A LEGACY OF LSD

To the Editor:

Re "Electric Kool-Aid Marketing Trip" (Op-Ed, March 19):

Michael Walker has written an encomium to Augustus Owsley Stanley III,
the "LSD millionaire" who figured out how to manufacture the drug in
industrial doses in San Francisco in the mid-1960s.

Without question, Mr. Stanley was a key figure in the Sixties
counterculture and played a large role in the music, art and "Summer
of Love" ethos associated with LSD. But virtually every obituary of
Mr. Stanley has romanticized his legacy. Consider how many bad trips,
suicides and ruined lives that legacy was also responsible for.

Cory Franklin

Wilmette, Ill., March 19, 2011