I would like to revise my response to yesterday's letter, but I am not quite certain as to how.

My first impulse, in sitting down at my correspondence desk, was to be snarky. After all, I am quite opposed to the increasingly common practice of using the imagined welfare of children as a basis for one adult (or group of adults) making moral decisions for or judgments on another adult (or group of adults). Further, I do not believe that the use of drugs that are currently illegal is necessarily any more harmful than the use of those that are currently legal, such as alcohol and tobacco. As a matter of fact, according to many findings, alcohol and tobacco are even more addictive and otherwise dangerous than any of the illegal ones (although this may also be because of their ready availability).

On the other hand, I am an avid reader of the news and watcher of television programs such as "Judge Judy," in which the lives of many children with unstable parents (those who abuse legal and illegal drugs, as well as those with violent tempers) are portrayed as chaotic, dangerous, irresponsible, full of ignorance, and otherwise devoid of potential for health and growth. If these children grow up at all, they often become locked in cycles in which they are doomed repeat the patterns of their parents, or suffer any number of mental and emotional instabilities. We all know this, regardless of our positions on the issues, and as the letter writer implied, we would not like to see children who matter to us raised under such conditions.

So I am torn. I dislike children in general, and I dislike those who attempt to inflict their personal morals on others . . . but are parents whose personal morals include a "riskier" set of behavior also not inflicting these morals upon those who are too young to understand (or reject) what is going on, thereby incurring lasting repercussions?

Issues like this paralyze me with indecision, which is why I advised that the writer of the letter in question, if he or she had reason to be truly concerned about the child's safety, to contact the only "experts" I could think of.