The day I set foot in Ybor after the Saturn excursion, I could perhaps have run for president and won. Six months later it was all I could do to avoid being lynched. I should provide some background on my abrupt shift of status. If there was one thing I intended to accomplish it was the elimination of the drug trade. Illicit, mind-modifying, addictive substances were pouring into the planet from the rest of the System and into the north from the south, and the state of Sunshine was perhaps the primary access point. The drugs were illegal, but that seemed only to make the trade more lucrative for the criminal element. In my time in the Navy I had acted to cut off the major middlemen of this trade, the Samoans pirate band, but like a hydra, the drug trade had sprouted new heads and seemed undiminished. Now I had opportunity to strike more directly, for the key to it was the market; cut off the market, and the supply will dwindle. A marketless product is doomed.
