OUR DRUG DYSLEXIA

Regarding your editorial "Drug testing for self-sufficiency" (Oct. 12):

On the issue of random drug testing of welfare recipients, the Tribune takes
a practical, constructive position to live within current drug laws. A
better position would be to support random drug testing as a short-term
solution but acknowledge that random testing presses the Fourth Amendment
guarantees of unreasonable searches and therefore needs a long-term solution.

Americans suffer from drug dyslexia. We confuse the danger of the drug with
the danger of its illegality. We don't understand that most of the damage
caused by an illegal drug requires both the drug and its illegality. Remove
either one and the damage declines dramatically. Conversely, add illegality
to a drug and the damage rises. Most of the social damage of the 1920s
started when Prohibition began and stopped when Prohibition ended.

Life with alcohol since 1933 has not been Utopian but has been better than
the blindings, the deaths, the turf battles, the police corruption, the Al
Capones and the alcoholism of the 1920s.

Abstinence as a condition of work was rare during Prohibition. That the
Tribune can speak so casually about random drug testing to achieve
abstinence - and not even question how we got to this sorry state - is a
depressing reminder of the freedom we have sacrificed to our collective drug
dyslexia.