THE WAR ON BREAD

Dear Alibi,

Thank you for printing the excellent letter from Mr. Jerry Bock, "Legalize
Law Enforcement, Not Drugs" [July 11-17]. Mr. Bock is to be commended for
his courageous position.

Given the wisdom indicated in his letter, I am confident that Mr. Bock is
just the man to assist me in my current effort to ban an extremely
dangerous and destructive, and yet inexplicably still unregulated
substance: bread.

We must move to ban all bread and make it illegal.

Look at the facts about this insidious substance: 1) More than 98 percent
of convicted felons are bread users.

More than 90 percent of all violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of
eating bread. 2) Bread has been proven to be addictive.

Subjects deprived of bread and given only water begged for bread after as
little as two days. 3) Virtually all drug users, alcoholics and smokers
consumed bread regularly before moving on to other drugs, alcohol and
cigarettes, proving that bread use leads to the use of other dangerous and
addictive drugs. 4) Fully half of all children who grow up in
bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests. 5) In
the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the
average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were
unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as
typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations. 6) Bread is
made from a substance called "dough." It has been proven that as little as
one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse.

The average American eats more bread than that in one month.

Children have been known to choke on less than one slice of bread. 7) If
bread were made illegal, the government, not the bakers, would reap the
economic benefits of illicit bread sales.

We could build thousands more prisons, for which the right-thinking,
non-bread users would pay. Escalating the War on Drugs to include bread
will allow us to spend billions of dollars more on this vital mission and
expand and create even more armed federal regulatory agencies to assail the
Bill of Rights without the bother of going through Congress. 8) Most
worrisome of all is the fact most American bread eaters are utterly unable
to distinguish between significant scientific data and meaningless
statistical babbling.

For the record, I only steal from the best. And always remember: Think
idiotically, act globally!

John Bauer

Albuquerque