Cocaine Folly

To the Editors:

The article on cocaine [April 11] reads like the decline and fall of an empire. The U.S. is a nation that has so much. Yet something is missing when its people must build up their confidence with a false god like cocaine. There is no need to fear Soviet weapons; Americans are destroying themselves.

Betty J. On

Linz, Austria

As long as our society considers the taking of cocaine to be within the bounds of socially acceptable behavior, then nothing, including intensive rehabilitation programs, can help us make headway toward solving this problem.

Martha Young-Scholten

Edmonds, Wash.

Virtually every civilization except that of the Eskimo has indulged in the use of drugs. When the choice is illicit, such as cocaine, the users are vilified as criminals. The question is: Can society deal with the problem if it persecutes and prosecutes the people it purports to be helping? The U.S. will continue to lose its battle against drug abuse as long as the antidrug bureaucratic Establishment prevails.

David J. Bailey

Wayne, N.J.

In America, a line of coke is as easy to obtain as a bottle of beer. Coke users will cut their habit only when they realize that cocaine is ruining their lives and not before that. All the millions of dollars spent on drug enforcement would be better spent on drug rehabilitation.

Richard T. Vimont

Munich

In the '60s and early '70s, drugs were used by many of us to gain self-awareness and to share visionary experiences. Most of us have since grown beyond the need to alter our states of consciousness. After having had our share of acid, peyote and mushrooms, we are unimpressed by cocaine and wonder why there is such a fascination with it. It is ironic that this middle class that condemned us in the '60s is enslaved by an irrelevant white powder.

Bill Platz

Bloomington, Ind.

This nation is going to hell fast while the countries who supply us with coke are laughing at the gullible Americans.

Mrs. Ronald Griffin

Cazenovia, N. Y.

Lawyers use drugs, breaking the laws they profess to revere. Police officers use drugs, breaking the laws they swear to protect. Politicians, doctors, teachers and parents are also users and hence lawbreakers. To whom, then, can our youth look for moral leadership?

Barbara Carlson

New York City

I always believed that if drug abusers wanted to ruin their lives, it was fine with me as long as they kept their habit to themselves. Now the thought of cokeheads practicing as surgeons and working on airplanes has me terrified.

Pamela J. Rivers

Carlinville, Ill.

The cocaine users in your article clearly made the choice to use and abuse the drug. The nonhuman primates at U.C.L.A. did not. Once again animals are being made to suffer because of man's weaknesses.

Aaron Medlock, Executive Director

New England Anti-Vivisection Society

Boston

Limits of Life

Allowing the Federal Government to enter the arena that decides when to let someone die [April 11] should be viewed with trepidation. Consider an infant born with an inoperable heart defect as well as a serious, but curable stomach blockage that renders feeding impossible. The infant would die if it underwent heart surgery. Yet without a strong heart it would almost certainly succumb if surgery were attempted on the stomach defect. With court-ordered surgery, physicians are now being forced into the role of executioner.

John T. Cockerham, Resident Physician

St. Louis Childrens Hospital

St. Louis

If Americans condone the withholding of food and medical treatment from patients, such as coma victims, the elderly and infants who cannot speak for themselves, who is to say we will not also some day withhold medical treatment from the mentally retarded or physically handicapped because they are considered a burden to society?

Cheryl W. Hollingsworth

Houston

The assumption that every physician knows the difference "between prolonging the act of dying and protecting the act of living," as Surgeon General Koop asserts, is fallacious. As a registered nurse, I have come in contact with doctors who could not perceive the difference because the choice is not always clear. Physicians possess no more of the godlike qualities than the rest of us.

Gail Browder

Sebastopol, Calif.

Contrary to Roger Witherspoon's statement regarding the death of his premature son, neonatal intensive care units are not cold, insensitive places. It is true that rarely do 22-week infants live, but most others do survive, and that is what makes working in these rooms worthwhile.

J. Edward Spence, M.D.

Chapel Hill, N. C.

I am a critical-care pediatric nurse and have worked in several of those "controlled, constricted environments" called Newborn Intensive Care Units (NICUS). I was sorry to read about the premature birth and subsequent death of the Witherspoon child. However, I was more distressed to read that the father thought the NICUS were without "real warmth and affection" and that his son would never know "what it is to be loved." While those of us who care for these infants may be busy trying to preserve a fragile life, we are never so rushed that we do not sing a lullaby, hold a tiny hand or comfort a frightened parent.

Resa M. Bacsik

Murray, Ky.

Jugular Joan

The only time I watch the Tonight show is when "bitchy" Joan Rivers [April 11] is host. Joan gets my vote for the funniest woman in America.

Thomas Myers

Columbia City, Ind.

It is to be hoped that Joan Rivers will some day lean so far over the mud pit from which she extracts her egregious material that she will topple in and be heard from nevermore.

Dolores Succa

Boiling Springs, Pa.

The Grand Inquisitor

As a former White House correspondent, I was amused to read your description of Sam Donaldson [April 11] as "more interested in emotion, in the fates of careers and in the flow of power than in the substance of Government." Well, yes. That is the White House, isn't it? Isn't that what Hugh Sidey writes about each week, and isn't that what TIME had in mind in its recent cover story on how Reagan decides?

Sam is a splendid reporter, if perhaps an unorthodox personality. As one who has agonized with him over whether one word or another would be more fair or accurate for either of us to use on a broadcast, I have developed a profound respect for his sense of responsibility.

Frank Reynolds

Washington, D.C.

I have never thought or said that Jimmy Carter was incompetent as President of the U.S., a view attributed to me in TIME. As a matter of fact, I have stated repeatedly, both on and off the air, that I believe his accomplishments to be considerable and that history will treat him much more kindly than did the voters in 1980.

Sam A. Donaldson

Washington, D.C.

Campus Hecklers

In your Essay on academic audiences who heckle speakers [April 11], you state correctly that "those who disrupt ... are almost always a tiny minority of the audience." I am surprised that the rest of the audience, who presumably wish to hear the speaker, do not deal with those who are causing the disturbance. In essence, the hecklers are questioning the majority's ability to judge the issues. Heckling, when it results in silencing a speaker, is verbal censorship and an insult to one's intelligence.

Patricia D. Lohmar

Minneapolis

Having attended Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick's remarks at the University of Minnesota, I am amused by the argument that the situation presents a simple case of the protection of free speech. If Kirkpatrick had appeared onstage with an opponent of this Administration's Central American policies, her detractors would probably not have sought to stifle her remarks. Dissenters would most likely have confined their protest to loudly applauding the comments of her antagonist. Speech that consistently comes from the same point of view is not free.

Michael Krause

Minneapolis

The Essay about the disruption of campus speakers reminded me of the story told about New York Governor Alfred E. Smith. During one of Smith's speeches, a heckler in the audience jeered: "Tell 'em all you know, Al. It won't take very long."

Smith, without missing a beat, promptly retorted: "I'll do better than that. I'll tell 'em all we both know. It won't take any longer."

Harold Reiss

Williamsville, N. Y. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.