[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
[February 25, 1997]
[Pages 199-203]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks Announcing the 1997 National Drug Control Strategy and an 
Exchange With Reporters
February 25, 1997

    The President. Thank you very much. First of all, thank you, Nathan, 
for your introduction and your commitment, and I thank all the young 
people who are here from the Boys and Girls Club, from the D.A.R.E. 
programs. I want to thank the members of the President's Drug Policy 
Council who are standing here behind me and those out in the audience 
who have been introduced by the Vice President and by General McCaffrey. 
And I thank the Members of

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Congress for being here and their support, and all the rest of you who 
are involved in this battle.
    Let me say a special word of appreciation to General McCaffrey. He 
has literally been tireless in developing a national strategy to reduce 
illegal drug use and, more importantly, to implement it in a way that 
makes a difference in the lives of all Americans. I knew that he was 
well-suited for the job. I had had a lot of exposure to General 
McCaffrey before I asked him to do this job. But even so, I have been 
surprised by the increased intensity of his tenacity and focus, and for 
that I am grateful. I think it gives us a chance to turn this situation 
among our young people around, with all of your help.
    Let me say at the outset, one of the things that I have tried to do 
and one of the reasons I like this drug policy so much is that it is 
focused on children and therefore it is a part of what I think ought to 
be our overall mission, which is to give our children a safe, wholesome, 
constructive upbringing that begins with a drug-free life, appropriate 
health care, safe streets, and a decent education.
    I want to thank the Attorney General--today the Justice Department 
has announced something else that I think is important. I'd just like to 
begin, because I think we need to look at this in terms of the safety of 
our children. Today the Justice Department announced that in the first 
28 months since the Brady bill went into effect--another law directed to 
the safety of our children--more than 186,000 felons, fugitives, and 
stalkers were blocked from buying guns over the counter, more than 
186,000, from March of 1994 to the end of June of 1996. And more than 70 
percent were rejected because the applicant was an indicted or convicted 
felon. Now, it seems to me that, for all those who are still out there 
campaigning against the Brady bill, those of us who support it can now 
rest our case. It's the right thing to do for America. It's making us 
safer. It's giving these children a chance to grow up drug-free. And I 
ask all of you in law enforcement to redouble your efforts to support it 
and to do what we can to defend it.
    Our five-part drug strategy is another part of making America safer 
for our children. In 10 years, a young person, a young man or woman 
Nathan's age, will be in his or her early twenties, a time when a person 
should be well on the road to becoming a contributing member of society, 
an adult with responsible duties. Those 10 years, they're a pivotal 10 
years. We're learning all the time about how formative the young years 
are in a person's life when intelligence is formed, but we also need to 
concentrate on the formative years when not only intelligence but good 
judgment is formed and decisions are made about whether people will be 
good citizens, good workers, good parents, and among other things, drug-
free. What happens to people in those 10 years should be an integral 
part of every drug strategy. This is an urgent issue.
    You know, there is hardly a day that passes when we don't read in 
the newspaper about yet another child becoming a victim of violence. 
Every American should be angry that a 9-year-old cannot make her way 
safely to her grandmother's door in a Chicago housing project--angry 
that she was brutally attacked and left for dead. That child will suffer 
with great physical and emotional pain for the rest of her life. A 
portion of her childhood was taken from her. And whenever an attack like 
that happens, a portion of our humanity is taken from all of us.
    Last week in Chicago, Hillary asked that anyone who has information 
about that attack contact the local law enforcement officials. I want to 
extend that call today and ask that all of us do more to keep watch over 
our children. We have to become angry whenever any child, one single 
child, becomes prey for drugs or violence or abuse, and we should use 
our anger to take action.
    Last week I unveiled our youth violence strategy to keep gangs, 
guns, and drugs off our street and called for new protections for our 
children, including safety locks on guns and extending the Brady bill to 
violent youthful offenders. But fundamentally this course will only 
change if all of us can teach our children right from wrong and if all 
of us can help them to steer away to a more productive, positive life.
    That is what we have to focus on in this drug strategy. We know what 
works. We know what works. There are people here who have been working 
in this vineyard for years and years and years. We know that bipartisan 
cooperation works. We know persistence and community action works. All 
were factors in reducing illegal drug use by half in the last 15 years. 
But we also know that during this time, drug use by adolescents, almost 
unbelievably, went

