Remarks at the First National Treatment Alternatives to Street Crime Conference.

Ladies and gentlemen:

I am very happy to welcome you all to the East Room of the White House and to welcome you to this conference. As you can imagine, the responsibilities of whoever is President of this country often include welcoming various groups, and each one, I am sure, believes that it is the most important group ever to come to the White House. Yours very well might be. I say this to others, too, though, I want you to know.

But the point is that we consider that this trip that you have taken was necessary. We want you to return to your cities, to your counties, to your States, feeling that it was worthwhile and that it was not just one of those junkets where people gather together in Washington, talk about a problem, and then go home and continue to do just what you have always been doing in dealing with that problem.

Incidentally, what most of you have been doing in many areas has been the right thing. What we are trying to do here is to bring together the experts in the field to get their ideas to you and to get from you, from the grass roots, your ideas, so that throughout this country we can have a program in dealing with drug abuse which will be more effective than the one we presently have.

Now, my views on this subject, I think, are pretty well known to most of you here in this group. Let me tell you how they developed.

When I came into office in that first year 1969, before the Nation was the problem of drug abuse as a very, very serious problem. And in a press conference I referred to drug addiction as public enemy number one in this Nation and that therefore it should have the very highest priority within the Federal Government, as well as in State and local governments in dealing with that problem.

And then various people came to see me to talk about the problem and to tell me how to attack it, and it was interesting to find the different approaches. There were some who said the real problem is the source or the supply. If we can just cut off the supply, particularly of hard drugs, heroin, then that means that we will lick the problem, because if we don't have the supply rolling into this country, they will not be able to get it, and that means that you will not have the drug addiction.

So, we have been working on the supply side and working very, very effectively. You know the success of our program with regard to Turkey--Ambassador [William J.] Handley, incidentally, is here today who is now working on this problem--but not only in Turkey but in our relations with France and a number of other countries, we have dramatically cut the source of supply of hard drugs flowing into the United States. We still have a lot to do, and this will still have a very high priority within the Administration.

A second group who discussed this problem came in to see me back in the year 1969 and said, "Now, the supply problem is, of course, very, very important, and we are glad you are working on it. But the real way to get at this is through law enforcement. What we need are stiffer penalties; what we need are more individuals who can go out and deal with the pushers and the others in a more effective way. And if we can just get the law enforcement • tools and the law enforcement personnel, we can turn around the drug problem in the United States."

And so, we moved in the law enforcement front. And we have moved very, very heavily and very effectively at the Federal level, and we have had cooperation from States and local governments in that respect. And those in law enforcement--and I have met with many of them, in New York, in Texas, in California, here in the District of Columbia very, very often-those in law enforcement, many of them, feel that theirs is the most important aspect of this problem.

And then a third area was brought to my attention very, very effectively when Dr. Jaffe¹ came aboard, and that was, it isn't the source--that is important, yes-or law enforcement, but the real way to get a handle on this problem is through treatment, treatment of those who become addicted.

¹Dr. Jerome H. Jaffe was Director of the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention from the creation of the office in June 1971 until his resignation in June 1973.

So, we went into a treatment program, one that is not as spectacular as law enforcement and one that is not as spectacular as picking up a big supply of heroin when it comes into the United States-and there have been some very spectacular achievements in that respect--but one which is enormously important. And it is interesting to note, and I am glad that we had the opportunity to note, as this conference begins that two-thirds of the three-quarters of a billion dollars that we are spending at the Federal level in the treatment of the drug problem goes to the treatment problem, rather than the others that I have mentioned.

That indicates our sense of priorities and also indicates the needs. It doesn't mean that we are not spending as much as we think we need to cut off the source of supply; that is well funded. It doesn't mean that we are not spending as much as we think we should in the field of law enforcement. But it does mean that on the treatment side, there needed to be an enormous push given, and that is why at the present time, as we look at the amount that is being spent by the Federal Government, it is 10 times as much as it was 4 1/2 years ago when we began these programs.

And then finally, there are others who call on the President and his associates and say, now all these things you are doing are very, very important, but in the final analysis you have got to stop the demand, and the way to stop the demand is to educate people. And so, you have noted the educational program, the programs that you have in your cities and in your counties, also the programs in which the National Advertising Council, the football association, and the others run their various advertisements to try to educate, particularly, young people with regard to the dangers in the whole field of hard drugs.

So, let me summarize briefly what our program is. I could summarize it in terms that we are spending 10 times as much money. I could summarize it in terms of the fact that drug addiction is down. We have turned the corner on drug addiction in the United States--haven't solved the problem, because we have a long way to go. There is a long road after turning that corner before we get to our goal of getting it really under control, but we have turned the corner. The numbers, the statistics, are beginning to be better.

Take, for example, drug-related crime in New York City, Washington, D.C., two cities which we followed very, very closely. There has been a reduction. But as we look at the whole situation, what we all have to understand is that like any problem as serious as this, it is not enough to attack it just on one front, your front, the one that you think is important. It must be attacked on all fronts, and in this case, that is exactly what we are doing.

We place, therefore, great emphasis upon the need to continue to cut off the source of supply from foreign countries, of heroin and other hard drugs flowing into this country. We intend to continue to strengthen our law enforcement capacity, and we urge you at local government to do likewise, to deal with those who are the pushers and those who start people on the long road, the disastrous road of drug addiction.

We intend to continue the program of treatment in which so many of you are interested, and we intend to continue in our program of education. But finally, it all comes down to the individual.

In this room are judges, law enforcement officials, educators, and other officials from all over the United States, and you would not be here if all we were talking about and the results of your work were simply turning around the statistics in this field.

You are here because you care about one person, one young boy, one young girl, maybe a teenager who, but for what you did or will do in the years ahead, could become addicted to drugs, and not only become addicted to drugs, possibly then going from there into a life of crime.

If what you do and if, as a result of this conference, we are able to save one of those individuals, this conference is worthwhile, and we would like all of you to think that way. I would like for you to, because I think of each of you in the work that you do, whether it is in stopping the source of supply, whether it is in the field of education, whether it is in the field of enforcing the law, or whether it is in the field of treatment, I consider each of you, individually, indispensable to this total program.

Now, the program has one of those public relations names, it is called Outreach, a very good name; and we are outreaching, certainly, in order to deal with this problem. Each of you plays an enormously important role, and for that reason, I want you to know that the whole country is in your debt. We are going to win this battle. We have turned the corner, but, having turned the corner, we are going to go on down this road until the whole Nation realizes that drug addiction in the United States is under control.

So with that, I conclude my part in the program and turn over the balance of it to the experts from whom you will hear. Dr. [Robert L.] DuPont, who is the Director of our Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, will follow me on the platform, and John Bartels, who will be nominated to be the director of Drug Enforcement Administration within the Federal Government will also be on your program today. Ambassador Handley, I know, will also be addressing you, and a number of other experts from the State and local level.

So thank you for coming to this conference. I suppose when I said--used the word, this "trip" was necessary, that could be taken in a number of ways. [Laughter]

Let me say, as a result of the trip you have taken to Washington, we know that many young people in this country will not be taking unhappy trips to other places through other means in the future.