When you make something illegal

When you make something illegal, all you do is raise its price. Marijuana smokers in states where it is illegal are still smoking marijuana. All those states are doing is running up their own legal bills prosecuting people for something that is legal across the state line. You solve problems by using the problem to solve itself. In Alaska, this is known as ‘eating a bear with its own teeth.’ The expression comes from a sourdough in Eagle, Alaska, Erwin Robertson, who shot a bear that was raiding his food cache. He was not strong enough to haul the bear away, could not butcher it because no one bought bear meat and could not leave the carcass because it would attract wolves. He had no teeth so he made dentures from the bear’s teeth and then ‘ate the bear with its own teeth.’  Keep that Alaskan adage in mind next time you have an ‘unsolvable’ problem. https://www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi

Steve Levi is an Alaskan writer who specializes in the Alaska Gold Rush (nonfiction) and the ‘impossible crime,’ (fiction.)  An ‘impossible crime’ is one where the detective must figure out HOW the crime was committed before going after the perpetrators – like a Greyhound bus with bank robbers and hostages disappearing off the Golden Gate Bridge –THE MATTER OF THE VANISHING GREYHOUND. Steve’s books can be found at www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi

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