Donald Smith says that Nancy Reagan was ridiculed maliciously when she
offered "just say no" as a solution to the drug problem ("For a
conservative, it's all so simple," Opinion Page, May 17).

True enough, but her solution was misdirected because society can't
"just say no." Only individuals can make that choice.

Had President Reagan and his friends followed Nancy Reagan's solution
it its logical conclusion, they would have found that there was no
drug problem and ended the war on drugs then and there.

Gerald Sutliff,
Emeryville, California