Remarks in a Roundtable Discussion at the White House Leadership Conference on Youth Drug Use and Violence in Greenbelt

The President. Well, hello, and good afternoon. Let me again thank all of you who are participating and all of you who came to the White House yesterday. I know that the event which we just held with the students at Eleanor Roosevelt was shown here, so I have no further introductory remarks. I'm anxious to get to the panel, except to say one thing briefly.

In the 12 years that I served as the Governor, when I had the opportunity not only to go to every community in my State but from time to time to travel throughout the country, I saw a modern example of what the framers of the Constitution intended when they set up State governments, and they basically devolved a certain amount of authority throughout our country. They wanted the States and, ultimately, communities to be laboratories of democracy. And they thought, the people who set our country up, that once in any laboratory a solution to a problem was found it would be like science, that that then would be adopted and people would go on to another set of problems.

What I think is happening in our country is that nearly every serious challenge we face has been dealt with brilliantly by somebody, somewhere, whether it's in education or in dealing with the crime problem or you name it. The one place where their laboratory of democracy probably fell down is that its human affairs are not like science, and very often, even though things are working well, they're not adapted, adopted, embraced as they should be.

So I think that all of you who are struggling and working to find ways to mobilize the energies not only of your communities, but willing then to see it spread across the country, are doing the most important thing you could be doing because it's the second half of what the framers of the Constitution knew we'd have to do in order to meet all the challenges of the future. I mean, they couldn't have imagined the world that we live in now, but they set up a system that requires the second half—and you are that.

I thank you for being here. I'm anxious to go forward, and I'd like to begin by having, I think, about four opening statements, beginning with Joe Califano. And I want to begin by just thanking you, sir, for the work that you have done at your center and the work that you have done for so many years now to try to help people deal with all kinds of substance abuse problems. And we'd be glad to hear from you.

[Joseph Califano, director, Center for Alcohol and Substance Abuse, discussed the statistical relationship between substance abuse and and other social problems, particularly among adolescents, and suggested methods of treatment and prevention.]

The President. Reverend Jackson?

[Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson explained the effects that drugs have had on the African-American community. He urged parents and clergy to become involved in children's lives, suggesting that 20,000 parents in 50 cities pledge to work with teachers and that 100 ministers in 50 cities work with juvenile court judges. He concluded by challenging children to become involved in the war on drugs and to take personal responsibility for their own lives.]

The President. Let me just say, yesterday Reverend Jackson and I spent a few minutes together in preparation for this day. And he went through what he was going to say. And the thing I want to say, quite apart from the incredible power of his remarks, is that he has given us a way to take what is working and to spread it across the country. And we now have to see if we're willing to do that.

Can you find 20,000 parents in 50 cities? Can you find this number of churches in 50 cities? Can we prove that we can take these—if you want to prove that you—we know objectively we can't jail our way out of the crisis, but we have never presented, frankly, a constructive alternative that we could spread across the country. You can build a jail in one city and another, and it looks about the same. This program or that program or the other program may not look the same in every community.

So the great—the enduring genius of what he has said today may well be his plan that would allow us to systematically make a difference across the country and offer us an alternative approach to this in the future. And I thank you, sir.

Jim—Mr. Burke.

[James Burke, chairman, Partnership for a Drug-Free America, reiterated the link between drug abuse and other social problems but explained that drug use had declined over the years due to changing attitudes toward drugs. He added that more leadership was needed at all levels to continue changing those attitudes and suggested listening to youth for ideas about what could be done.]

The President. I would like to now call on a remarkable person who has probably laid a costlier sacrifice on the altar of our modern troubles than almost any other American, and who has responded by devoting her life to trying to help us work our way out of it, Dr. Lonise Bias. Thank you for being here.

[Dr. Bias described her efforts to encourage positive change in the Nation following the drugrelated death of her son Len and the murder of her son Jay, explaining her values of unconditional love, community, faith, and a commitment to character over image. She added that parents must monitor the flow of information that their children receive and impress upon them the importance of values and morals.]

