CONSPIRACY? GOVERNMENT'S NOT SMART ENOUGH TO FOOL ANYONE

As expected, there was a considerable response to last week's front
page story about Tim Felger and his campaign to legalize marijuana.
Selected excerpts from some of these letters are printed in this
week's issue.

While everyone's entitled to his or her opinion, those who believe
there's some kind of nefarious government conspiracy regarding the pot
laws strike me as somewhat over the top.

Certainly, it would seem that there are vested interests in
maintaining the status quo. After all, it's a huge industry,
especially in a province that's successfully killed off our former
economic mainstays: mining, fishing, forestry even.

If it were legalized, a big chunk of funding would be taken out of the
police budgets, as well as that of the justice system. Defence lawyers
would suffer, too.

Organized crime would lose a large share of their revenues, and be
forced to find other means of keeping themselves in the lifestyle
they've become accustomed to.

There are a lot of people quite content with the status quo, but those
who relish conspiracy theories - such as the Roswell alien conspiracy
and the like - have been putting a little too much wacky-tobacky in
their pipes if they believe the government has some sinister plot to
deprive them of their pot.

Yes, governments can be very effective at ruthlessly stifling dissent,
but this is always very ham-fisted, and no one is fooled. Government
is not particularly sophisticated when it comes to conniving, and
concealing their duplicity. Inevitably, all the sordid details come
out in the wash. They can't keep secrets very long, because people
love to blab.

As Abe Lincoln once said, you can fool some of the people some of the
time but you can't fool all the people all the time. Those words are
still as true as the day they were first uttered.