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up. And I might add, until last year so was the crime rate by young 
people going up while the overall crime rate was dropping. And the two 
things were clearly related.
    This is not a problem confined only to the poor or to those in inner 
cities. It cuts across from rich to middle class to poor, from urban to 
suburban to rural. In each of these places there are children who are 
getting in trouble when they ought to be choosing a better life. Among 
eighth graders in the last few years, drug use is up 150 percent. An 
eighth grader, typically, is 13 or 14 years old. That's why prevention 
is important at that age and indeed even considerably younger. If we 
teach our children well, more of them will live well away from harm's 
way.
    Our drug strategy must be more than a year-to-year approach but a 
guide to action for the next decade for those critical 10 years of these 
young people's lives, to reduce drug use and its consequences, and to 
keep our young people out of the kind of harm that the invasion of drugs 
into their bodies will cause. We should first begin by giving our 
children the straight facts. We know that the more children are aware of 
the dangers of drugs and believe the facts, the more likely they are to 
avoid them. We propose to add up to $175 million to seed a far-reaching 
media campaign to get out the facts and shape the attitudes of these 
young people. We'll be seeking matching funds from the private sector 
for a total of $350 million because this must be a shared 
responsibility. If a child does watch television--and what child 
doesn't--he or she should not be able to escape these messages.
    And again, let me say I want to thank General McCaffrey for bringing 
this idea to me and pointing out how much we had permitted public 
advertising aimed at young people about the dangers of drugs to decline 
over the last few years. That is one of the seminal contributions that 
he has made to my understanding of this issue, and I appreciate it, and 
I ask the Congress to help us to get this job done.
    Second, we must reduce drug-related crime and violence. Drug 
trafficking supports gangs and sets off gang warfare. A million 
Americans are arrested every year for violating the drug laws. Let me 
say that again: A million Americans are arrested every year for 
violating drug laws. Three-quarters of the growth in the number of 
Federal prison inmates is due to drug offenses. We will enforce the law 
vigorously, but we have to do more than make more jail space. I saw 
yesterday that two of our largest States, Florida and California, now 
have prison budgets bigger than their higher education budgets, that 
prison construction is growing all over America much faster than 
constructions in our colleges and universities, even though enrollment 
is going up and older people are trying to go back to college.
    We have to do more to prevent these things from occurring in the 
first place, more to take the guns out of hands of criminals and 
juveniles, more to use the criminal justice system to reduce drug demand 
and break the cycle of drugs and violence. Drug courts and mandatory 
drug testing and treatment are effective. I'm pleased to announce that 
the Justice Department is providing $16 million in grants to more than 
125 communities across our Nation for planning, implementing, or 
improving drug courts. I have seen them work; I know they will make a 
difference.
    Third, we have to work to eliminate the social consequences of 
illegal drug use. A third of all AIDS and HIV cases are drug-related--a 
third. More than 3.6 million Americans, as the General said, are 
addicted to drugs. Drugs kill 14,000 of our fellow citizens every year. 
Often, people who use illegal drugs are people who go to class or hold 
jobs or have families. They drain our productivity. We can begin to 
reduce these circumstances if we can further decrease the number of 
casual drug users and if we can help chronic users to overcome their 
dependency. It is important that we try to do both.
    Fourth, we have to do more to shield our frontiers against drug 
trafficking. We all know that this is a very difficult task. Hundreds of 
millions of people enter our Nation every year. Hundreds of millions of 
tons of cargo are shipped here every year. Just one millionth of all 
that cargo is illegal drugs. One millionth of all that cargo is illegal 
drugs. But that is still far too much and an awful lot of cargo. Our job 
is to stop it without hurting the legal commerce and movement that makes 
us the trade leader of the world. Along our border to the south with 
Mexico, crime and violence linked to drugs must be brought under 
control. Our 1998 budget will bring considerable reinforcement to that 
border.
    Fifth, we have to reduce drug cultivation, production, and 
trafficking abroad and at home.

