I am a recovering divorced parent of three wonderful children, all of whom were born in Bellingham. I was shocked to see the ads for alcohol in the June 1 issue of The Bellingham Herald. Why do we need to market a numbing agent so desperately? The children don''t need to see parents ingesting alcohol even sparingly. The whole ancient tradition of "have a drink" can be eliminated if we make it that way. How does selling alcohol make any common sense to a society? Oh yeah, profit! Who profits? Doctors, lawyers, courts and corporations. On the contrary, it keeps us stuck in the dark ages. Alcohol kills us, sometimes fast (vehicular homicide) or slow (liver disease) but it always gets the job done. So now that alcohol is more readily available is it a sign that we are so desperate to be numb of our lives and point fingers at all the idiots out there? Because we all know the problems are all out there.

Alcoholism is a social disease, I believe, and if we keep teaching our children that its OK to put that stuff in our bodies then how can we have the audacity to put them in jail when they make mistakes when using alcohol? We have become laboratory animals in our own experiments and we use our intellect to create reasons for the actions that justify the means.

Jeff Sellstrom

Bellingham