Can the cant

Excellent article on the "soccer mom" in trouble [Cover story, "Eight years for a 'minor' offense?" February 20] ( I am making my 13-year-old read it in hopes that he will understand why I am not going to serve alcohol to him, much less to his friends.

However, stuck into a very nice piece of journalism was an item of political propaganda: "[The war on drugs] has incarcerated a generation of Americans who are disproportionately black."

The extent to which so many of our young black neighbors grow up uneducated and unemployable and then seek the "easy" money of brutal criminal activity is and has been the most disturbing and intransigent domestic problem we have faced, and our failure to tackle it with more than wishful thinking is a cancer in our society.

However, to imagine that legalizing drugs would cause these deviants to become model citizens is on a par with those who think outlawing SUVs will solve problems in the Middle East.

Keep up the splendid journalism. Edit out the political cant.

Hart Gary