Editorials / Opinion

Seattle Times letters to the editor

Individuals should consider abandoning alcohol entirely

Steven Schellings rests in front of a growing memorial where a car hit three pedestrians on Monday, killing two and critically injuring a mother and infant. Schellings’ son is a student across the street at Eckstein Middle School. (KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES)

The latest fatalities caused by the drunken driver in Seattle make me weep [“The road to tragedy: alcohol, second chances,” page one, March 27].

Weighing the carnage on the roads, the rapes, assaults and murders committed by people under alcohol’s influence, as well as the ruined marriages, devastated families, lost jobs and destroyed health for those who drink to excess, can one on balance legitimately claim that the fleeting pleasures of alcohol consumption are worth the terrible personal and social costs?

We all know that Prohibition failed and that outlawing alcohol’s consumption doesn’t work. But society will still be better off for each individual who chooses to listen to the “better angels of our nature” and simply chooses not to drink. This concept is not obsolete.

–Patrick L. McKenzie, Sammamish