The President. We have a number of distinguished people on this panel, and I'd like to— I think it's time we began with the young people and hear from them. So I will just call on them and then I want to call on some of the other panelists who are here who have done so many important things. But let me begin by asking Karen Lee, who is a senior here at Eleanor Roosevelt, who joined Students Against Violence a year ago, immediately after her classmate, Julie Ferguson, was abducted across from the school and killed. I'd like to ask her what has been happening here, what happened in the antiviolence program and where it's going, and what impact it's had on the students in the schools.

[Ms. Lee explained that Students Against Violence tried to provide alternatives to violence such as peer mediation and counseling, taught self-defense and stress management, worked to raise community awareness, and organized memorial candlelight vigils.]

The President. How many students here at the school are involved in it?

[Ms. Lee said that the group had approximately 20 active members.]

The President. Thank you. I want to come back to that in a moment with some of our other panelists, but I'd like to go now to Izaak Prado, who is a junior at a community school in Visalia, California. A former drug user, a former gang member who is in the second phase of the Tulare County Juvenile Drug Court in Visalia. He's returned to school; he says his attitude and his outlook have changed and that in his program associated with the drug court he attends mandatory drug counseling, sets goals, and learns from the experience of older men about how to handle peer pressure and stay away from drugs.

There are a lot of people talking here today; you've actually had to walk the walk. And I thank you just for having the courage to sit up here on this panel. I would like to ask you to make whatever statement you would like to make about your experience and what you would say to other young people and what you think you could do to make a difference there.

Mr. Prado. Well, I'm here because I got in trouble. I got in trouble for possession.

The President. I just want to make sure they can hear you. I think they turned the mike up. That's good.

[Mr. Prado described the program and how his attitude toward drugs and gangs had changed and said that the program should be expanded nationally.]

The President. Could you tell the people who are here how you happened to be placed in the drug court when you were arrested, or whatever happened to you? How did you wind up going into the drug court?

Mr. Prado. Well, I was arrested, and I was sent to see the judge. And since my case was in affiliation with drugs, they gave me an opportunity to come into the program.

The President. You had the choice about whether to go into the drug program or be punished conventionally in the criminal justice system, right?

Mr. Prado. Yes, and I chose to be part of the program. And it's not like you can just drop out of the program if you feel you can't complete it. You know, once you make it, it's a commitment and you have to stay in it for approximately 9 months.

The President. Let me say that a lot of people here in this audience will be familiar with the drug courts, but one of the first ones in the country was established in Miami. And I happened to have, just by family accident, the exposure to it many years ago because my brotherin-law was the public defender in the drug court. So I have sat for hours on end on two different occasions in the Miami drug court. And all the people there also have to voluntarily choose to be in the drug court's jurisdiction to choose the path of rehabilitation to avoid automatic jailing of people who just got into this.

And one of the parts of our crime bill that we're still struggling to preserve funding for is a small stream of money to help people establish these drug courts around the country. And you're a pretty good walking advertisement for it, and I thank you for what you've done.

I wonder if any of the other panelists would like to ask Izaak a question before I go on to anyone else. Anyone have a question you want to ask him?

Well, I thank you. You hang in there.

[Reverend Jackson asked Mr. Prado if he was afraid that he would use drugs again. Mr. Prado responded that the program made him want to live a clean and healthy life.]

The President. You heard Dr. Bias say it's what happens in your mind that's the most important thing. So, you hang in there. We're for you.

I'd like to ask Margaret Alstaetter, who's here to my left, a freshman at Wilmington College in Ohio, and she's the Students Against Drinking and Driving Student of the Year. To raise awareness of alcohol-related issues, she coordinated a mock accident, planned public service announcements, organized Red Ribbon Week activities, and conducted a lot of other projects involving local elementary schools and young people.

And so I'd like to ask her to say whatever is on her mind and ask her whether she thinks the SADD movement has helped to change the attitude of students about what is or is not the cool thing to do, or is or is not an acceptable thing to do, and whether or not it—whether having a chapter like this at every college and at every high school in the country would make a difference in the culture, to go back to what Mr. Burke said about our ability to change people's views of this. But talk a little about your own experience and tell us what you think.

[Ms. Alstaetter described the efforts of her SADD chapter to educate schools and communities about the dangers of alcohol and drugs.]

The President. Thank you very much. Let me ask you this. How many people are in your organization?

Ms Alstaetter. In my high school, we have about 70 active members.

The President. That's good.

Barry McCaffrey. Let me, if I may, intervene. We're scheduled to terminate at 1:15, but Mr. President, knowing how valuable your time is, nonetheless you did make me your drug czar. So could we go beyond this to 1:30, do you think, to get some of the power of these comments out on the table?

The President. He's only been out of uniform for a few days, and he's already off schedule. [Laughter]

I would like to stay very much until at least 1:30, until we hear from everybody. Thank you very much, General.

Let me say, I think—I wanted you to hear from these three students. Now, I'd like to come back and sort of pick up the issues, starting with—Karen talked about school violence, and I would like to call on a couple of people now to discuss how they have dealt with it.

Carl Cohn is the superintendent of the Long Beach Unified School District in California. It's the third largest school district in California; there are 81,000 students in this school district. And 2 weeks ago, I went to his school district to one of the schools there, named for the great American baseball player Jackie Robinson. And he was, as far as I know, the first major school district in the country to implement for elementary and junior high school students a school uniform policy.

I went out there because we had worked, particularly through the Attorney General's office and through the Department of Education, through Secretary Riley, to make sure that the school district and that others who wish to do the same thing could do so legally, explain how it could best be done, and then put together a handbook which you could then mail to every school district in the country explaining how Long Beach had done what they've done and how a school district who was interested in this could do it.

And when I first heard about it and, indeed, when I mentioned it in the State of the Union Address, my last State of the Union Address— I always try to keep up with the reaction— on balance, it was the most positive reaction I ever got, except for all of the nasty letters I got from kids saying, "How dare you suggest that school uniforms would be a good thing. It would be the most boring, awful thing that ever happened; our liberties would be trampled." And in one fell swoop, one remark, I turned myself into an old fogey before the entire country. But I must say, having gone out there since the State of the Union, I think that at least every American needs to hear about the Long Beach experience, particularly in light of what Karen said and others have said.

So, Carl, the floor is yours.

[Mr. Cohn said that since introducing the uniforms, there had been a dramatic reduction in school crime at the elementary and middle school level.]

The President. Let me just inject a couple of facts here, in case any of you are thinking about this. First of all, there was not a uniform school district policy. He allowed every school, by some process or another, to choose their uniforms. And they were basically just comfortable school clothes, like I saw one of the young people was in a—the uniform for the boys was blue slacks and a white shirt with a collar every day. It wasn't—and there was some variation within that. And then the uniform for the girls was the same thing or a skirt.

And each school got to choose their own colors and got to decide what the parameters of the uniform were. If the school chose, the teachers and the principal also wore the uniform, but that varied by school. But the young man that he mentioned, for example, said his school was located in a high crime area where the gangs associated gang membership with the colors red and blue, so the school chose black, white, and green for the school uniform. And to see this young, attractive African-American student saying, "I don't have to look over my shoulder anymore when I walk to and from school; I feel safe," that's worth something.

The other student who spoke was a young— I think a 13-year-old student, who is a terrifically powerful young woman who said that she felt one of the reasons that the learning had gone up and discipline and behavior problems had gone down is that it gave all the children a sense of unity and that all of them were being judged based on what was on the inside, rather than on the outside. It's interesting. And in that sense, she said she thought the children who came from well-to-do families were helped as much by the policy as children who came from poor families. And they also had to set up a system so kids who came from families who couldn't afford it and all that, and they covered all that.

But if you have any interest in this I would urge you to write to Carl because it's hard to quarrel with the results and what the kids said. Maybe it's not the thing for every school district and every school, but they had a lot of problems and to see them drop in a breathtaking fashion I think is a real tribute to the courage and vision of the people of that school district. And I thank you for what you did.

[Reverend Jackson stated that school uniforms would have a positive impact regardless of a student's economic background. He also suggested that students learn to sew their uniforms themselves.]

The President. Before you laugh too much about the last comment Reverend Jackson made, let me remind you that the most famous cloth spinner of the 20th century was Mohandas Gandhi. That was his main non-work activity.

So I'd like to call on Yvonne Green who is the director of the safe schools initiative in and around East Capitol and Marshall Heights in Washington, DC. She has a very challenging job. And she is helping to establish the kind of school and community partnerships that the rest of us so often talk about. So I'd like to ask her whether the safe and drug-free school funds out of the crime bill have helped her and what she's done with it and what she thinks it's making a difference.

[Ms. Green explained that the program established community and school partnerships to reduce violence and create a safe learning environment for children. She added that program participants, including parents, police departments, and civic organizations, served as peer mediators and met regularly to discuss improving the schools. She concluded by suggesting that Department of Education funds be given to individual groups directly.]

The President. Thank you very much. That's a very good idea.

Now, if you will remember, Izaak said that he was involved in the drug court system in his hometown of Visalia, California. I'd like to call now on Judge Jeff Tauber, who is here, who initiated the design implementation of the Oakland drug court program, which was one of the Nation's first. He's now president of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, and he advises Federal, State, and local agencies about how to establish these drug courts.

So I'd like for him to talk about this. In view of—you heard the statistics Reverend Jackson mentioned. We know more than half of the individuals that come into the criminal justice system in the country have some sort of a substance abuse problem. And I'd like for him to tell me what he thinks the results are from the drug courts that have been established enough—in time for us to evaluate them and what he believes the future of the drug courts movement is.

[Judge Tauber described the drug courts program, indicating that research showed that the program dramatically reduced recidivism by 40 to 60 percent. He described how the drug courts had successfully collaborated with other organizations and agencies in the communities.]

The President. I want to open the floor if anybody has questions of Judge Tauber. But I want to emphasize to all of you—remember Izaak's story. Not only are these courts reducing the recidivism rates, these people are not going to prison in the first place—they are not going to prison in the first place. And as far as I— the only courts that I've any experience with, the option to go through the regular system or to go into the drug court, since the drug court imposes certain responsibilities on the defendant going in, is left with the person who is charged, as it was in Izaak's case.

But I think the question of what the aggregate impact on this country would be if every community of any size had a court like this—which requires a community support system because you've got to show up on a regular basis and all that—is quite significant. And the one I watched in Miami for long periods of time on two separate occasions, the whole atmosphere was different, the chemistry of the court was different, the way that the defense lawyer and the prosecutor and the judge related to each other was different, because they knew what they were trying to do was to save the defendant and in the process get the law observed and make the community safer.

It's a very exciting thing. I would like to see it done everywhere. And I think what you're doing is very important.

Would anyone like to ask any questions of Jeff before we go on?

Judge Tauber. I would like to add one thing, if I may. I just wanted to thank you and this administration for its support of drug court and the Attorney General and the Department of Justice, because I think that we had the opportunity to grow and to grow in a very, I think, a very thoughtful and responsible way because of that support.

The President. Thank you.

Judge Tauber. Thank you.

The President. Now, if you remember, our third young person, Margaret, talked about the Students Against Drunk Driving and what they were trying to do to keep our young people sober and drug-free. I'd like to now call on Kurt Landgraf, who is the president and CEO of DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company, who is now the representative of the National Pharmaceutical Council here. And he will discuss the $33 million program I announced in my speech.

I say this because we know that the students need help and support at home. We also know, whether you believe—you know, there's this endless debate that started that basically was the study of people who had an alcohol addiction, about whether it's all a matter of weak will and bad habits or whether some people are biologically predisposed to it have problems. We know that whether you believe it's totally determined or not, there are all kind of differences both in the home situation and in people's makeup that makes it more important than ever that we get the parents involved early, making good decisions and understanding what to do.

So I'm excited about this, and I'd like to ask Kurt just to talk a little bit about this program, why the pharmaceutical companies decided to do it, and how they expect it to work.

[Mr. Landgraf explained that the National Pharmaceutical Council enlisted 17,000 sales representatives from 15 pharmaceutical companies to distribute Office of Drug Control Policy information to health professionals, saying his industry recognized a problem and offered its resources. He added that business was a important social institution, like government, and should help address social problems.]

The President. Thank you. I want to say a special word of thanks to you, sir, not only to you, individually, but to the people in your business. You know the United States has the most successful pharmaceutical industry in the world. And it depends, in part, for its success on a decent partnership with the Federal Government, especially through the Food and Drug Administration.

And the statement you have just made is the statement that I think is very important, that in many respects the collective influence of American business practices is far greater on the American people than the influence of the Government is, and that's as it should be in many respects because we have a free enterprise system, we believe in a private economy and it has served us rather well.

But the statement you just made is a very important statement—that even in a global economy, when you have to worry about the worldwide competition, the home base still matters. And in the end business has to be able to do well by doing good, because America must be strong for the private economy to flourish. And that's a very important statement, and I thank you for it.

I have intentionally saved for last among our panelists—and I want to give the Governor a chance to say a word as we close—but the sheriff of Jacksonville, Florida, Nat Glover, because he is one of the most unusual success stories in our country. He was elected sheriff in a community in which is a majority white community and which is also a majority of the other political party. [Laughter] And he was elected sheriff because people of all races and both political parties and all backgrounds trusted him to take the lead in lowering the crime rate and making the streets safer. It wasn't a political issue, at all; it was a human issue.

And he was elected by promising, in effect, to have his office on the street. And I had the extraordinary opportunity to spend a day with him, not just at a rally of young people giving a talk, which I got to do, but actually walking the streets and watching him relate to people, the young and old alike, and seeing how they looked at him as the source of energy for delivering them from their own fears. And it was an extraordinary thing.

So I wanted him to talk about what he's done in relating to the community and what the successes have been and to just thank him publicly for being a role model for law enforcement around the country. But I'd like to ask him to say a few words and maybe reflect on what he's heard here today and what he's trying to do in Jacksonville.

Sheriff Glover.

[Mr. Glover described how the President's community-policing strategy improved a low income community in Jacksonville.]

The President. Thank you.

Governor.

[Gov. Parris Glendening of Maryland stated that many families in the Nation had been affected by violence and people must take personal responsibility for themselves and for future generations. He said that education, job training, and drug treatment programs were more effective than prisons in deterring crime and disagreed with recent cuts in funding.]

The President. Thank you very much. As we— yes, Jesse? [Laughter]

[Reverend Jackson stated that the roundtable discussion and community-policing efforts would have positive effects on the war on drugs but voiced his concern about police corruption. He concluded by asking students who were registered to vote to stand.]

The President. That's pretty good.

[Reverend Jackson asked the students who were not registered to stand and then encouraged them to register and exercise the power of their votes.]

The President. I would like to thank Eleanor Roosevelt again for hosting us and thank all of the others who made this possible. I want to thank the panelists. I hope all of you who came to this conference got something out of their moving statements, their personal experiences, and perhaps some ideas you can take home. I want to assure you that the Vice President and General McCaffrey and I and the other members of our Cabinet will read the reports of all the various sessions of this conference.

I have only two regrets as I leave here. One is that we couldn't spend all day hearing from all the young people who are here. And the other is that we couldn't spend all day listening to all the people who are here from the conference who could have just as well been on this panel.

I want to thank you for the life you're leading, the work you're doing. Many of you out there in this audience I've had some personal involvement with, and I feel personally indebted to you—you know who you are—and I thank you for that.

This is our country's great challenge. And if you look at these fine young people that were here, the rest of us owe it to them to meet it. And I feel more optimistic than I did before I came here today that we'll do exactly that.

Thank you, and God bless you all.