Interview with Wolf Blitzer, Jill Dougherty, and Claire Shipman of the Cable News Network

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 2, 1996

Teenage Drug Use

Mr. Blitzer. Mr. President, first of all, thank you so much for spending some time with us.

You've asked the American public to give you credit for your achievements. The budget deficit has gone down; there have been millions of new jobs created; the crime rate has gone down. But are you also willing to accept responsibility for the dramatic increase in drug use among young people since you've taken office?

The President. Well, I'm certainly willing to say that our best efforts have not turned it around, and I'm very concerned about it.

I talked about this in the State of the Union Address. I've been telling the American people for over a year that - myself, before we had a study - I've been making full disclosure here that we had a crime rate going down but a youth crime rate going up; we had a drug use rate going down but a youth drug use going up. Now, finally, the youth crime rate has started to go down. So about the only trend in all of America, whether it's economic or social, that's going in the wrong direction is this youth drug use. And it began, apparently, with a change in attitudes about 1990. The patterns, interestingly enough, are the same in Canada and in several European countries where both drug and tobacco use are going up among young people who either don't think it's dangerous or think they can take the risks. And I'm very, very concerned about it.

Mr. Blitzer. Well, the accusation that Bob Dole and many other Republicans, of course, make is that someone was asleep on the job during these past 3 1/2, 4 years while there's been this explosion in drug use among young people.

The President. Well, that's not true, because we were not asleep on the job. And that's why I've been talking about it. Like I said, I've been talking about it a lot longer than they have; they waited for a study and an election season. I have been telling the American people in all these community stops I've been making for months and months and months, going back a year, that the one thing that's not going right in this country is that the drug use rate among young people is going up.

I don't blame them for it - Senator Dole and Mr. Gingrich - even though I think they're partly responsible for not supporting my safe and drug-free schools program and the other education, prevention, and treatment programs I've asked them for. But this is a very complicated thing. It's obviously going on in other countries, and it obviously started - all the experts say it began in 1990 with a change in attitudes about how dangerous these drugs are. We've done - it is true that we cut back the drug office in the White House, but I don't think anybody believes 100 people in a Washington bureaucracy control what happens in drug use.

We have been more aggressive at interdiction than previous administrations. We have tried to support - we have, in fact, supported more school-based programs like the D.A.R.E. program for law enforcement officials. I have tried to be as active as I could in lifting up these programs that work at the community level and in helping people. But whatever we've done has not worked, and we all need to face that. But I don't know that placing political blame helps us very much. If anybody has got a better idea, I'd be happy to look at it. We have got to do something to turn it around.

But it's clear - if you just talk to young people, it's clear that there has been in the last 5 years or so a real change in attitudes among a core of young people about whether it's dangerous or not, and that seems to be right at the root of what the problem is.

1996 Election

Ms. Dougherty. Mr. President, in his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention, Bob Dole indicted your administration for what he called, and I'll quote here, "a corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned." Do you look upon that as a generational attack or an attack on you personally, and how do you answer it?

The President. Probably a little bit of both. And a lot of it is just pure politics. Just take the young people - he's attacking the young people in the White House. One of the young men who works for me lived in a house trailer when he was a boy. George Stephanopoulos' people were Greek immigrants and clergy. And they're not all young. Leon Panetta is the son of Italian immigrants, a walnut farmer - he's a walnut farmer.

I just think it's just another example of the kind of political rhetoric that's all too prevalent in our society today: If you can't defend your record and you can't run against the other person's record and their proposals, attack them personally, demean them, smear them, try to get other people to look down on them. I don't want to do that. And I have given our people strict instructions that we are to talk about the differences in our record and the differences in our proposal. We are not to attack them in that way.

Ms. Dougherty. But isn't age an issue in this campaign?