[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
[June 27, 1997]
[Pages 836-840]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Signing the Drug-Free Communities Act of 1997 and an Exchange 
With Reporters
June 27, 1997

    The President. Let me, first of all, say to you, Congressman 
Portman, and to Congressman Levin and Congressman Hastert and, in his 
absence, Congressman Rangel, and to the Senators who worked on this, 
this is a very important day for this legislation because it does 
reflect our commitment in Washington to behave in the way that people in 
communities behave when they do what works in fighting the drug problem, 
and I cannot thank you enough.
    The fact that we did this in a bipartisan fashion, and we did it, to 
use Congressman Portman's words, based on trying to legislate nationally 
a system not only to empower people to do what we know works in some 
communities today already but to give them the incentive to do more of 
it, is, I think, a great thing. So I thank the Congressmen for being 
here. I thank the members of the Cabinet for their support. I thank Jim 
Copple, the president of the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America; 
Dick Bonnette, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America; and all the rest 
of you who are here.
    Now, before I sign this bill, I have to make a couple of comments 
about--this has been a very interesting week of momentous decisions by 
the Supreme Court. Today the Supreme Court issued a ruling on the Brady 
bill. And since I have been so heavily identified with that for several 
years now, I'd like to make a few comments.
    The decision struck down the requirement that local police officers 
conduct background checks but left intact the Brady bill's 5-day waiting 
period. Since the Brady bill passed, 250,000 felons, fugitives, and 
mentally unstable persons have been stopped from purchasing handguns. I 
don't think anyone can seriously question that it has made a major 
contribution to increasing the safety of the American people. And I'm 
going to do everything I can to make sure that we continue to keep guns 
out of the hands of people who should not have them.
    These criminal background checks make good sense; they save lives. 
Now 27 States, 9 more than when the Brady bill first passed, have State 
laws requiring them, and they will continue to do the background checks. 
Even in other States, criminal background checks will continue. The 
Brady law was drafted by our law enforcement community; they wanted it. 
Again, it was a community-based resolution of a difficult problem. So I 
know that these State and local law enforcement officials who asked us 
to pass the law will continue to do the background checks.
    I've asked Attorney General Reno and Secretary Rubin to contact 
police departments across our country to make sure they know that the 
background checks can and should continue

[[Page 837]]

to be done by local police on a voluntary basis. And then the Attorney 
General and Secretary Rubin will immediately convene a meeting of law 
enforcement officers to review and develop recommendations, including 
appropriate legislation, to ensure that we can continue to perform these 
background checks. It's my understanding that the Supreme Court actually 
made some suggestions about how we might proceed from here.
    My goal is clear: no criminal background check, no handgun anywhere 
in America. No State should become a safe haven for criminals who want 
to buy handguns.
    We know that--again, I say, tremendous progress has been made. The 
idea that 250,000 of these sales and transfers have been stopped is a 
very impressive thing in just a few years, and I think it clearly 
contributed to the largest drop in violent crime in over 35 years last 
year, murders dropping a stunning 11 percent in 1996.
    So we've got to keep going on this. And even though I wish we didn't 
have to do this extra work, I think the framework of the Court decision 
makes it clear that we have done the right thing, that the 5-day waiting 
period is legal. And let me remind you, as the Attorney General said, by 
November of 1998, which is not all that far away, we expect to have in 
place the technology and the capacity to do instantaneous background 
checks. Is that the date? So what we've got to do is figure out how to 
keep this system alive between now and November of '98. We are committed 
to doing it.
    Let me just say another couple of words, if I might, about this 
legislation today and what it means to us. I think the Congressman said 
it's only a small part of our overall drug budget, but it clearly sends 
a signal that we are shifting emphasis, not to diminish what were doing 
on interdiction and the other work that we have to do about drugs beyond 
our borders, but to recognize that we will never get a hold of this 
problem unless we deal with the demand side here in America.
    And we know that while casual drug use has plummeted over the last 
15 years among adults, it has doubled among young people in just the 
last 5 years, and among eighth graders it has tripled. The fact that the 
percentage of total people trying drugs at that age level is small is 
cold comfort when you look at the trends and you ask yourself, how could 
these trends be running in direct contradiction to the fact that drug 
use is going down among people between the ages of 18 and 35? That is 
the real threat to our future. That is the problem we face today. And 
the quicker we face up to it the better off we're going to be.
    A study by Columbia's Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse has 
shown, for example, that a young person who tries marijuana is 85 times 
more likely to try cocaine than peers who don't try marijuana in the 
first place. So a middle schooler or a high schooler who mistakenly 
decides that it's safe to try cocaine or heroine or LSD or 
methamphetamine or any of the so-called designer drugs, along with 
marijuana, is playing a dangerous game, and we have to try somehow to do 
more than we have done in the past to stop this. And we know that the 
broadly based community antidrug coalitions have been successful at 
driving down casual drug use. We know that they've been more successful 
than anyone else and than any other approach has been.
    So what we're trying to do here is to find a way to support them, to 
encourage them to do more, and to increase the number of such coalitions 
throughout our country. We know that this has got to be done person by 
person, family by family, community by community. That's what this 
legislation does. More than 4,300 communities in every State in America 
and our territories have organized themselves to deal with this, to help 
parents, to help the teachers, the coaches, the principals, all the 
others who are fighting for drug-free schools and communities and a 
drug-free future for our children.
    So this is the sort of partnership we need more of. Again, let me 
say I am immensely gratified by the bipartisan nature of this. I also 
would say, if you focus on the problem, which is why juvenile drug abuse 
is going up while young adult drug use is going down, and the whole 
impact of the culture on that, I think it justifies the policy that 
General McCaffrey adopted that I have supported him on of having an 
unprecedented advertising campaign to try to get the message out to 
these young people. And I certainly believe it supports our juvenile 
crime strategy of having 1,000 afterschool programs to give our young 
people positive things to do, because we know that a lot of the most 
difficult hours are those right after school closes for criminal 
activity and for casual drug use.

