Copyright 1997, The Idaho Statesman

HEADLINE: Our children's futures make war against drugs worth fighting

Is anything worth fighting for? Few issues surface in our daily lives
for which we would risk our lives. We may feel passionate about key social
issues. We may even write our congressman over economic concerns. Marches
on the Capitolsteps may allow us public displays of our particular brand
of social solidarity.However, to lay down your life for people affected by
an issue is often viewed as a thing of either romance novels or seriously
misled cults. Or so we are ledto believe.

You see, I would surrender my life for a small group of people. I would
lay down my life at a moment's notice for three young people whose names
are Nate, Megan and Colin. These are my kids and there is a war that
threatens to destroy their innocence and vitality before junior high
school is ever reached. It is a war and the enemy is evil. Its empire
vast.

Who is this enemy? The illegal drug world.

Those who advocate its legal extension into my three kids' lives and
into your family's home dishonor all of us. By manipulating civil
liberties they sanction the irresponsible. They enable the illegal. By
embracing illegal drugs they invite a despicably evil stranger into all of
our kids' lives. Barbies andKens, Power Rangers and Slinkies are joined
by drugs that a generation ago even Jimi Hendrix would have avoided. This
is war and every parent is already enlisted.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis, Senior Policy Analyst for the
Family Research Council, recently visited Switzerland to view firsthand
their experiment in legalizing heroin. He then flew to Boise to view the
''Enough isEnough Campaign.''

A West Point graduate, Maginnis later wrote: ''Idahoans must firmly
condemn the Swiss experiment and prepare for the inevitable assault from
those who advocate medicalizing addictions. Parents are the best and first
line of defense. The United States faces a drug war like never before.''

According to Maginnis, in the recent past when addicts could not come
to the heroin clinics for injections they were given heroin laced
cigarettes, but according to Rosanne Waldvogel, overseer of the Zurich
project, ''Smoking isnot healthy,'' so now they hand out 200 milligram
heroin tablets for addicts who can't shoot up. These addicts go out on
the street. The ''clean clinic rooms'' are left behind for city squalor.

Also in 18 clinics (spread among five cities) 800 addicts are charged
15 Swiss francs per day (about $ 13). The Swiss government pays for
the balanceof the cost. In order to qualify for this virtual giveaway of
government heroin, addicts must have at least two years of daily
intravenous heroin experience and at least two treatment failures to
gain admission. In essence, the kids of Switzerland are rewarded with
government heroin if they can manageto ''tough it out'' for the first
two years as addicts.

A further worse example of national planned social failure could hardly
be found. No, the Swiss model is not for the United States.

In World War II, the Swiss very willingly acted as a neutral gold
storehouse for those who openly advocated the overthrow of civilized
culture.

The barbarians at that time spoke with German accents, wore tailored
uniforms and dispatched their duties with dedicated efficiency and they
banked with the Swiss. Fifty years later, the barbarians of today are
equally well spoken, well tailored and certainly as dedicated and they
are still banking on the
Swiss.

No, ladies and gentlemen, the debate on drugs is not open. I don't care
if Barry Goldwater, George Schultz, Milton Friedman and William Buckley
disagree with me. I do care that Nate, Megan and Colin know that their dad
can be countedon to save them.

You, who so glibly mock these words of a dad in love with his kids,
realize well that attempts at telling any of our kids that ''enough is not
enough'' willbe met with a resistance so powerful and so completely
assured of itself that you will be shocked. We did not raise our children
to become lab tests for social scientists. We gave them life and we will
give our lives for them. Yes, there are things worth fighting for.

Dennis Mansfield of Boise served on the task force for the Enough is
Enough Campaign.