[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[February 9, 1994]
[Pages 210-214]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at Prince Georges County Correctional Center in 
Upper Marlboro, Maryland
February 9, 1994

    Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President. And Dr. Brown, thank you 
for all the work you have done to develop the drug strategy. Thank you, 
Adele Hayes, for this fine program we came here to celebrate today. And 
thank you, Mr. Saxton, for having us here.
    I was a little uncomfortable about how hard you all laughed at the--
[laughter]--it occurred to me that this could be one of the great 
moments in American history for people who hate politicians. You've got 
the President, the Vice President, half the Cabinet, and a substantial 
portion of the Congress all in jail at the same time. [Laughter]
    I want to say a special word of thanks, too, to Joseph Mundo, 
because I know how hard it was for him to stand up here and give that 
talk. And I thank you, sir, for doing it.
    We have introduced a lot of people here today, and I don't want to 
lengthen that. But there are two people that I think it's very, very 
important to recognize as I get into what our

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administration's approach to the drug issue will be, because it is clear 
to me and has been for some time from personal experience that we have 
to have, in order to succeed here, an enormous effort across this 
country that goes way beyond the Federal Government and way beyond law 
enforcement, that involves citizens supporting our common efforts, and 
that involves some pretty sweeping cultural changes, and there are two 
Americans here who have done as much to try to fight the drug problem in 
that way as any people who live in our country. I'd like to ask them to 
stand and be recognized: the former Secretary of what was then the 
Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the director of the Center 
on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, Joe Califano, 
thank you, Joe; and one of our country's most distinguished leaders and 
the chairman of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, Mr. Jim Burke, 
is also here.
    Ladies and gentlemen, we came here for a real purpose, to announce 
our antidrug strategy. I do believe it is the most comprehensive one 
ever, but we wanted to come here to illustrate that this is an issue 
which must be dealt with person by person, one at a time--it's a very 
human problem--and that it requires those of us who are trying to deal 
with it to take certain steps and those who have already suffered from 
alcohol or drug abuse to take even stronger steps.
    I believe very much in what we are doing today from two angles. One 
is, the first job I ever had, courtesy of the voters, was the job of 
attorney general; I started out in a law enforcement job. Second is that 
I have had the questionable privilege of living in a family that has 
dealt with both alcoholism and drug abuse. I know treatment works. I 
also know that it is important to be tough as well as caring.
    What we are trying to do today is to start our Government on a 
course that offers the promise of real results to the American people. 
When I asked Lee Brown to come and be head of the Office of Drug Policy, 
I told him that for the first time ever I would make the Director a 
member of my Cabinet, that I recognized that it was folly to believe 
that 100 or 125 or, for that matter, 1,000 people working in a Federal 
office in Washington could change the habits and the policies of the 
American people, that we had to enlist the entire Government.
    I daresay this is probably the first time that we've ever had seven 
Cabinet members on a stage at the same time all manifesting their 
commitment to dealing with this issue. And there are many others. We'll 
have a total of 10 just in the next 2 days who will be announcing their 
part of this battle to implement this strategy. We also have here the 
Director of our AIDS effort, the head of the Internal Revenue Service, 
the head of the Secret Service. We have an enormous number of Federal 
officials here who are not on this stage who have a big part of this 
endeavor. I say this to illustrate the fact that we have really tried to 
be very realistic, very hardheaded to try to take some time to think 
about what it is we can do and what it is the rest of America has to do 
to reinvigorate this Nation's fight against the scourge of drugs.
    We know we have to build on the works of parents and community 
leaders who did so much to bring down casual drug use in the 1980's. We 
know we have to add to the success of law enforcement authorities who 
have proved there are things you can do that work. We know that where 
energies have been deployed effectively, whether it was cracking down on 
pushers, cracking down on drug networks, or building up people like this 
man who spoke so eloquently today, that they can make progress.
    We also know some pretty tough facts. We know that hardcore drug 
abuse in America has continued unabated. We know that its persistence 
represents the threat to the stability of our society and the economic 
future of our country. We know that no nation can fight crime and drugs 
without dealing honestly and forthrightly with the problem of drug 
addiction. As I said in my State of the Union Address, we need an 
approach to crime and drugs that is both tough and smart. We very often 
have one without the other, and we paid a price for that, as well.
    The crime bill and this strategy we announced today puts more into 
law enforcement than we've ever put before. It does more to keep drugs 
off the street. It does more than ever before to help hard-core drug 
users into treatment programs where they belong. It is a new national 
attack on drug addictions.
    The craving for drugs is an enormous factor in a lot of our 
problems: the rise of violence, the spread of AIDS, the spiraling costs 
of health care. Every time I have one of my town meetings on health 
care, I tell the American people

