FAILURE TO RESPOND

I can't believe The Post and Courier would use the old
shoot-the-messenger defense in its editorial criticizing Thomas
Ravenel's column in favor of legalizing drugs. That is, if you can't
attack the argument, attack the person making the argument which is
what you did.

While you admitted he offered some persuasive points, you replied
only that he's the wrong spokesman.

When he decried drug prohibition as "a violation of our civil
rights," you answered that "he sounds as if he's playing the victim."

When he showed that alcohol and tobacco cause far more deaths than
cocaine, you responded only that it's a "self-serving pitch" that
"sounds as if he's minimizing that drug's insidious dangers."

Not once did you respond to his arguments.

But worst of all, you said Ravenel is the wrong spokesman for the
anti-prohibition movement "not because of the arguments he put in his
column (but) because of these facts he left out:" And then you
quickly recapped his arrest and imprisonment on drug charges -- even
though those "facts he left out" were published at the end of his column.

Shooting the messenger is the big problem, no matter who says it.
Please answer his arguments.

Skip Johnson

Meeting Street

Charleston