Will on Family Disintegration

I found Will’s column to be both tragic and accurate. He correctly notes the correlation between poverty and single parenting, but Will only touched briefly on the cause: “. . . Heroin, primarily a male addiction that caused an increase in one-parent families. Crack may be producing no-parent children.”

The cause of the rapid downward spiral of the family unit is obviously drugs. In all reality, therefore, why is no one questioning why so many people are taking drugs? What is so terribly wrong in the lives of masses of people which makes drugs so attractive?

The answer may be the same as why so many people play the lottery--they are among the few avenues available to escape a deadened life.

What has happened to our beautiful America? In South-Central Los Angeles, drugs are sold openly on street corners, while a few miles away in Beverly Hills, million-dollar mansions are “tear downs” to make way for gaudy new mansions. We admire crooks and cheats--Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Ollie North.

It is more than our family structures that are suffering disintegration. The moral muscle of America has gone flabby; it is only more obvious on the Los Angeles street corners and in welfare statistics.

JACQUELINE KERR

Los Angeles