CHUVALO A "SAP" TO BLAME HEROIN

Dear Editor,

Re your story, Drugs more brutal than any boxing foe, April 11.

George Chuvalo is pathetic.

He spends his days now endlessly crisscrossing the country telling anyone
who will listen, or who cannot escape because they are in prison or in
school, how his three sons killed themselves with drugs, blubbering on cue
about how he misses them. "It was like everything you breathe in was
grief..." It's a wonder he doesn't carry the mummified bodies with him to
add emphasis to his story.

Our 18-year-old son, Peter, died in February of 1993 shortly after ingesting
some street heroin along with a number of acquaintances, none of whom
suffered any deleterious effects. After doing a little research, my wife
and I now know that heroin is not a poison and that it was drug prohibition
that killed our son, not the heroin itself.

Years of being pummeled in the ring have doubtless seriously damaged
Chuvalo's brain because he still cannot see that, just as Prohibition
poisoned thousands who ingested adulterated alcohol, drug prohibition is
killing users today by cutting off their access to drugs of known potency
and purity.

How sad to see that George Chuvalo has become the brain damaged poster boy
for the failed crusade of prohibition.

How low has the newspaper business sunk that you see fit to encourage the
sap?

Alan Randell, Victoria, B.C.