OPERATION PIPE DREAM

The crackdown began just days ago not only here in Pocatello, but all
across the United States as federal agents bullied their way into towns and
cities across the country in what has been called "Operation Pipe Dream," a
massive collaborative effort to stop the sales of glass pipes and other
smoking devices.

It's a sad state of affairs in this country when we will spend millions of
taxpayers' dollars to stop the legal and legitimate operations of business,
they themselves paying taxes to our government, while at the same time
cutting local education and other important expenditures. We've got money
for bombs but no money for books! We've got money to harass and ruin the
lives of our citizens, but no money for decent health care or a Social
Security system that provides a decent quality of life for our elderly.

We can throw billions of dollars a year at fighting the nonexistent,
unnecessary and losing "war on drugs," yet can't pay our teachers well
enough to keep them much above the poverty line in many states. When will
the government stop this persistent determined demonization of its own
citizens and actually listen to the voice of the people and what it's saying ?

The fact that because of differences concerning federal and state law the
federal law agencies can come into any town or city and literally force
local law agencies to directly go against local preference and local law
(as in the Cannabis Compassion Club raids in California earlier this year),
with no fore mention or explanation of activities is not only absurd but
bordering on martial law and a Gestapo police state. Today, it's a few pipe
stores here and there which might not be the concern of but a few, but what
will be next?

I have to wonder how many of the agents and officers who had been recruited
and assigned to "Operation Pipe Dream" might have been more effective
watching our borders and skies for terrorists ...

I urge you to write to your local representatives and seek to have federal
policies examined and changed. ..

Hinsel Scott,

Pocatello