Responsible Youth

Your editorial, “All Kinds of Kids Get In Trouble” (Jan. 8), fails to recognize an important ethic: the responsibility of the individual to make moral decisions. While I acknowledge the power of peer and environmental influences on adolescents, I do not accept your premise that “they have been knocked from a sunlit path.”

In my work as executive director of Los Angeles Youth Programs, I have the privilege of being associated with teen-agers who have chosen to reject crime, drugs and gangs. Instead, they have elected to serve their communities as volunteers. A recent nationwide Gallup poll reveals that more than 60% of 12- to 17-year-olds volunteered at least once a week in 1991. They chose to stay on the sunlit path; most of us have the freedom to make this choice.

ALICE DRUCKER

Los Angeles Youth Program