High on Cocaine

To the Editors:

The use of cocaine [July 6] is more evidence of the rottenness and decay of our society. We beat our chests and proclaim ourselves the strongest and most powerful country on earth, but our enemies know destruction will come from within.

Primitivo D. Roca, M.D. Rochester

Imagine a $30 billion-a-year tax-free business! Ironically, cocaine dealers don't pay the IRS through the nose like the rest of us poor taxpayers.

Mary Jane Mullins Louisville

The way to deal with drug abuse is not through law enforcement alone. Society must begin to tackle the pressures that push people to such extreme forms of escape.

Jerry D. Colonna Ozone Park, N. Y.

Is there anyone left out there who still enjoys the basics, like walking, talking and breathing?

Donald W. Hahn Jackson, Wyo.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, lives with the same pressures that drive celebrities into using coke. These people are like any junkie walking the streets of New York City--stupid.

George Grajkowski Hastings, Minn.

The fingernail of the bejewelled person shown snorting cocaine was bitten to the quick. Do coke users become anxious, or do anxious people become coke users?

Bruce Munson Monona, Wis.

Your cocaine cover was the last thing we who work in drug abuse prevention or treatment needed. While TIME's intentions were probably good, the story perpetuated the symbols and myths that give coke its allure and encourage its use. The mystique of the drug scene makes for good reading and bad living.

John McVernon, Chairman New York State Association of Substance Abuse Programs New York City

Confronting Nuclear War

Your Essay "Looking Straight at the Bomb" [July 6] reveals the dilemma we face because of "no thought" and the inability of our leaders to dare to spend billions for peace negotiations rather than for armaments and bravado. Mr. Reagan and his circle should remember that pride goeth before a fall.

Ansel Adams Carmel, Calif.

Weapons, weapons everywhere. I no longer ask if there will be a better tomorrow. My only question now is: "Will there really be a tomorrow?"

Amita Kapoor Durham, N.H.

Those of us who want our children to enjoy this beautiful earth know we can survive only if we refuse to accept the "inevitable" proliferation of nuclear weapons. Either we stop the production of these devices now, or we shall all be looking straight at the Bomb.

Ariana Clarke Windle Standlake, England

I refuse to accept Armageddon, not because I refuse to look at the Bomb's drab snout, but because I have too much faith in humanity to believe that after all our evolution and history, our triumphs and failures, our knowledge and learning, some overreacting Zeus will make us vanish in one mighty poof of a fireball.

Rusi N. Motiwalla Santa Barbara, Calif.

Women and the Draft

With so many people of this country crying "Ratify ERA!" how could the Supreme Court, in all its wisdom, uphold male-only draft registration [July 6]?

Rick Loewe Millbrae, Calif.

The courts probably never considered the egalitarian nature of their decision. When women have an equal hand in making war, then let them be drafted to wage that war.

Lisa M. Siegel Los Angeles

Wanted: Skilled Workers

Your article "A Shortage of Vital Skills" [July 6] failed to mention one of the chief reasons that nobody goes into tool-and diemaking any more. For the past 20 years, policies of the Federal Government have encouraged everybody to get a higher education whether it was right for the individual or not. Now we have a lot of college graduates who are barely able to spell their own names.

Since President Reagan has started cutting back on student loans, perhaps more people will become machinists and laborers. This, combined with increased pay, should eventually get things back to a more natural balance.

Bill Dekle Nashville

The machinist is the most educated, lowest paid, least appreciated of all the skilled workers, receiving barely one-half the hourly rate paid to those in the construction trades--electricians, plumbers, welders, etc. I love machine tools, but who wants to be a machinist?

Mario Centenaro Nanuet, N.Y.

My father has been a tool-and-die worker for more than 40 years. He has always earned better-than-average wages and enjoyed his work. I wonder if people realize that masters of this craft have minds of mathematical geniuses and hands that surgeons would envy.

Bonnie Gahry Powell Randolph, N.J.

Iraq's Reactor

I was both shocked and dismayed by the erroneous allegation in your story "Could Iraq Have Cheated?" [June 29] that my wife was an Israeli, and by the implication that my testimony on the inadequacies of the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards was, as a result, biased. My wife was born and raised in California.

Roger Richter Former IAEA Nuclear Safeguards Inspector Washington, D.C.

Campaign to Clean Up TV

I agree that there is too much sex and violence on TV [July 6]. But to return to the Ricardos and the Cramdens of I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners, as the Moral Majority's Dan Fore suggests, would be ridiculous.

Lucy Ricardo was a scheming, deceitful, bubble-headed idiot. Ralph Cramden was a pompous, irrational, loudmouthed, overbearing jerk. Are these the examples Mr. Fore would set before his children as good marriage partners and role models?

Judy Ruths Minneapolis

If TV is only a mirror of society, then how is it that on a television police drama, the cops will see more action in one episode than most cops see in 20 years? In a Dynasty-or Dallas-type show, the corporate head will bed more secretaries than his true-to-life counterpart could hope to in a lifetime. Does CHiPs really reflect the average highway patrolman?

I am a truck driver, and the next time I'm stopped by a CHiP officer, I only hope it is Erik Estrada and not the real thing.

Jay Kelley Vallejo, Calif.

Air Safety

Your article on proposed on-board aircraft-collision avoidance systems, "Safety Bubbles in the Sky" [July 6], repeated a common but erroneous allusion to the 1978 San Diego mid-air collision, stating that "a small private plane crashed into a commercial jet."

According to the National Transportation Safety Board's final report, the "probable cause" of the accident was the failure of the crew of the Boeing 727 to maintain visual separation from the Cessna 172, which was overtaken and run into by the commercial jet.

Bothwell G. Lee, M.D. Boston

Modern Illnesses

Your article "New Maladies" [June 29] prompts me to report another one. After 30 years of driving a large gas-guzzling automatic-shift car, I switched to a four-cylinder gas saver and developed "manual-transmission knee" from operating the clutch.

Ruth Dwyer San Mateo, Calif.

I too am an avid Space-Invaders player, and although I fortunately do not suffer from the painful wrist ailment you described, I do occasionally have another notorious illness, "Space-Invaders hand." The symptom is a painful stiffness centered on the top of the hand about an inch and a half from the knuckles. I believe that this is caused by the unnatural angle at which one must keep his hand to play the video game.

Maurice Baumgarten New York City

Proper Behavior

In spite of the advice given in Debrett's Etiquette and Modern Manners [July 6], the technique for the proper way to eat a pea can be found in these lines remembered from grammar school days.

I eat my peas with honey. I've done it all my life. It makes the peas taste funny, But it keeps them on my knife.

Betty B. Muir Atlanta

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