Re Deedee Acosta's message...
 
> what about, in some cases, the artists of the objects?  Should Native
> American art not be exhibited because the artist was perhaps under the
> influence of peyote or mescaline?  In the nineteenth and early part of the
> twentieth centuries cocaine, laudanum, morphine, opium, etc. were not
> illegal...
 
Is this a good time to remind everyone that Louisa May Alcott (author
of _Little Women_ and other books) was a dope addict?  When she went
off to nurse Civil War soldiers and got terribly sick, she was given
drugs for the first time.  She became addicted and knew it--she wrote
in her journal such comments as "get no sleep without morphine."  At
least one biographer has attributed her early death (she was only 45
or so when she died) to mercury poisoning from the way laudanum was
processed.
 
An anti-drug attitude is the fashion just now--up to a point.
Probably none of you have heard anything about the drug scandal at
the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville--it involved the athletic
dept.  Seems "thousands" of doses of controlled substances were being
distributed illegally--prescription painkillers in this case, and
even the director of athletics and some of the coaches were dipping
into the supply for themselves.  "Thousands" of doses?  Ye gods! they
must have been passing the stuff out like candy!  The university had
to cough up $100,000 for the feds, but last I heard, no one had been
arrested.
 
Nan Lawler
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