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we have to do some things to provide health care to all Americans and 
bring down the cost, but we have to be honest. No health care proposal 
can solve all the problems that lead American health care to be more 
expensive than any other country. And one big one health care cannot 
solve is the fact that we pay more for violence because we've got our 
emergency rooms full of people who have been cut up and shot. We pay 
more to deal with AIDS. And both those things are the direct result, in 
large measure, of our very high rate of drug abuse. You know it, and I 
know it. So if we want to deal with this problem, we have to face it.
    You also heard Mr. Mundo say in such powerful terms that he lost 
everything. We know that drug abuse is a big factor in the breakdown of 
families, in the increase in joblessness, in the increase in 
homelessness. How many people--every day when I go out for my run at the 
White House, I see what seems like an ever-increasing number of people 
who are living homeless within three or four blocks of the White House. 
And you know every one of them has a personal life story, many of them, 
a story that involves drugs.
    We know if you go to any children's hospital in any sizable city 
today and you go to the ward where the little babies are, you'll see 
baby after baby after baby born with an addiction to drugs. We know that 
now many of our streets are too dangerous to walk and our schools even 
dangerous to attend. I met a young man about a year ago from Chicago, 
who was a big, strapping, handsome young fellow who wanted to really 
make something of his life. And he said that he knew he had to get an 
education to do it, but he was scared to walk from home to school to get 
the ticket out of his neighborhood. I've had that scene replayed many 
times just in the last year with other people.
    If we want to, therefore, reduce crime and cut health care costs and 
reform our welfare system, if we want to rebuild our families and our 
communities, all these things require a serious effort to curb the use 
of drugs. Part of it is enforcement. The crime bill now before the 
Congress is part of that strategy. It would put another 100,000 police 
officers on the street. It would provide boot camps for juvenile 
offenders. It would provide dramatic increases in support for drug 
courts, very successful drug courts, like the ones in Florida, New York, 
California, and the District, where court-ordered rehabilitation 
programs have cleaned people up and freed prison cells for truly violent 
criminals. The Miami drug court has treated 4,500 first offenders since 
1987, with a rearrest rate of only 11 percent.
    We know these kinds of initiatives will support the efforts of 
community grassroots efforts, like the one sponsored by Monsignor East 
and his parishioners in Washington who started an orange-hat brigade, 
where community leaders patrol streets in bright orange hats, sending a 
message that drugs and drug trade won't be tolerated. There are 
thousands of groups like this all across America who work with police to 
shut down crack houses and take their neighborhoods back.
    Last Friday, the Vice President and the Cabinet outlined our new 
plan to help residents of public housing rid themselves of crime and 
drugs. We can't do that unless people at the grassroots participate and 
take the lead. But we have to also do our part. The most effective 
things mobilize all the resources of a community. And that's what our 
strategy seeks to support.
    We also seek to support a new, more drug-free America through 
prevention. We need to reach people before they get started through 
prevention and early intervention, especially among our young people 
before they enter middle school, much less high school or college. The 
latest statistics show an increase in drug use among the young. Our 
children need a constant drum beat reminder that drugs are not safe; 
drugs are not good; drugs are illegal; there will be consequences for 
using them.
    I know a lot of these programs work. I saw them work in the schools 
where my child attended when she was very, very young. I saw the impact 
that a law enforcement officer in a uniform, talking to children who had 
never before had a positive human personal relationship with an 
authority figure, could have in these schools. I know we can do it. And 
our proposal provides a substantial increase in funds to support those 
kinds of activities.
    We also know we have to do more in the workplace. Drug-free programs 
at work can be every bit as important and effective as drug-free 
programs at school. Our strategy supports programs like these and calls 
on everyone in a position of influence to do their part.
    Finally, we have to have some more effort at treatment. This 
strategy recognizes that drug

