Helms and Weld

One would hope Trent Lott, Republican Senate majority leader, could stop quaking and overcome his morbid fear of North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms. Helms chairs his body’s powerful Foreign Relations Committee and is unilaterally preventing that body from even considering the nominee for the position of ambassador to Mexico.

What would happen if Lott called Helms’ bluff, got the nomination on the Senate agenda and permitted it to come to a vote by the senators of all 50 states?

I predict that Helms would huff and would puff, but then he would finally disappear in a cloud of carcinogenic smoke!

MILLICENT SAFRON

Winnetka

Robert Scheer is the first journalist I’ve read that put the Helms-William Weld controversy in its true perspective (Column Left, Aug. 12). It is a sad commentary on our present political scene that a bigot like Helms is permitted to wield such power.

I especially liked Scheer’s pointed criticism of William Bennett. This self-designated Mr. Virtue is a vicious bully who hates gays and anyone else who dares to disagree with him. His opinions about drugs are extremely simplistic, and he accuses anyone who disagrees with him of abeing soft on drugs.

MORTON WACHSPRESS MD

Woodmere, N.Y.

One can rarely accuse Scheer of understatement, but his condemnation of Helms on the medical marijuana/Weld confirmation hearings seems just that.

Every physician and every patient should know that this excuse for a politician has introduced legislation that would imprison any physician for eight years in the federal penitentiary for suggesting to a patient--even a terminally ill one--under the age of 21 that marijuana might alleviate some of his/her symptoms. Not prescribing, but merely talking to a patient about marijuana would be criminalized. (Marijuana, not stocked by any pharmacy, is non-prescribable.)

J. THOMAS UNGERLEIDER MD

Los Angeles