Dutiful Daughter

When a young Tustin, Calif., girl walked into the local police station just after midnight and turned over a bag containing some $2,800 worth of cocaine, it seemed to be a case of a good citizen doing her part in the national war against drugs. She also produced a small quantity of marijuana, about two dozen pills, drug paraphernalia, $1,900 in cash and a .25-cal. handgun, thus providing sufficient evidence for officers to arrest Bobby Dale Young, 49, a bartender, and his wife Judith Ann Young, 37, a U.S. bankruptcy-court clerk. But there was an extraordinary twist to the bust: the tipster was the Youngs' 13-year-old daughter Deanna.

For months Deanna had implored her parents to stop using narcotics, but to no avail. After attending a church lecture by an off-duty policeman on the dangers of drug abuse, the junior-high-school student knew what she had to do. Several hours later she searched her house, collecting the incriminating evidence. "The talk she heard the night before," said a lawman, "was the straw that broke the camel's back." Deanna's parents were charged with one count each of coke possession. Their daughter was placed in a shelter for abused and abandoned children.

Deanna's story was the most unusual incident in a week of intensifying antidrug activity around the country. Not since the early days of the temperance movement, when Carry Nation took ax in hand and went about hacking up saloons, has the U.S. public seemed so determined to do something about substance abuse. There were church vigils and street-corner rallies, marches through dope-infested neighborhoods, and TV spots filmed to urge young people to resist the temptation to experiment with drugs. Showing the Administration's support for drug testing, the President and his Cabinet submitted to urinalysis.

As the Administration unveiled its ambitious "Operation Alliance," designed to crack down on drug trafficking and dealing, other antidrug crusaders were touting education and treatment as the key weapons in the drug war. In the Baltimore area, officials announced plans for expanded drug- awareness programs in local schools and a "crack" hot line to aid users of the new, highly potent form of cocaine.

In New York, Governor Mario Cuomo proposed that anyone convicted of selling as little as $50 worth of crack be liable to life in prison. Local police in the state have begun confiscating the cars of cruising crack buyers. Meanwhile, federal agents arrested Jose Giraldo, the alleged primary East Coast contact for a $600 million international drug ring. They also nabbed Michael Phillippo, the manager of a posh Westchester, N.Y., country club, as another alleged ring operative. Police found more than $3.1 million in $20 bills stashed behind Phillippo's wine rack.