[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 42 (Monday, October 23, 1995)]
[Pages 1858-1859]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the Concert For Hope in Hollywood, California

October 16, 1995

    Thank you very much. Thank you, Joe Califano, for your singular 
determination to keep this issue before the American people. There is 
not another citizen in the entire United States of America who has done 
as much as Joe Califano to help us all to come to grips with the 
implications of substance abuse. And every American is in his debt.
    I also want to thank the other honorees for the work they have done, 
the late Frank Wells and Tony Bennett and our friend Betty Ford. I want 
to thank the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia for 
helping us all to learn more about this, and all the performers tonight 
for making this a very special evening for the United States.
    This mission of ours cuts across politics, geography, income, and 
race. It must unite all of our people in a common purpose. Tonight in 
3,500 cities and towns all across our beloved country, community 
antidrug coalitions are gathered in auditoriums and town halls to watch 
this broadcast. These people have played a large role in our antidrug 
efforts, many of them part of an important campaign led by Lee Brown, 
our Director of National Drug Control Policy, who accompanied me here 
tonight. With their help, he

[[Page 1859]]

is getting an urgent and very straightforward message to our teenagers: 
Stay drug-free; you have the power. With marijuana use on the rise among 
our teens, that's a message every one of us must now help to spread 
every day.
    Tonight the antidrug coalitions all across our country who are 
sharing this evening with us are honoring some of their own and some of 
our Nation's finest. I applaud these honorees as well--the parents, the 
police officers, the prosecutors, the clergy, the social service 
workers, the doctors, the recovering drug addicts and alcoholics, and 
all of their families--for they are the true foot soldiers and the real 
heroes in this, our common national crusade. To them I say, we know your 
battle is not easy, but you are not alone, and you must keep fighting 
for all of us and especially for our children.
    Like millions of Americans, I know firsthand how a family suffers 
from both drug and alcohol abuse. The consequences of this kind of abuse 
are many. But since December 1st is World AIDS Day, we should take 
special note that 25 percent of AIDS cases are the result of drug abuse. 
Many other cases can be blamed on the risks our young people take under 
the influence of drugs or alcohol.
    The battle against substance abuse must be waged a person at a time, 
a family at a time, a school at a time, community by community. But it 
must be backed by all of our efforts, including the President. We are 
doing what we can at the national level, with punishment, with working 
to keep drugs out of the country, with helping our community-based 
efforts to promote safe and drug-free schools and prevention and 
treatment programs that are so important. And I will keep fighting to 
keep these things funded.
    But I also hope all of you will help me in this battle against teen 
smoking. We know that every day 3,000 of our young people begin to 
smoke, and that 1,000 of them will have their lives end prematurely 
because of it. Children who reach the age of 20 almost never start 
smoking if they haven't started by then.
    These are our common goals and our common endeavors. We wish for all 
of our children a drug-free America. It's up to each of us to take the 
kind of responsibility that your honorees, and the honorees in all those 
town halls and auditoriums all across America, have assumed. If we can 
do our part, we can give this country a drug-free America in the 21st 
century.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 9:40 p.m. in the Pantages Theater. In his 
remarks, he referred to Frank G. Wells, former chief operating officer, 
Walt Disney Productions; entertainer Tony Bennett; and former First Lady 
Betty Ford. A tape was not available for verification of the content of 
these remarks.