BELLINGHAM, Washington - Officials with the Bellingham Air Marine Branch reported their first bust after increasing security along the Canadian border. "We've known organized groups of people were importing large amounts of product over the border for years," admitted Michelle Christopher, spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security, "But we haven't had the resources to break up their operations. Until now." Forty senior citizens aboard a bus leaving Canada, each with a supply of prescription drugs, were detained and charged with drug smuggling.

"We ain't smugglin', we're survivin'!" -- Puddentane

"We ain't smugglin', we're survivin'!" exclaimed one woman who would only give the name 'Puddentane', "I need five different medicines and my husband needs three. Down here, they cost us $850 a month! With our discount cards, they're still $775. But we can all bumble board the bus and get a two day trip and two month of meds for under $500."

"Grandma Moses may have found a bargain, but that doesn't give her a free pass to break the law," said Officer Ed Morganess, of the Department of Homeland Security, "Like it or not, all these people here have broken the law and are just as guilty as if they had been bringing marijuana, cocaine, or bootleg DVD's across our borders."

While few would argue that the war on drugs has been successful, fewer still seem to agree on how best to improve it. "Why can't these old fogies work within the system to get what they need?" asked one twenty-one-year-old girl, "Don't they have, like, free clinics or something where they can get their stuff from? Didn't President Bush just hand out free drug cards?" Others feel that targeting the elderly is not the best approach to attacking the overall drug problem. "I see drug dealers all the time," said one young man, "But I've never seen any old grandmother out peddling heart meds from her script bottle. I think they ought to just leave 'em alone."

"Say what you will, but when I go to bed tonight, I'll know I'm a cog in the machine that keeping us safe from Canadian-based encroachment," said Christopher, "And I'm going to sleep easy because of it."
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