A COLD BEER ON A HOT DAY

I read the Aug. 7 Viewpoints letter from Mark Brown, "Alcohol's use,
purpose," stating that alcohol has only one purpose: "to get high." I enjoy
a glass of wine with my dinner and the occasional cold beer after mowing
the lawn on Saturday morning.

I haven't used alcohol to "get high" since college, when I was as ignorant
as Brown seems to be. Ignorance in a college kid is excusable, but from
citizens concerned enough to write letters to a newspaper with the intent
to influence others, it is not.

Ignorance such as demonstrated in Brown's letter resulted in Prohibition,
one of the most miserably failed social experiments of our history. It
deserves resistance today.

Gary Gentry, Houston