MAKE TAMIKA A BATTLE CRY IN WAR ON DRUGS

By Kenneth L. Khachigian

For those with the stomach to get through it, last week's series in The
Times on the tragedy of little children living with substanceabusing
parents took readers into an unforgettable dark corner of America.

The drama played out in The Times' narrative and recounted below is not a
pretty one and should shame a society that tolerates it.

Tamika Triggs is a 3yearold girl, "her sweet faced framed by golden
ringlets of hair." And that's where the fairy tale stops. Tamika lived in
at least nine different places this past year with her 34yearold
HIVpositive, drugaddicted mother. Her "homes" included a garage, crack
den and a druggie's apartment.

Until rescued last week by social workers who read The Times' story, Tamika
often went 24 hours without eating. Her weight dropped a full 10% in one
week. Her teeth were brushed with her mother's presumably HIVinfected
toothbrush.

Tamika's father is in prison, and her mother frequently left her alone for
a day or a week at a time with virtual strangers while she prowled for
drugs. Tamika was once left with a prostitute who took her along onto
streets "so police wouldn't suspect she was looking for tricks."

The Times described one instance where Tamika laid in her mother's arms as
mother and friend smoked crack and shot up heroin in a ramshackle shed.
Here is the reporter's gruesome description: " . . . intent on smoking the
last crumbs of crack, she gently lowers [Tamika] onto a mattress moist with
urine and semen. As mom inhales, Tamika sleeps, her pink and white sundress
absorbing the fluids of unknown grownups."

The Times' series also describes the nightmare existence of 10yearold
Ashley Bryan and her 8yearold brother, Kevin. These children go for weeks
without a bath, eat only once a day (usually rice), and dodge punches from
a drug and alcoholaddicted father.

Kevin fishes in filthy dumpsters in search of clothes for his sister.
Ashley, who fantasizes about buying a Bugs Bunny Tshirt and having a
stomach full of candy, says the same prayer each night: "Just once, give me
something good. Please, make my life better.'

Reading these horrid scenes, one concludes that for all the apparent
effort, America's commitment to eradicating drugs is fauxand worse,
failing. The United States has a higher rate of drug abuse than any other
industrialized nation.

Our president, vice president and assorted attorneys general are ruthless
in their seekanddestroy mission against tobacco. Would that they were as
relentlessly hostile to Joe Cocaine as they are to Joe Camel.

We have bureaucrats who zealously chase down operators of leaf blowers, and
outlaw paints are branded as the enemy by clean air commissars. East of the
Los Angeles Basin, there are mandates to commit literally tens of millions
of dollars to create habitat (read, homes) for rats and sand flies.

You'd think that the Tamikas and Ashleys and Kevins of this country deserve
at least a few crumbs off this table of social conscience. If we can save a
rat, why can't we save a kid?

But these priorities are not going to change unless we rage against our
national lack of determination to confront this war against our culture.
This sickening scourge is a switchblade at America's heart, and drug czars,
treatment programs and outgunned social workers aren't enough.
* * *

Pulling punches and philosophizing loftily in tony salons won't cut it any
more. The fashionable tolerance for "recreational drug use" and claims that
drug abuse is a "victimless crime" have to be rejected. The ACLUdriven
"rights" of drug thugs and death peddlers deserve the contempt their
consequences invite.

The way to beginand it is merely a beginningis for Congress and state
legislatures to commit every conceivable law enforcement and military
resource to end this national disgrace. If we have the will, we will find
the way. And because this enemy knows no limits, the way should not be
limited.

Lacking resources is not our failure, nor is it the wit and creativity of
our citizenry. At the moment our failure is one of resolve.

An outraged nation confronted child molesting with Megan's law. Given all
the strengths America possesses, surely we could write "Tamika's Law."