Proclamation 4328—Drug Abuse Prevention Week, 1974

The drug trade, by destroying. individual lives and dividing families and communities, strikes at the heart of our national well-being.

America's response has not been passive. During the past half decade, we have given the highest priority to eliminating this threat to the very fabric of our society.

Our enforcement programs, undertaken with the cooperation of 60 other nations, are aimed at stamping out the drug trade at all levels, from the growing process to street sales.

We are also rendering special Federal assistance to local law enforcement agencies. As a result, drug arrests are up, major traffickers have been jailed, and supplies have been reduced. But too many Americans still are victimized by drug abuse.

We must redouble our efforts to cut supplies and punish suppliers. And we must make a national commitment to rehabilitate former users.

Now, Therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate the week of October 20-26, as Drug Abuse Prevention Week, 1974.

An important focus of our effort should be on the community acceptance of former drug abusers. For without a way back into society, the former addict still is prey to the pressures and pointlessness that contributed to his abuse in the first place. Let us begin, this week, to search out the techniques and resources we will need to help former drug abusers find their place in productive society-techniques and resources that will complement the work presently being carried out at the 1,240 Federally funded treatment centers and service points in more than 350 communities across the Nation.

I call upon officials at every level of government, upon. educators, medical professionals, and communicators, upon the business community and the civic groups of our Nation, upon the churches and clergy, and upon all who bear the special trusts of community leadership, to rededicate themselves during this week to the total banishment of drug abuse from American life.

I again urge every American to commit himself wholeheartedly, beginning now, to this supremely important humanitarian cause.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this eighteenth day of October, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-ninth.

GERALD R. FORD