'TOO MANY DRUG ADDICTS AT HOME'

Chair of March Against Drugs urges parents to change their attitudes toward their drug-using adult children.

The best way to fight drugs is to throw the bums out.

Even if - says the tough-talking chairman of this year's 7th annual March Against Drugs - the bums are your own children.

"We in America have a bad attitude toward drugs," says Alice Moore of Kalamazoo. We are too tolerant, she says.

"We have too many drug addicts living at home, demanding this and demanding that of their parents, who walk around with their purse because they're afraid their own kids will steal from them.

"Let go," she tells the frightened and weary parents who allow their adult children to stay in their homes.

"Do what your parents and grandparents would have done.

"Put the adult drug user out."

One alternative to bouncing from home to the streets in Kalamazoo is Safe House, a "home away from home," in Moore's words. A community of recovering addicts, the organization provides access to housing as well as around-the-clock drug counseling.

Safe House is sponsoring its 7th Annual March Against Drugs at noon Saturday. The idea is to demonstrate to users and the rest of the community that addiction can be overcome.

But it can't be overcome as long as so many parents are allowing their adult children with addictions to live under their roofs, Moore says; it's a weakness that not only hurts the addict but also his or her children.

"By tolerating the drug abuser and not forcing them out, it's harming the children," says Moore, a technician at Borgess Medical Center.

"We're allowing way too much."

Raised in Kalamazoo and a 1972 graduate of Kalamazoo Central High School, Moore moved to Detroit and recently moved back to Kalamazoo. Seeing the impact of drugs on the east side of the state, as well as in her hometown, led to her choosing Safe House as a nonprofit organization she wanted to support, she said.

"We won't change drugs," says Moore. "But we do need to change our attitudes."