[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
[May 21, 1997]
[Pages 635-638]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the United States Conference of Mayors
May 21, 1997

    Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. Mayor Helmke and other officers of 
the Conference of Mayors, General McCaffrey, Mr. Vice President, to 
members of the Cabinet and the administration, all of you who are here. 
First, let me thank you for participating in what, as Mayor Daley said, 
is a fairly unprecedented, long-term, consistent effort at cooperation 
with all these Federal agencies to try to work through a united approach 
to this issue.
    It occurred to me as I was coming here that one of the things I 
ought to say is that all the objectives that all of us have for our 
country depend in part on our being able to give our children a drug-
free future. I came here saying that I wanted to be President because we 
needed to change America for the 21st century, to make sure opportunity 
would be available for all people--it's by definition not there for 
people who are too paralyzed to take advantage of it--to make sure that 
all citizens would be responsible contributors to a community becoming 
more united. Drugs divide America in all kinds of ways that you're very 
familiar with and, by definition, represent irresponsibility.
    And I wanted our country to be a leader in the world for peace and 
freedom and prosperity. And it's hard for America to lead when we're 
fighting all the time over the drug issues. And we certainly do. I just 
got back from a trip to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, and 
each stop along the way, it was a big point of our discussions.
    So it's important that you're here. A lot of you were just at the 
Presidents' Summit of Service in Philadelphia. We said we were going to 
try to create communities in which every child in this country by the 
year 2000 would have a safe place; a decent, healthy start in life; 
access to a good education and marketable skills; a mentor trying to 
help him or her; and have a chance to serve themselves--our children. We 
can't do any of that unless these kids have a drug-free future. So this 
is very, very important.
    Before I get into the substance of my remarks, I'd also like to say 
a special word of thanks to someone who has worked with you on our 
behalf for over 4 years now. This is Marcia Hale's last day on the job, 
and I think we ought to say to her she has done a magnificent job 
representing the mayors. [Applause] Thank you. She leaves for London 
tomorrow. She's going to work for a great American company, and as 
nearly as I can tell, she will soon be in a position to support me in my 
old age. [Laughter] And so we wish her well.
    Let me say that, also, I want to thank all of you for the work 
you've done with the Attorney General and with our other law enforcement 
officials in trying to drive down the crime rate. We can be very pleased 
with what has happened when we've had more police, more punishment, more 
prevention in our communities with a community-based strategy. One of 
the chiefs of police I met today said that the COPS program had been the 
best thing the Federal Government had done in his 37 years in law 
enforcement, and I appreciate that.
    You all know that the crime rate has dropped for 5 years in a row, 
and we learned last week at the annual observance at the Law Enforcement 
Memorial that we had the fewest number

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of police officers killed last year in the line of duty in 35 years. And 
all those are good signs.
    We've also had some success in the fight against illegal drugs. 
Monthly drug use today is about half of what it was 10 years ago. But 
what we have to face is--and I was glad General McCaffrey said what he 
did--is that we have had this anomalous situation in America for the 
last several years where crime is going down but crime among juveniles 
is going up; drug use among young adults, which used to be--that used to 
be the biggest problem category--18 to 35, going down, drug use among 
juveniles going up. And that is the thing, I think, that is plaguing all 
of us.
    This report you have given, I think, is very, very instructive about 
what we can do, and I want to talk a little more about what we can do 
together. But I think it's also important to point out that this problem 
is the problem of every American citizen. It goes beyond the 
responsibilities of even the President and the Attorney General and the 
drug czar and the DEA and the mayors and even the people who are 
involved in prevention and treatment. Our society cannot say on the one 
hand we want to have a tough and tolerant attitude toward drugs and on 
the other hand send a very different message every time there might be a 
little money to be made out of it.
    And I want to say specifically, there have not been consistent and 
unwavering messages. You know, a lot of you have experienced in your 
communities the increasing allure of heroin among young people. We've 
seen a lot of communities where cocaine use goes down, heroin use comes 
up. For most people in our generation--a lot of you are younger than I 
am, but most of you are about my age--we all grew up thinking heroin was 
the worst thing in the world, and there were these horrible images 
associated with it, strung-out junkies lying on street corners in 
decidedly unglamorous ways. But we now see in college campuses, in 
neighborhoods, heroin becoming increasingly the drug of choice. And we 
know that part of this has to do with the images that are finding their 
way to our young people.
    In the press in recent days, we've seen reports that many of our 
fashion leaders are now admitting--and I honor them for doing this--
they're admitting flat out that images projected in fashion photos in 
the last few years have made heroin addition seem glamorous and sexy and 
cool. And if some of the people in those images start to die now, it's 
become obvious that that is not true. You do not need to glamorize 
addiction to sell clothes. And American fashion has been an enormous 
source of creativity and beauty and art and, frankly, economic 
prosperity for the United States, and we should all value and respect 
that. But the glorification of heroin is not creative; it's destructive. 
It's not beautiful; it is ugly. And this is not about art; it's about 
life and death. And glorifying death is not good for any society. And I 
hope that we have all come to recognize that now, because none of us are 
going to succeed unless all of us work together on this problem.
    Let me say that I also recognize that we have more to do here. The 
balanced budget agreement that we have reached with the Congress, and 
which received overwhelming support from Members of both parties in the 
House of Representatives last night--I am very, very proud of it--will 
allow us to continue to increase our efforts to work with you to do our 
part of the job. And I agree with what Mayor Daley said; we have a lot 
of things to do here, including improving the coordination between what 
we do and what you do.
    Among other things, General McCaffrey has succeeded in making the 
case for a $175 million advertising campaign which will be leveraged 
with private sector resources to give our children the hard facts about 
drugs. I think that is very important. We have a lot of evidence that 
drug use does go down or up depending upon the absence or presence of 
certain messages and a certain cultural environment about it.
    There are also two other things I'd like to mention because they 
were mentioned specifically, Mr. Mayor, in your plan. First, we have 
some good news to report in our progress about methamphetamines. Last 
year, we targeted this increasingly popular drug as a special focus for 
our efforts. Meth has a devastating effect on those who use it. It is 
produced in clandestine labs which carry an enormously high risk of fire 
and explosion. The Congress supported our efforts by enacting the 
Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act, establishing new controls 
over the chemicals used to make meth and strengthening penalties for 
trafficking in those chemicals.
    Now a year later, we are releasing a one-year progress report. 
First, seizures of dangerous

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drug labs used to manufacture meth are up 170 percent in one year alone. 
Second, the use of methamphetamine is down in key western cities. In 8 
of the 10 cities where meth use had been skyrocketing, it's dropped 
between 7 and 52 percent. So this shows you that if we work together, we 
can actually turn the tide in problem after problem after problem.
    A second focus of our efforts--and again, one that you mentioned in 
your report--involved a vigorous crackdown on money launderers. We know 
that without a steady stream of laundered cash, the drug trade will 
wither. Today the Treasury Department will take three steps to further 
cut off the cash. We will require currency exchanges, check cashers, and 
other money services to register with the Treasury Department. We will 
require more businesses to report suspicious activity under penalty of 
law and will require the transfer of funds overseas above $750 to be 
reported to Federal law enforcement. We know this will cut back on money 
laundering. It will require some efforts at compliance, but it is worth 
doing. We know if we can get to the money, we can get to the problems 
very often.
    Finally, let me ask your help in trying to get the Congress to pass 
the kind of juvenile justice bill we all know that we need. Organized 
gangs, armed to the teeth, prowl too many of our streets and threaten 
too many of our communities and are part of the drug problem. I have 
proposed comprehensive legislation, modeled on what is working in Boston 
and many other cities present in this room and around the country, that 
will protect our children better from violence and give local 
communities the capacity to have safe streets again.
    The plan will add prosecutors and probation officers, keep schools 
open longer to keep children off the streets. And we know an awful lot 
of the problems young people have occur in the first few hours after 
they get out of school and before they can be home with their parents. 
It will also require child safety locks on guns. Right now, we protect 
aspirin bottles better than we protect guns. And it would extend the 
provisions of the Brady bill to juveniles who commit serious violent 
crimes; they wouldn't be able to buy a gun when they turn 21.
    The legislation passed in the House of Representatives contains 
tougher penalties and more prosecutors, but only about a dozen States 
qualify. It does not do anything on prevention. It does not make all 
States available for extra prosecutors and probation officers. And it 
does not deal with the child safety locks or extending the coverage of 
the Brady bill to juveniles who commit serious crimes.
    Now, I believe we ought to get a good juvenile crime bill here that 
can be actually used in the way the crime bill of 1994 and the COPS 
program are being used by you on the streets. We want to give you 
something you can use. This bill, like the other ones, was largely 
written by local officials telling us what should be in the bill. So I 
do not want this to be a political issue; I do not want this to be a 
partisan issue. I tried to do this in a very straightforward way, based 
on what those of you who labor in this vineyard every day told me was 
the right thing to do.
    So I hope that you will help us do that, continue to make progress 
on meth, continue to make progress on money laundering. I assure you we 
will review your plan and your recommendations very closely. And again, 
let me say I also hope you will help us remind the people in your 
communities that if we want our kids to be drug-free, we've got to work 
hard to send the right signals.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 10:30 a.m. in the State Dining Room at the 
White House. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Paul Helmke of Fort 
Wayne, IN, and Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago, president, U.S. 
Conference of Mayors.

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