Perhaps The Tribune is unaware that alcohol is the nation’s No. 1 drug problem, larger than all the other drugs put together. The reason it is No. 1 is that it is legal and has cultural approval.

What if a new product were to come on the market, and we knew that it would kill almost 100,000 Americans every year (almost twice as many as the entire Vietnam War killed)? That it would seriously injure or maim 6 million people every year, that it would fill almost 80 percent of our county jails and a quarter of all our hospital beds? What if we knew these facts and many more? Would an institution of scientific thought give the product the ambience of cultural approval by serving it on campus?

No. Of course not. The damning statistics need to be told, emphasized and clearly thought out.