Drug Debate

Sir: I commend you on the fine article on pop drugs [Sept. 26]. It was most poignant and struck close to home. I was a grasshopper, but luckily enough I stopped a couple of months ago. I have heard a lot about how you can't get hooked just blowing grass. I've got too many friends disproving that theory. We all started on grass, but they are now dropping acid, popping speed and sniffing glue. Getting high is a great feeling, but it is a greater feeling being free and seeing someone else, and not yourself, ruin his life.

DAWN WELLS Washington, D.C.

Sir: Could you please put me in touch with Dr. Lindesmith of your article on pop drugs? You see, I've been in college a couple of years now, and I haven't yet developed an interest in marijuana. So I guess I've got a problem. I'd appreciate whatever you could do but, for Christ's sake, don't tell my old man! He's along in years, and that could spell the end.

STEVE ORTON Altadena, Calif.

Sir: That's a description of what it is like to be "under the influence" of drugs? Your teen-ager and adult are only describing what it is like to be acutely mentally ill--ask any schizophrenic.

(MRS.) ELIZABETH C. LANDWEHR Long Beach, Calif.

Sir: Your cover article is a tribute to modern interpretive reporting. The problem of drug abuse will not be solved until more people grasp the complex issues and address the problem with understanding based on scientific and social fact. When the mass media do a superior job of reporting these issues and facts, we are certainly on the road to solution. STANLEY F. YOLLES, M. D. Director National Institute of

Mental Health Chevy Chase, Md.

Abolishing the College

Sir: I doubt that President Nixon said that he will sign the proposed constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College "if it reaches his desk" [Sept. 26]. Upon approval by two-thirds of each house of Congress, constitutional amendments are not sent to the President but are submitted directly to the legislatures of the several states.

STEVEN L. STERN Los Angeles

Taking On Teddy

Sir: How can Ted Kennedy have the gall to attack the Administration's Viet Nam war policy as "an exercise in politics and improvisation" [Sept. 26] when his recent famous TV speech was exactly that?

MARION BEADLE Hana, Maui, Hawaii

Sir: Ted Kennedy's overrighteous indignation at President Nixon's handling of the inherited Viet Nam war is short of ludicrous. How unfortunate that Teddy was so silent when his brother John ordered the first American combat troops of this war into action and is now so vitriolic against the President's honest attempts to reduce these forces. What irony that Teddy also insists that we now toss out the Thieu regime when it was, once again, his own brother who was directly responsible for the fall of Diem, leading to the rise of Thieu.

How tragic, too, Kennedy's professed concern with the loss of lives in Viet Nam when he was so negligent about saying the one young life over which he had direct control at Chappaquiddick.

(MRS.) G. M. GRACE Arlington, Va.

Earlier Passage

Sir: It surprised me to find that the article "The Manhattan's Epic Voyage" [Sept. 26] failed to give credit to the first ship that completed the voyage through the Northwest Passage. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police auxiliary schooner St. Roch completed a west-to-east passage from Vancouver, B.C., more than 25 years ago. It also sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on July 22, 1944, and made the voyage through the Northwest Passage, arriving in Vancouver, B.C., on Oct. 16, 1944.

I am a retired member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and have always appreciated giving credit where it is due. W.V.C. CHISHOLM Beverly Hills, Calif.

Sir: You state that the Canadian government is now being pressured into declaring the Northwest Passage Canadian territorial waters, indicating that only now, when there is the scent of money in the air, is it going to do it. Canadians have always considered these waters to be theirs and have no intention of being bullied by American "oil-tanker diplomacy" into giving them up, despite America's mistaken idea that it owns us.

LEO J. KEATING Guelph, Ont.

Avant-Garde Bagmen

Sir: My husband and I have just left Japan, and it behooves me to update you on behalf of the Japanese men, who probably are not even aware that they represent an avant-garde force of purse-carrying men [Sept. 26]. Rarely will you see a gentleman without his soft zippered black pouch bag with a handle, no doubt carrying personal accoutrements.

I've wondered for years how men have managed this long without them!

(MRS.) SYLVIA TERRELL Los Angeles

Sir: Intrigued by Mr. Capote's portable collection, I inventoried my non-Gucci, shoulder-strapless and exceedingly square, standard-brown-leather attache case. To wit: one tube of spot remover, one small tin of shoe polish, one pair of sunglasses, six packets of matches, one toothbrush (without toothpaste), three pencils (two broken), four ballpoint pens (two without ink), one loafer tassel, two unpaid bills, one checkbook, one pad of deposit slips, one address book, two note pads, one Chap Stick, one safety pin, six paper clips, nine rubber bands, one bottle of eye drops, one pen light, one railroad timetable, two personal letters, one road map, one adhesive bandage, one paperback book, one laundry ticket, some business papers.

Of course, you'd never catch me carrying a handbag.

WILLIAM MATHEWSON Manhattan

Sir: Once upon a time, when I was a young girl, we were taught about the three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. At long last, I understand the purpose of the neuter. It's something on which to hang the over-the-shoulder bag.

(MRS.) CARRIE HANCOCK Willowdale, Ont.

On the House

Sir: Re your article "From Dream to Nightmare" [Sept. 26]: it is really too bad when, in this supposedly free country, some snob in a nondescript colonial house can tell someone what kind of house he can live in. This is a good example of how we treat everybody in the world who doesn't conform to our Wasp way of life. I sincerely hope that Mr. Eustice wins his appeal and succeeds in trying to be an individual.

SANDY LOMBARDI Minneapolis

Sir: Frankly, I think his house is beautiful. And if I lived in that atmosphere, I'd board up my windows, too.

KATHLEEN NUNES Albuquerque, N. Mex.

Animal Origins

Sir: I am amused though puzzled by your review of Eugene Marais' The Soul of the Ape [Sept. 26]. I am aware of no more highly informed reporting of the new evolutionary interpretations of human behavior than the articles appearing in your BEHAVIOR section. Yet in the back of the magazine, one finds a reviewer deploring it all, suggesting that Marais speculates too much about the animal origins of the human unconscious (when that is what the book is about), and finally stating that Marais "came to grief over the noninheritance of acquired characteristics," a concept that never enters the work.

I find it difficult to believe that any TIME staffer could know this little about what is going on in the natural sciences. Whom did you bring in, a cultural anthropologist?

ROBERT ARDREY Rome

Mother Symbol

Sir: Vicki Budinger is marrying Tiny Tim [Sept. 26]? How exciting! She must see him as a mother symbol.

LESLIE GOODMAN-MALAMUTH Manhattan Beach, Calif.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.