A.A.'s Country-wide News Circuit

Effects of the recent Institute held at the University of California at Berkeley, Cal., are already beginning to be felt in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Bay Area Groups are very happy over it. Two municipal court judges have come out recently with public statements regarding the "drunk" problem, one of them, Municipal Judge Twain Michelsen of San Francisco saying "eighty per cent of the county jail population consists of inebriates." Judge Michelsen said he fully intended to free all men brought before him on drunkenness charges, unless they seemed in need of medical care. In this way, he said, he hoped to focus public attention on the problem. He reached his decision after a tour of the "drunk tanks" in San Francisco police stations on which he was accompanied by the executive secretary of the San Francisco Committee for Education on Alcoholism. Judge Christ B. Fox of the Oakland Municipal Court is turning the consideration of the problem of drunks appearing before him over to two probation officers, one of whom spent last summer at the summer session of the Yale clinic. Judge Fox said that while he cannot sentence men to A.A. he can at least guide their footsteps that way. . . . The Richmond Group reports that it is fortunate in having a very liberal minded newspaper publisher who has given a full column, written by a member of the group, every Thursday afternoon. This has appeared for seven months and the group has been advised that it will appear as long as copy is provided. . . . The Richmond Group also furnished the main luncheon speaker at the Kiwanis Club luncheon recently and the same speaker will be scheduled for several other civic group meetings.