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addiction is a disease, that it can and should be treated, and that 
treatment can work, as Adele said. We're letting hardcore drug users 
know that if you're an addict caught in the cycle of drug abuse, we can 
help you to get the help you need. Our goal is to get 140,000 more 
hardcore users into treatment in the next year, 140,000 more, targeting 
chronic hardcore users, including adults and juveniles under the 
supervision of criminal authorities, along with pregnant women and 
children.
    Every dollar we spend on treatment will save seven dollars America 
is losing today. It will make up for lost productivity. It will save 
money we are using now to fight the problem instead of to prevent it. 
This target is a significant start that allows us to expand programs as 
the effectiveness of service and research findings grow.
    One of the most important parts from your perspective of our health 
care proposal is that it would include drug treatment as part of health 
care coverage. This is a very important thing. We have to recognize that 
until we have the appropriate level of treatment on demand without 
delay, we will continue to pay for a problem that we can reduce. You 
know treatment works. It's time for the Congress to recognize it in the 
form of the budgets we have presented and for America to aggressively 
embrace it in the way you have at this institution.
    We also recognize we need to try to do something to control the 
supply. Strategy calls for what we strongly believe is an improvement of 
our international drug control programs, shifting away from a policy 
that was focused largely on interdiction--that is stopping the drugs 
when they were on the way to the United States--to a three-pronged 
approach: working with countries in which drugs are grown that have the 
political will to go after the kingpins in those countries; destroying 
the cartels that grow rich from supplying our people with drugs; and 
continuing our interdiction effort, hopefully with better technology and 
smarter efforts that allow us to interdict even more drugs. That is very 
important. We should not stop it, but we must supplement those efforts 
so that we can be more successful.
    Dr. Brown has said, yes, we want to continue our presence at the 
border to interdict drugs, but we don't want to wait for people at the 
border anymore. He says he's tired of swatting hornets, he'd rather go 
after the hornet's nest. And that's a pretty good line.
    I might say our friends and neighbors beyond our borders should 
welcome this. We have seen in nation after nation how international drug 
trafficking is a threat to democratic institutions. It fuels human 
rights abuses and terrorism against the innocent. It undermines 
legitimate, broadbased economic development. It contributes to regional 
instability. Many of the countries that deal with this problem will 
never become what they want to be until they're able to be rid of it. We 
ought to help them, for ourselves and for their own people as well.
    This is an important part of our foreign policy toward major source 
countries and major transit countries. We have to make it an important 
part of our commitment to promoting democracy, economic reform, and 
human rights. None of that's going to happen in countries dominated by 
people who dictate events because of the profits of the drug trade.
    Finally, let me end where I began. From my own personal experience, 
in my family as well as my work in law enforcement as an attorney 
general and a Governor, I believe still that once it occurs, drug 
addiction has to be overcome one person at a time. In the past year as 
President, I've spoken about drugs on 85 separate occasions. And I can 
keep talking about this until I, once again, lose my voice, but you and 
I know that we're not going to make a dent in this problem except by 
having it happen, one person at a time. If this man had not chosen to 
take some responsibility for his own life, then this fine program would 
still be just another expenditure of taxpayer money.
    The newly inaugurated mayor of Detroit, Dennis Archer, offered a 
challenge to his city when he was sworn into office. I'd like to quote 
it for you now because it equals what I think we're facing. He said, and 
I quote, ``To the people of Detroit, stand with me when I tell the dope 
man to get off our streets, to leave our children alone, to get out of 
our way. We're taking back our streets, and we're taking back our 
children.''
    Well, Mayor Archer can't do it alone. Monsignor East can't do it 
alone. But this administration and the entire weight of State and local 
government can't do it alone either. The people of this country have got 
to take responsibility for themselves, their children, and their 
neighbors. If we work with them, if we say we know hardcore drug users 
can't do it alone, the help they need is treatment, the help they need 
is

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support, then I think we can make a real profound difference.
    I want every American, every Member of Congress, every State 
official, everybody who works for a mayor or a city government to join 
me in putting this strategy to work. This is a national strategy, not a 
Federal strategy. I don't want it to become partisan in any way, shape, 
or form. This should unite us in America: people in the private sector, 
people in Government, people at the local level, people at the national 
level, Republicans and Democrats, people who are inside this 
institution, and people who are beyond its walls. We have a common 
interest in saving our country. And all of us have a personal 
responsibility to pursue. This drug strategy we announce today is our 
attempt to be your partner and pursue our personal responsibility. And 
together, together we can do it.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 12:22 p.m. in the gymnasium. In his 
remarks, he referred to Adele Hayes, human services coordinator, 
Awakening; Sam Saxton, director, Prince Georges County Correctional 
Center; Joseph Del Mundo, former drug treatment client; and Monsignor 
Raymond G. East, pastor, St. Teresa of Avila Catholic Church, 
Washington, DC.