of course, not all government action may be constituted as bad, particularly, government intervention to protect the rights of Americans, e.g. stopping people from being enslaved. Therefore, there is a two-fold solution to properly prevent immigrants from being exploited. First, improper economic interventions need to be removed and second, proper ones need to be added (i.e. efforts need to be made in stopping enslavement and so on). At the same time, Schlosser is right when he reminds Americans that the healthy choices they make in eating should also be healthy for the community too. Certainly all growers do not treat their workers poorly, but immigrants will continue to be exploited as long as some do. Thus, one solution from Schlosser that actually makes sense is that Americans should be watching what they eat from growers who maintain commendable working conditions.
After reading Eric Schlosser’s “Reefer Madness,” it becomes apparent that when writing about the huge underground economy of the United States, what is actually being addressed is the mainstream. As mentioned, each and every one of us is affected by the American black market. Perhaps someday it could be one of our friends or a member of our family who gets arrested for using marijuana for medicinal purposes, or perhaps the food that is on our plates actually gets after the hard work that illegal immigrants put into cultivating it. What really makes issues such as these a part of the American black market is the fact that they popular politics bind them up.
References
Schlosser, E. (2004). Reefer madness: Sex, drugs, and cheap labor in the american black market. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Liput, D. J., Hammell, D. C., Stinchcomb, A. L., & Nixon, K. (2013). Transdermal delivery of cannabidiol attenuates binge alcohol-induced neurodegeneration in a rodent model of an alcohol use disorder.Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 111, 120–127. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091305713002104
Daniel, S. (2012, Oct 12). What experts say. Retrieved from http://www.cannabis.info/UK/library/6640-what-experts-say/
Great minds: Be wary of government as a solution. (2013, Aug 14). Retrieved from http://stillwatergazette.com/2013/08/14/great-minds-be-wary-of-government-as-a-solution/
