To the Editor:

"Drug Laws That Destroy Lives" (editorial, May 24) makes drug users
and sellers sound like victims rather than like the criminals they
are.

The women you refer to should have given thought to their children's
best interests before they used or sold drugs. Moreover, you report,
one brazenly refused a generous plea offer and "chose to go to trial."

As for their young children, who can say what other bad influences
their drugged parents might have exposed them to had they not been
convicted and imprisoned? The removal of their parents from their
daily lives may have been the best thing that could have happened to
them.

The law-abiding public should rejoice at having these criminals
removed from the general population. The Rockefeller laws of 1973
should be strongly maintained and enforced.

WALTER BECK
Brooklyn, May 24, 2000