HATCH NOT FIRST TO INDULGE IN HYSTERIA

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, believes that "excessive preoccupation with
social causes, race relations, environmental issues, etc." may be
signs of drug abuse in teen-agers, according to an Oct. 23 editorial.

This reminds me of the criteria that "pod creatures" used to detect
unconverted human beings in the science fiction movie "Invasion of the
Body Snatchers": Anyone who displayed feelings, emotions or concern
for others might still be human and had to be cured.

But it is not necessary to resort to fictional scenarios to discover
the origins of Hatch's theory. Irrational hysteria has long been as
American as apple pie. Hatch is hardly the first.

Then-U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy used similar tactics to unmask "pinkos,"
and the good people of Salem understood perfectly that an old woman
with a fondness for cats was probably a witch.

This incident demonstrates that the true motivation of the fanatical
drug warriors like Hatch is not to eliminate drug use. The motivation
is to convert Americans into a flock of passive, blindly obedient
"sheeple" who have no desire to question the status quo.

If the effects of drug abuse on a person's behavior, personality and
mental state are so subtle that the usage can only be detected
indirectly by monitoring an individual's socialism activism, then why
do we need a war on drugs?

John Wallace

Checked-by: Patrick Henry