Dad's clinic is in the chapter about porn.

This is 3 investigative reporting stories under a single cover. The central theme is the failed prohibition of Marijuana, Mexican labor in the US, and Obscenity.

The Reefer Madness section is good, but contains no new information vs movies like Hemp Revolution or High.

The Mexican Farm Labor story centers around Strawberries in California. The laws and legal dodges surrounding farm labor have changed enough this decade that this is more historical than topical.

The Obscenity Laws question centers arround the story of Reuben Sturmon with about 40 pages dedicated to Larry Flynt and movie making in the San Fernando Valley. The apparent birth of corporate shell companies as a strategy to hide ownership on behalf of porn (Reuben) and the glimpses into money laundering are fascinating. Overall, I felt the Reuben Sturmon story needed at least 40 more pages to be comprehensive. This is about the number of pages spent on Larry Flynt and modern american porn movie making, which are studies in themselves. I wish the author has confined himself to the life of Reuben Sturmon and how he affected society.

- I think that this book falls far short of his 'Fast Food Nation', where he displayed hard-hitting, in-depth investigative journalism, in a brilliant analysis of the fast food industry's impact on society. In 'Reefer Madness' Schlosser examines three social-issues-as-black-market-economies (the marijuana trade, the pornography industry, and the exploitation of illegal immigrant laborers), and exposes the social hypocrisy regarding these topics.
- eg. "Sometimes dope dealers get longer sentences than murderers. Some states have made mandatory jail time for possession of even one joint, but no mandatory jail tme for conviction of spousal abuse (or child molestation!).
- None of these three topics is covered in the depth I would have like to have seen, and Schlosser doesn't really tie the three, diverse, subjects together very well. His most powerful argument is, not so much for legalization of marijuana, as advocating a more uniform approach (nationally).

Interesting read. Schlosser delves deep into many areas not often covered on these issues, e.g., interviewing Midwest farmers who grew marijuana, and the economics of strawberries. While I disagreed with a handful of his conclusions, it was a good read, well researched, and generally tightly argued.

My complaint is Schlosser's tendency to personalize; while I'd focus on the merits and demerits of a controversy, Schlosser is always looking for personal faults of the other side. Though I agree with him about decriminalizing marijuana, I'm not sure it's particularly relevant that Bill Clinton and a lot of other drug warrior politicians had either smoked pot themselves or their children did. Because, it's also true that many anti-drug folks never touched them. If every anti-drug politician was clean, would that invalidate Schlosser's conclusion that marijuana should be legalized? I'd say no, it's not relevant. Schlosser continues his search for hypocrisy an awful lot in his section on obscenity (hello J. Edgar Hoover!) and illegal labor. I found Schlosser a bit holier-than-thou, after a while. That said, I was pleased with his research and the book, which is, overall, solid.