RESIST 'REEFER MADNESS' HYSTERIA

My amusement with the "Henny Penny" dance in Helena is waning. Chief
amongst the heavenly ruin, once that spear-chuckin' lobby was
assuaged, is medical marijuana.

Some say the law's implementation is not what they voted for.
Reasonable enough.

Clinics with traveling doctors, pot farmacies occupying long-vacant
Main Street storefronts instead of the healthier casinos and bank
branches, and of course, the hemorrhoid case heard around the state,
turning the purview of neurology upside down.

Imagine that one of the mining interests referenda regarding cyanide
leaching passed. With current metal prices and oil moving to Allah
knows where, Montana would look like a cribbage board in about six
months.

That would please some, not others.

Our steadily rising utility bills are monthly reminders of Gov. Marc
Racicot's obsessive ramming through of energy deregulation and the
resultant sell-off of Montana Power Co., its land, dams and our water
rights in a naive pursuit of fiber-optics riches. Oops.

Nationally, the repeal of Sarbanes-Oxley with an inert Securities and
Exchange Commission turned the longtime investment strategy of buy and
hold into buy, hold and fold in no time. State portfolio values
plummeted - unions, the disabled, poor and seniors the apparent culprits.

The level of calculated fraud perpetrated by big banks, derivative
creating Wall Street sharks and wholesale Realtors like Countrywide
Financial makes that Bernie Madoff fella look like a shoplifter in a
dollar store.

The point is, unintended consequences are the norm in new legislation
and with such investigatory vehicles as environmental impact
statements equating with jihad in parts of our state, we are doomed to
trial and error.

Maybe we ought to just "pull it over" and resist the resurrection of
the "reefer madness" hysteria of 100 years ago, and maybe, just maybe,
know freedom from the celestial perils so prevalent in Helena.

Gary Buck, Missoula