Pubdate: Thu, 10 Feb 2011
Source: Post and Courier, The (Charleston, SC)
Copyright: 2011 Evening Post Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.charleston.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/567
Note: Rarely prints LTEs received from outside its circulation area
Author: Skip Johnson
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n073/a01.html
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n074/a07.html

FAILURE TO RESPOND

I can't believe The Post and Courier would use the old 
shoot-the-messenger defense in its editorial criticizing Thomas 
Ravenel's column in favor of legalizing drugs. That is, if you can't 
attack the argument, attack the person making the argument which is 
what you did.

While you admitted he offered some persuasive points, you replied 
only that he's the wrong spokesman.

When he decried drug prohibition as "a violation of our civil 
rights," you answered that "he sounds as if he's playing the victim."

When he showed that alcohol and tobacco cause far more deaths than 
cocaine, you responded only that it's a "self-serving pitch" that 
"sounds as if he's minimizing that drug's insidious dangers."

Not once did you respond to his arguments.

But worst of all, you said Ravenel is the wrong spokesman for the 
anti-prohibition movement "not because of the arguments he put in his 
column (but) because of these facts he left out:" And then you 
quickly recapped his arrest and imprisonment on drug charges -- even 
though those "facts he left out" were published at the end of his column.

Shooting the messenger is the big problem, no matter who says it. 
Please answer his arguments.

Skip Johnson

Meeting Street

Charleston
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom