Editor:

There is a time-honored principle of capitalism — it says entrepreneurs must compete in the marketplace. If you start a business and cannot make a go of it (for whatever reasons you may not have foreseen or prepared for), you must turn toward a different way to make a living. You don't lean on government welfare. Too many people in Humboldt County thought erroneously that they could attain wealth as cannabis growers. Your article regarding this fiasco stated that the growers entered "a marketplace that has seen production outpace consumption three-fold, sending wholesale prices cratering over the past six months" ("Supes Move Forward with Cannabis Tax Reprieve," Feb. 10). Now the growers are in trouble and seeking an anti-capitalist bailout that the county cannot afford.

And the majority rule principle of democracy is now being overturned by county supervisors who seem to have forgotten this principle and have conceded the bail-out, which goes against the wishes and needs of that majority of voters who passed Measure S. Now many of the other, far more numerous, residents of Humboldt County are going to be denied adequate services due to county understaffing. Some are already experiencing inadequate water due to drought conditions combined with diversions to licensed and unlicensed cannabis farming. All are experiencing poor road conditions due to pot-hole patchwork and new pot-holes forming. (Whoever named those "pot"-holes could never have foreseen this coming new relationship to farming!)

Bad decisions seem to have been made all around. One wonders how much political support money may have made its way into the pockets of our county and state legislators from the cannabis industry. In the same vein, I wonder what has caused such marked support of the local industry by the NCJ, whose many thousands of readers may include relatively few cannabis consumers. Do you even know how many?

Irene Sears, Kneeland