[[Page 838]]

    So the Drug-Free Communities Act of 1997 is not only a good thing, 
but I hope it is an indication of things to come.
    The last point I'd like to make, just to echo what the Vice 
President said about the smoking issue, is I think that this settlement 
was a terrific achievement. It is the result of all the work that was 
done before then in the public health community and the work that our 
administration had done. But we have to take a quick look--I mean, a 
careful look at it, and we will take a careful look at it. Secretary 
Shalala and my Domestic Policy Adviser, Bruce Reed, are heading a group 
that will consult with the public health community, will look at it 
carefully, and we will offer our judgments on it.
    My preliminary take is that we do not want to paralyze the capacity 
of the FDA to protect the American people. That, to me, is the critical 
thing. And that in no way minimizes the enormous achievement of the 
attorneys general and the others who are involved in this in the public 
health community. And I have no final judgment on it. I just want to say 
that Secretary Shalala is going to take a serious look at it. We're 
going to work hard here in the White House. But if we can do more and 
more of these things together in a bipartisan way as we're doing today, 
I think this country is going to be much better off.
    Thank you very much.

[At this point, the President signed the legislation.]

Supreme Court Decision on Handgun Legislation

    Q. Mr. President, with the Supreme Court ruling today, will your 
administration--and can it legally--speed up the process of getting this 
instant background check system in place?
    The President. Well, that's one of the things the Attorney General 
and Secretary Rubin are going to tell me in the next day or two. We're 
going to look at what our options are. Obviously, we've been thinking 
about this. I think the important thing to point out is, the Supreme 
Court said it was constitutional for us to have a 5-day waiting period, 
that we can have background checks but that five of them did not believe 
we could require local officials to do it. They said we could have done 
what we've done in the past by tying Federal funds of some kind to the 
willingness to do it, sort of a contractual arrangement.
    We're going to look at what our options are and see where to go from 
here. But in the short run, I would just implore the officials in the 23 
States that don't have their own State laws requiring this to keep on 
doing it, because there is no longer any serious debate here; no one who 
needs to get any kind of weapon has been seriously inconvenienced, and a 
quarter of a million people who had no business with them don't have 
them. It's a huge public policy success for the United States. It's a 
part of driving the crime rate down. And we'll come up with our options 
as quick as we can.

Proposed Tobacco Agreement

    Q. It sounds like you like the tobacco agreement.
    The President. No, I don't think you should draw any conclusion one 
way or the other. I like the fact that they achieved it and that has--
and the broad dimensions of it are quite staggering. I mean, even in 
Washington $368 billion is a lot of money. [Laughter] And I think that 
it's a real testament to all--to the work the attorneys general and the 
other parties did. But I would say that we have an obligation to look at 
it very carefully from the public health point of view.
    Keep in mind, whenever--in any settlement in any lawsuit, both sides 
think they're better off settling than not, or there wouldn't be any 
settlement--I mean, by definition. So what we have to make--we have to 
be sure that the things that made the tobacco companies believe that 
they did the right thing to settle don't compromise the long-term 
interests of the public health and especially our attempts to stop 
children from smoking in the first place. That's all. And we're looking 
at it.
    But I don't think--you know, even if I were to render a negative 
judgment on it after Secretary Shalala and Bruce Reed finish their 
review, I would still be immensely impressed with the work that the 
attorneys general and the others have done. It's quite a staggering 
thing. It's a long way from where we were just a couple of years ago 
when no one thought that any progress would ever be made on this issue.
    Q. Mr. President, what are your specific concerns about the FDA 
provisions in this agreement?

