NOTHING CASUAL ABOUT CASUAL DRUG REFERENCES

Four out of the five stories on the cover of your Nov. 26 Style section
referred to drugs or drug use. And in only two of the stories was the
reference essential to the narrative or the subject: Stephen Hunter's
review of "21 Grams" and Sean Daly's review of Jay-Z's "The Black Album."
This alone should show how pervasive drugs have become in our culture. But
your writers took things a step further.

Hunter's review of "Bad Santa" compared the movie to "an old Mad magazine
'Scenes We'd Like to See' put together by someone on crystal meth." David
Segal, who covered the performance of the Wiggles, a group whose target
audience is toddlers, places not one but two drug references in his
article: "Debriefing a child under 3 is a lot like cross-examining someone
who is insane or tripping on acid," and, in his concluding paragraph,
compares the audience to attendees of a Grateful Dead concert, among whom
drug use was and is highly pervasive.

Your journalists should be aware of the Partnership for a Drug Free
America's recent statistics showing that 2.8 million U.S. teenagers, or 12
percent of the population, have tried LSD, and that 2.6 million (11
percent) have tried methamphetamines. Further, the White House Office of
Drug Control Policy says that in 2000, 46 percent of the D.C. population 12
years old or older had used illicit drugs.

Your paper would do well to curtail the use of casual drug similes and
reflect on whether such references serve to further the glorification of
drug use in our country.

- -- Bryan D. Utter

Gaithersbur