Pot and Coke

To the Editors:

Legalize marijuana [Jan. 29]. Think of the advantages: a new taxable market, a reduction in the trade deficit (by growing and consuming domestic crops) and an end to all the corruption and violence that come with imported pot.

B.A. Walker Glen Ellyn, III.

The money currently being squandered on marijuana and cocaine law enforcement would go a long way toward financing a national health insurance program. The money would be better spent promoting life than artificially supporting a criminal underground.

Alan Baldwin Cobalt, Idaho

Marijuana and cocaine are the deep-rooted substances of cultures that have existed far longer than America's gun-toting, industrially polluting society can hope to survive. I have yet to see one stick of the most potent Thai weed kill a single Vietnamese or Harlem black.

Mark Macisaac Vancouver

The Inca ruler allowed only the aristocracy and the royal messengers to use the coca. The Indian population was forbidden its use because it tended to make them nonproductive. When Pizarro and his fellow Christians took over the empire, one of their first acts was to make coca chewing available to the whole populace. The result was that there was no effort to resist or overthrow the Spaniards because of the lethargy the drug produced. Gordon H. Dalton Pinehurst, N.C.

Abortion and Religion

Abortionists are trying to set up pro-life as a religious issue [Jan. 29] so they can shoot it down as such. Many pro-lifers are religious but that does not make it a religious issue. Abortion is a scientific and moral issue. A fetus is a living individual with a separate identity from conception. When one person's "right" inflicts death on another, that right becomes secondary.

Rosalie Rosenfeld Medford Lakes, N.J.

The law does not seek to force Catholics, fundamentalists or any other pro-lifers to have abortions they don't want. Yet when a court suit seeks to prevent them from legislating their way down all our throats and using our tax system as a means to force women to bear children they don't want, they call it a threat to civil rights.

Shari York Toledo

I am a probation officer supervising adult females. About 90% of these probationers are themselves products of unwanted, unplanned pregnancies. As their lives have become more desperate, laden with social and criminal problems, no "right to lifers" are there to help them pick up the pieces.

Mrs. R.K. Astmann Buffalo

Any antiabortion bill will be sillier than the Prohibition Amendment, unless a holy inquisition enforces it.

Jim Spires St. Petersburg, Fla.

A Too Familiar "Freedom"

The uncertainty of what will follow the Shah becomes serious apprehension when one reads the Ayatullah's declaration that "the press will be free ... except for those articles that would be harmful to the nation" [Jan. 22]. The restrictions sound all too familiar and similar to those allegedly enforced by the oppressive regime the Ayatullah claims to lighten and improve. And who will decide what is harmful to the nation? The Ayatullah and his entourage?

Willibald Sontag Koblenz, West Germany

The Grammarian

Bravo for Richard Mitchell [Jan. 29]. Every city in the U.S. that has a newspaper, TV station or radio station needs an Underground Grammarian to guard against further deterioration of the English language and to re-create in the mind and ear of the public a sense of pride in the ability to communicate accurately.

Lee Nehrt New York City

Personally, I couldn't wait to escape from under the thumbs of these zealots, the grammarians. I find I would much prefer splitting infinitives than hairs. And

I'd rather dangle participles than the false hope that improved language will truly improve man.

Susan L. Lenzkes San Diego

TV in the Zoo

The TV addiction of Willie B., the Atlanta gorilla [Jan. 22], should not surprise us. It merely lends credence to the widely held belief that television producers have lowered the intellectual content of their programming to the subhuman level.

Bruce N. Deppa Gaithersburg, Md.

In view of the learning capacity shown by many gorillas and other great apes, why not specially taped programs for them, such as sign-language classes? There is an orangutan in our Washington zoo who is so bored she is reduced to just watching the people. I'm sure she would love good TV programs.

Natalie Gawdiak Silver Spring, Md.

Judicial Activism

In your Essay on the judiciary [Jan. 22], you criticize the courts for taking an activist role. As a workingman, I can only say thank God somebody cares about my rights. Justice and human rights have fallen by the wayside as politicians from both parties scramble to ingratiate themselves with fat-cat contributors. The judiciary is the only place where the poor and working people can receive fair treatment.

Manfred Holl Poughkeepsie, N. Y.

What Every Girl Knows

Every girl learns at a very young age that it is wrong to have sexual intercourse with a man without being married to him. This is in violation of one of the rules of society. I hope Lee Marvin [Jan. 15] doesn't have to pay that woman any money.

Dorothy B. Newell Glendale, Calif.

Spies in Maine

How has TIME discovered Gordon Bok [Jan. 22]? What city-slicker spies were hiding among "we happy few" who trooped time and again to local fairs or high school gyms in snowstorms to hear this modest man?

But TIME cannot reproduce his warm rich voice or the stark poetry of his songs So perhaps we are safe, and he will not become a superstar but will remain a folk singer among those who treasure his gifts Mrs. Adrian Asherman Cousin's Island, Me

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