[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.