[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 1 (Monday, January 11, 1999)]
[Pages 5-7]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on the Zero Tolerance for Drugs in Prison Initiative

January 5, 1999

    Thank you very much. Let me begin by just expressing my appreciation 
to all who have spoken and to all who are here for the years and years 
and years of commitment you have manifested in this endeavor. I thank my 
good friend Senator Leahy, and Congressman Rangel. I thank General Reno 
and General McCaffrey for making it possible for us to continue to 
emphasize these things and to actually make progress, for being both 
practical and idealistic.
    Thank you, Mayor Griffin, for what you said and for what you're 
doing, and for bringing your police chief, Chief Hoover, here with you.
    I want to say, obviously, a special word of appreciation to Kathleen 
Kennedy Townsend, who has literally redefined what it means to be a 
Lieutenant Governor-- [laughter]--I would hate to succeed her as 
Lieutenant Governor of Maryland--[laughter]--for her indefatigable 
energy. I thank the others here from Maryland who are involved in her 
endeavor.
    I'd also like to say a special word of welcome to Judge Joel Tauber 
and all the others who are here from the drug courts throughout America. 
I'll have more to say about them in a moment, but I am especially 
grateful for their endeavors.
    Six years ago, as has already been said, our country was at peace, 
but too many of our communities were at war. Illegal drugs were ravaging 
cities on both coasts and the American heartland in between. Crack and 
methamphetamine use were at near record levels. Drug dealers controlled 
whole neighborhoods and thought nothing of opening fire on passing 
police cars. Many communities lived in terror; many children feared 
walking down the street.
    I actually met, in a school in California--I'll never forget this--
with a group of children who were drilled on how to jump out of their 
desk and hit the floor if they were subject to drive-by shootings. It 
had a searing impact on me. One of the reasons I ran for President was 
to give those kids their futures back. And all of you have done a lot to 
give them their futures back, and I'm very grateful to you.
    In every successive year, I have proposed a larger antidrug budget. 
In 1999--we had a 30-percent increase just between then and 1996, even 
as we produced the first balanced budget in a generation. Under General 
McCaffrey's leadership, we have put these resources to good use: 
unprecedented new

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tools for domestic enforcement; unprecedented new campaigns to convince 
young people to stay off drugs--I hope you saw one of our ads on the 
football game last night, if you watched it--unprecedented new efforts 
to stem the flow of drugs across our borders; unprecedented new efforts 
to stop the revolving door between the prison and the street.
    As you've heard from Attorney General Reno and General McCaffrey, 
this strategy is working. We do have the lowest crime rate in 25 years. 
Drug use is falling. Finally--thank goodness--drug use is beginning to 
fall among our young people.
    But the crime rate is still too high. The streets are still too 
violent. There is still too much drug use, especially in our prisons. 
The Mayor of Reno whispered to me when Kathleen was talking that Mayor 
Daley told him it was easier to get drugs in the Illinois penitentiary 
than it was on the streets of Chicago. I say this not to criticize the 
Illinois penitentiary; that's a statement that could be made in more 
than half the States in this country. So we still have a lot to do. 
There is no better way to start than to help our prisoners break clean 
from drugs.
    Today we release a new study from the Department of Justice that 
offers more convincing evidence that drug use stokes all kinds of crime, 
from property crimes like burglary, auto theft, to violent crimes like 
assault and murder. It shows that one in six offenders landed in prison 
for a crime committed just to get money for drugs, that nearly a third 
of prisoners were using drugs at the time they committed their crimes, 
that more than 80 percent of prisoners have a history of drug use. And 
when you consider that--plus the breathtaking statistic that Lieutenant 
Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend gave us about the volume of heroin 
and cocaine used by people who are in the criminal justice system--it is 
clear to us that if we are going to continue to reduce the rate of 
crime, we have to do something to avoid releasing criminals with their 
dangerous drug habits intact.
    As you've heard from previous speakers, we've already done a lot to 
expand drug testing and treatment in Federal prisons and to encourage 
States to do the same. But today we want to make a dramatic leap 
forward. The balanced budget I will submit to Congress will contain a 
$215 million zero-tolerance drug program designed to promote drug 
supervision, our Nation's most comprehensive effort ever to test and 
treat not only criminals in prison but also those on probation and 
parole.
    To inmates in every State, we want to send a message: If you stay on 
drugs, you must stay behind bars. To probationers and parolees, we want 
to send a message: If you want to keep your freedom, you have to keep 
free of drugs.
    Through this initiative, we will also expand our efforts to help 
communities build and administer drug courts--Charlie Rangel mentioned 
Attorney General Reno's efforts as a young prosecutor. Many years ago, 
long before I ever thought I would be standing here as President, 
because my brother-in-law was a public defender in the Miami drug court 
that the Attorney General set up, I used to go and visit it in the 
eighties. I went three times; one time I stayed for the whole session of 
court, almost all day. I have never had a more exhilarating experience 
in a courtroom in my life, including the sessions of the United States 
Supreme Court I have attended, because finally I saw something that I 
thought could actually work to change people's lives, to restore people 
to productive use in society, to reduce the crime rate, to make people 
safer, and to stop the policy of warehousing people in ever-increasing 
numbers in order to keep our streets safe.
    When I took office, there were just a handful of these drug courts 
in operation, including the one that the Attorney General launched in 
Miami. Today, there are more than 400. If our budget proposal is 
approved by Congress, we can move to have more than 1,000 up and running 
by the end of next year. That is a worthy goal. It will change America 
for the better. It will give a lot of people their lives back and make 
our streets safer.
    I'm also proud to say that on top of these proposals we will free up 
another $120 million for drug-free prison initiatives this year, funds 
to help States boost testing and treatment, funds to purge their prisons 
of drugs with advanced new technologies.

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    At the end of this century, we've made great progress in our efforts 
to free our children and our communities from drugs and crime. As we 
begin a new century and a new millennium, we have an enormous 
opportunity to finish the job, to harness all the resources of the 
criminal justice system--our courts, our prosecutors, our prisons, our 
probation officers, our police--to break the drug habits of prisoners 
and people on parole and probation. We have to break this cycle. We have 
to give all these people a chance to be drug-free and to be productive 
citizens again. It is the only way we can ever, in the end, assure our 
children the future they deserve.
    Thank you all for what you do. God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:04 p.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the 
White House. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Jeff Griffin and Chief 
of Police Jerry Hoover of Reno, NV; Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend 
of Maryland; Judge Jeffrey S. Tauber, president, National Association of 
Drug Court Professionals; and Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago, IL.