[[Page 839]]

    The President. I want to wait until I get my review. I just want to 
make sure that they will still be able to do what is necessary to 
protect the public health and children's health based on the evidence 
that comes before them in the intervening period. Now, there is a period 
of years in which they cannot actually ban nicotine. But there are a lot 
of other options and issues which could come before them during that 
period, and that's what we're looking at, to make sure their 
jurisdiction has not been under any--[inaudible].

Tax Cut Legislation

    Q. Sir, how do you resolve the rhetorical battle between Republicans 
and Democrats with the tax bill? There seems to be a stand-off going 
into yesterday over the income tax----
    The President. Oh, I think a lot of that is--I think the best way to 
resolve it is, one, for everyone to say, we want a tax bill, we want a 
tax cut bill. We want a tax cut bill that does not explode in the out-
years, does not bring the bad old days of the deficits back to us. We 
want one that is faithful to the agreement that was made. And I want one 
that, particularly within the confines of the agreement, that helps 
families to raise their children and that helps to fund greater 
education.
    But you should expect a little of this skirmishing. We're going to 
do more, and we're going to offer our thoughts on Monday about what 
should be in the tax bill, and then we're going to keep working. But 
I'm, frankly, quite optimistic. I wouldn't--you would expect that all 
the parties would advance their views in the most vigorous way possible. 
But I think the issue is, are we likely to have a bill that meets those 
criteria, and I think the answer is, yes, we are quite likely to have 
one.

Line Item Veto

    Q. You feel stronger with a line item veto, don't you?
    The President. Well, I think it's the right thing to do. I was 
pleased that the Supreme Court didn't strike it down, although they 
invited the first person who gets mad enough to do so. [Laughter] So I 
guess we'll be back in court on that one. But let me--I had it when I 
was Governor; most Governors do. I think it should be used with great 
care and discipline. You have to respect the congressional process. And 
my experience was after having used it a few times, that the great value 
of it was that it was a low--it was just another part of the framework 
of fiscal discipline we're trying to effect. That is, when I was a 
Governor, after a year or two, the most important thing about it was not 
when it was used, but that it existed in the first place, because it 
helped to keep us within a framework of fiscal responsibility. That's 
basically what I'm interested in.

Sending Power Back to the States

    Q. Mr. President, what do you think of the Supreme Court's record on 
sending power back to the States, now that the term is almost over?
    The President. Well, I need to have time to evaluate all the things. 
Basically, you know, we sent a lot of power back to the States since 
I've been President. Since I used to be there, I can hardly say it's a 
bad idea. I think the question is, what are the terms on which the power 
goes back, what is the framework, can the national interests still be 
protected? And that's how you have to evaluate all this.
    But in general, it's just like this bill here. This bill basically 
empowers communities within the framework of an agreed-upon national 
objective. Why? Because this is not a problem we can solve in 
Washington. And every Republican and every Democrat who has ever looked 
at it says the same thing. So what these Members have done is to embody 
what seems to me to be a common-sense principle.
    So I have no problem with that. I think that a lot of the 
operational work of life is better done where people live, at the 
grassroots level. The only question I would have on any of these things 
is, can we still pursue the national interests? If we had no capacity 
coming on-line in '98--let's take the Brady bill, for example--if we 
have no capacity coming on-line in '98 to do instantaneous background 
checks, then I would take the--certainly would want to take the Supreme 
Court up on their offer to tie the receipt of some kind of Federal 
money, at least, to the willingness to continue these background checks 
because I think that's a national interest issue.
    But on balance, I think the operations, doing more operationally at 
the State and local level, is a good thing.

Line Item Veto

    Q. Would you use the first line item veto on the tax bill?

[[Page 840]]

    The President. You go back and read that legislation; that was a 
battle over legislation--they were very artful, the Congress was, in 
kind of limiting the extent to which the President can use it on a tax 
bill. It's different. The options on spending are broader than the 
options on the tax bill. So I'll have to look at that.
    I hope I don't have to use it at all. I hope we just make a good 
agreement; that's my goal.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:32 p.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the 
White House. H.R. 956, approved June 27, was assigned Public Law No. 
105-20.