    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [July 1, 1993]
    [Pages 967-968]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the Swearing-In of National Drug Control Policy Director Lee
    Brown
    July 1, 1993

        The President. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please be seated, and
    welcome to the Rose Garden. I want to acknowledge the presence in our
    audience of Lee Brown's children; the Attorney General; the Secretary of
    Transportation; the Secretary of Agriculture; General Powell, the
    Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; numerous other distinguished
    Americans; and Members of Congress, including Senator Hatch, Senator
    Dodd, Senator Cohen, Senator Pressler, and Congressmen Rangel, Conyers,
    Gilman, and Congresswoman Waters. I may have left someone out, and
    Senator Kennedy just called to say he was on the way. I think that's all
    a great tribute to Lee Brown.
        We are here today to install a uniquely qualified person to lead our
    Nation's effort in the fight against illegal drugs and what they do to
    our children, to our streets, and to our communities, and to do it for
    the first time from a position sitting in the President's Cabinet. When
    I named Lee Brown to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy,
    many called that an inspired choice. I would say that is an accurate
    characterization because Lee Brown brings three decades of experience in
    highest law enforcement offices in some of the toughest cities in our
    country, New York and Houston and Atlanta. I know if Mayor Dinkins were
    here today he would want me to say a special word of thanks for the
    unique partnership they enjoyed in a safe streets program, which clearly
    lowered the crime rate in many neighborhoods and many categories of
    crime in New York City.
        Lee Brown's leadership in the cause of keeping our communities and
    citizens safe is unsurpassed, and now he must bring those skills and all
    that experience to deal with the destructive lure of illegal drugs. We
    know that successful drug control does not take place in a vacuum. This
    is a many-headed monster. Drugs violate our borders when smugglers bring
    them in as illegal cargo. Our jails are crowded, and our court system is
    overloaded with users and dealers. Crime and violence are brought to
    communities large and small, and random drive-by shootings and
    deliberate killings as well. Too many young Americans are robbed of
    their future and many, many of their very lives.
        For all those reasons, fighting drugs requires a multifaceted
    offensive and the maximum use of the resources we have as a people.
    That's what we've been trying to do in this administration. With all the
    budget cuts and with a 5-year hard freeze on overall domestic spending,
    there's a 10 percent increase in the funds in our budget for demand
    reduction and a dramatic increase in the funds available for community
    policing, as well as a clear commitment to include drug treatment in the
    national health care program that our administration will be advancing
    in the near future.
        But most important, we now will have an effort that is coordinated
    as one, pulled together and anchored by Lee Brown. No longer will the
    Office of the Director of Drug Policy operate separately from the rest
    of the Government, consigned just to being a bully pulpit. Now it will
    work hand-in-hand with the other Cabinet Agencies, and in doing so, our
    effectiveness will be increased.
        Our aim is to cut off the demand for drugs at the knees through
    prevention. That means more and better education, more treatment, more
    rehabilitation. At the same time, we want to strangle supplies by
    putting more officers on

    [[Page 968]]

    the streets, by enforcing the law in our communities, at our Nation's
    borders, and by helping our friends and allies to do the same thing
    beyond our borders. We pledge to work with other nations who have shown
    the courage and the political will to take on their own drug traffickers
    who destabilize their own societies and their economies.
        Our commitment to all these things is personified in Lee Brown. A
    tough guy might say he's a drug trafficker's nightmare, a cop with a
    doctorate or a doctor of criminology with a badge. But the most
    important thing to me is he's got a track record of results. How many
    law enforcement officers in this country would be proud to look on the
    record he has amassed of actually reducing the rate of crime in the
    streets where he has worked.
        You know, the insecurity most Americans feel, without regard to
    income or race, is a truly appalling thing. And anything we can do not
    only to give lives back to children who might otherwise become involved
    in drugs but to give the streets and the safety of the streets back to
    ordinary American families of all kinds is a service well done, and it
    might mean more to them than anything else this Government could produce
    during my tenure in office and for the foreseeable future. The work that
    Lee Brown did in pioneering community policing in Houston and New York
    is now legendary, with officers on foot patrol knowing their neighbors,
    working to prevent crime as well as to catch criminals.
        This is a fight that surely can unite us all, across the boundaries
    of party and race and region and income. We are fighting for our
    families, our children, our communities, and our future. Each and every
    American, make no mistake about it, also bears a personal responsibility
    to play a role in this battle. Anyone who thinks that Lee Brown or
    anyone else can solve this problem for the American people, instead of
    with the American people, has another think coming. There are people in
    this audience today whom I know have worked for decades to try to help
    come to grips with this issue: parents educating their children;
    teachers working hard to prevent crime; law enforcement officers going
    into the schools, working in programs like the D.A.R.E. program; people
    who have worked in drug treatment and know as I do, from our own
    family's experience, that it works. All these things are an important
    part of what we have to do. Make no mistake about it: We've got to try
    to get the streets back for our kids, too. We ought to have a time in
    this country when children don't have to be afraid to go down to the
    neighborhood swimming pool in the summertime.
        I am thankful that Lee Brown has taken on this challenge. He'd made
    the decision to do so at a time in his life when he might have
    reasonably been expected, for personal and professional reasons, to take
    a different course. He could clearly be making more money doing
    something else; he could have far fewer headaches doing something else.
    He would not have all of us investing so much of our hopes in him if he
    were doing something else. The simple fact that at this point in his
    life he resolved to do this says a great deal about him and his
    character.
        I would like now to ask Judge Richard Watson of the U.S. Court of
    International Trade to join his friend Dr. Brown up here to administer
    the oath of office, and I would like to invite--James Watson, I'm
    sorry--and I'd like to invite Dr. Brown's eldest daughter, Torri Clark,
    up here to hold the Bible for her father.

    [At this point, Judge Watson administered the oath of office. Director
    Brown then thanked the President and discussed his strategy to solve
    America's drug problem.]

        The President. Do you have any questions for Dr. Brown?
        Q. Mr. President----
        The President. We'll take one or two. I just had another press
    conference.
        Q. Do you think an energy tax and small business incentives----
        Q. Boo-o-o!
        Q. ----should be non-negotiable items of a budget package, which is
    equally important to the economy as drug control?
        The President. Well, we're going to pass a good economic package. I
    feel confident about that. And we're now trying to work out the
    differences in the House and the Senate, and I'll have more to say about
    that in a few days.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:20 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White
    House.