Around AA Items of AA Information and Experience

John L. Norris, MD, nonalcoholic chairman of AA's General Service Board, wrote an open letter to all AA members, following the decision of the Supreme Court in the Powell case last June. Readers are referred to the September Grapevine, page 39, for a discussion of the landmark decision. The court decided against the plaintiff, who was seeking to have his arrest and imprisonment for public drunkenness declared in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution as a cruel and unusual punishment for the unavoidable results of an illness--chronic alcoholism.