Pubdate: Wed, 30 Dec 1998
Source: Calgary Sun (Canada)
Contact:  http://www.canoe.ca/CalgarySun/
Forum: http://www.canoe.ca/Chat/home.html
Copyright: 1998, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Author: Pat Dolan
Note: Parenthetical remark by the Sun editor; headline by newshawk.

BILL KAUFMANN cites Jean-Pierre Levesque of Criminal Intelligence
Service Canada, as saying that it costs $2 million to investigate a
two-man biker team. ("Biker battle feared," Dec. 28.)

And all that because they are suspected of profiting from consensual
crime, to wit, narcotics and prostitution.

Well now, prostitution and narcotics have been around for the last
5,000 years.

Perhaps it might be time to consider learning to live with them in
less socially harmful ways.

We have learned to live with bugs. The idea of a bug-free or a
drug-free world is unrealistic.

Why continue, then, to prohibit something which history tells us
cannot be successfully prohibited? Why continue this childish game of
"cops and robbers"?

It is, after all, as researcher Levesque pointed out, not only
pointless, but very, very expensive.

Pat Dolan

(Bugs can be kept at bay and so can outlaw bikers.)
- ---
Checked-by: Patrick Henry