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We've made a start by supporting alternatives to drug crops. In Peru, 
coca cultivation dropped by 18 percent. In the next decade, we want to 
completely eliminate the cultivation of coca for illicit consumption. If 
we help with alternative crops, that is a viable, viable policy in many 
cases.
    We've also had some successes against trafficking. The Coast Guard's 
Operation Frontier Shield in the eastern Caribbean between October 1st 
and December 1st of last year seized 14,000 pounds of illicit drugs, 
compared to 5,400 pounds for the entire previous year. It seized seven 
smuggling vessels and achieved an 80 percent interdiction rate, versus 
20 percent in the previous year. We can do better with interdiction, and 
we're learning to do it.
    Throughout the Caribbean and in South America, we've captured more 
than 100 tons of cocaine a year. With the cooperation of other nations 
and with regional organizations, we're committed to building on our 
record of success. And when Secretary Albright returns from her trip 
this afternoon, we'll be looking at certification on counternarcotics 
operations. We are committed to cooperating with our friends in Latin 
America. That's one of the reasons why I asked Mack McLarty to be my 
special envoy to the Americas. We want to cooperate with them, but we 
want them to cooperate with us as well. We want to reduce our demand for 
drugs, but we are determined to reduce the supply as well.
    Finally, let me say we have to do more to work together here at 
home. On May 21st I will host the first White House mayors conference on 
drug control, to bring together not only mayors but police officers and 
prosecutors, too, to make sure that in every community we are doing the 
very best job we can. I want parents, teachers, law enforcement, and 
other community leaders to help us. I want our young people to help us, 
most of all. We did not create this problem overnight, and it will not 
be solved overnight, but over that critical decade of these young 
people's lives who are here, we can lift a whole generation away from 
the grip of a terrible menace.
    Thanks to the efforts of many people, we now have a rational, 
coherent, and long-term strategy. Its ultimate success will depend upon 
the support it receives from every American. And ultimately, it will 
depend upon the willingness of our young people to listen, to learn, to 
be strong, and to find support. The rest of us have to be that support. 
There is no more urgent priority.
    Thank you very much.

1996 Campaign Financing

    Q. Mr. President, in a short time we in the media will have access 
to documents which reportedly contain your feelings that overnight stays 
at the White House could be used as a motivation to get----
    The President. This is not a national priority.
    Q. ----could be used as a motivation for getting people to 
contribute more to the Democratic National Committee.
    The President. That's not what they contain.
    Q. Well, I'm--we have not seen these documents yet.
    The President. Well, I'll tell you what. I'll be glad to answer the 
questions, but you should see it first. What the document says--there's 
a document in there that points out that in early 1995, a lot of the 
people that helped me get elected President in '92 thought that they had 
gotten estranged, in effect, from me, that we had not kept in touch with 
them. And Terry McAuliffe sent me a memo suggesting things we ought to 
do to reestablish contact, which I thought was a good memo. And I told 
him to proceed. And I told Nancy Hernreich, in addition to that, that I 
wanted to ask some of my friends who had helped me when I got elected 
President that I hadn't been in touch with to come to the White House 
and spend the night with me. That is a reference to that.
    And later, by the way, today, sometime, we're going to release the 
people--the number of people who stayed at the White House in the last 4 
years, and you will see that the people that worked for me and helped to 
raise funds for me were a small percentage of the total number of people 
who stayed at the White House. But they were my friends, and I was proud 
to have them here. And I do not believe people who lawfully raise money 
for people running for office are bad people. I think they're good 
people. They make the system work that we have now. I'm proud that they 
helped me, and I was proud to have them here. I did not have any 
strangers here. The Lincoln Bedroom was never sold. That was one more 
false story we have had to endure. And the facts will show what the 
truth is.
    Thank you very much.

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Note: The President spoke at 11:37 a.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive 
Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to Boys and Girls Club 
member Nathan Habel, who introduced the President; Terence McAuliffe, 
finance chair, Clinton/Gore '96; and Nancy Hernreich, Deputy Assistant 
to the President and Director of Oval Office Operations.