Selected questions from the audience following Dr. Elders' speech.

DICK EVANS: You spoke eloquently from your perspective as a public figure, but could you say a few words from your role as a mother whose family has been victimized by the war on drugs?

DR. ELDERS: Well, for those of you who don't know, my son was convicted of a drug crime. He sold an eighth of an ounce of cocaine to his friend, who had really hounded him. He said he made more than 30 phone calls trying to get him to make the first sale. He was a paid informant. Then the police tried to get my son to do it again, and they tried for three months. But he never did.

I just want you to know that a mother is very saddened to say, "My son is a drug addict." Kevin was addicted to cocaine. He has been under very intensive treatment for more than a year now, and he realizes that he will be an addict forever.

Right now he's in "boot camp." He was very fortunate to get into that. This is for first-time, nonviolent offenders, if they have been sentenced to less than ten years. And if they are able to complete the boot camp, they will be able to get out in 105 days, and they expunge their record. If you will all pray that my son will make it until December 18, we hope that he'll be able to get out.

JOEY TRANCHINA: Dr. Elders, you cited a lot of statistics. I wanted to humanize one: 71 percent of the babies who were born with HIV were infected through an infected syringe. I called the CDC and worked out the numbers, and that's over 3,500 babies.

I do needle exchange in east Palo Alto in a community that's 80 percent black, in which African-Americans tested 41 percent positive for HIV. And it's different for me, because I know their names, I know their mates and I know their kids, and they would come to me and ask me, "Who's going to take care of my kids when 1 die?" How long are we going to tolerate this?

DR. ELDERS: We've tolerated it too long already. And I think our silence has been deafening, and we must stand up.

QUESTION: How much support did you have within the Clinton administration for your position on studying legalization? And what did you think of Mr. Clinton's not backing you up?

DR. ELDERS: The answer to your first question is: zero. The answer to the second question is that I felt always—today still —that the president was very supportive of the things that I was about. He was really very supportive of my stances, probably not on drug legalization, but on all the other things that I was about and stood for.

But I felt there were many things going on in the administration, and he felt it was far better that he save his presidency. 1 have no problems — no problems at all — with what the president did in my regard. And I want you to know that I still support Bill Clinton.