SPEAKING OUT

Change in drug policy is inevitable. But we have to make it happen.

FIRST OF ALL, LET ME THANKTHE DRUG POLICY Foundation, Dr. Trebach and everyone who is involved in the process for selecting me to receive your highest award, the Richardi Dennis Drugpeace Award for 1995. I thank the Drug Policy Foundation and all of the people here for all you do, each and every day, to make the facts available to the American people. I think many of the things that you do, and the studies that you support, make us all more aware of the problems that are going on with illicit drugs in our country.

Dr. Trebach said I was going to give a major drug policy speech, but with all the drug policy experts in this room, that would be like bringing coals to Newcastle. Still, there are some things that I feel I can say, and that I want to say.
Most of you well remember — I certainly still remember — the day it rained on me in Washington, and! didn't even know why it was raining. It was December 7, 1993, and I had suggested that this country should "do some studies" on whether legalizing drugs would reduce our crime rate.

You see, I had always been taught that when you don't know.- enough about something, the thing you do is study it. But I found out that there are certain things you don't even say you are going to study, even though they are having a devastating effect on the country, on our young people and on all of our society.

Even though it rained on me, for months and years after I made that remark, politicians, police chiefs and all sorts of people would see me in airports or wherever and come up to me and say, "Dr. Elders, you're right. We know you're right. But if we tell anybody about it, we won't get reelected," or all kinds of terrible things would happen.

Well, I felt I went to Washington to be your surgeon general. I didn't go to Washington to get a job. I had a job. I went to Washington to do the job. And part of that job was to speak frankly, to speak the truth even though people did not want to hear it, and that is what I did.

I think the crime and misery that accompany the use of drugs in our society has continued to escalate. We have filled our prisons: We've gone from 300,000 prisoners in 1985 to 1.3 million today. And it seems we Americans don't mind —we don't mind — spending an average of $35,000 for each prisoner we have warehoused in our prison system. In the past ten years, we have built more prisons than we have built schools. Our government has utilized the criminal justice system to try to reduce drug abuse at an enormous financial cost and loss of civil liberties. Sadly, we have failed to even slow down the drug use.

We all know that, and yet our leaders keep suggesting that the way to take care of the problem is to use longer, harder, tougher, mandatory sentences. I believe that the burden is going to get so hard — in the very near future — that we are not going to be able to continue to carry the load. We are going to have to do something different. We are going to have to change.

We have a government that says, "We will not study drug policy." That same government turns around and says that, "We will not allow people to buy needles to reduce the spread of AIDS." And yet, we don' t mind spending $100,000 per person who develops HIV disease, to take care of them, to watch them die. That makes no sense. We love to intervene, but we don't care about preventing the problems. That makes no sense. We are going to have to change.

WE ALL HAVE GOT TO BE INVOLVED. WE HAVE to make a difference. So what do we do? What are some of the things that we can do to make a difference?

We've got to be fighting for programs and policies that focus on prevention. The best way to deal with a problem is to prevent it from happening in the first place. All children need to have early childhood education and comprehensive health education from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Teach children how to be healthy. When I was out there in the public spotlight talking about teenage pregnancy, everybody was all bent out of shape talking about abortion. I said I was about preventing pregnancy, I was not about abortion, because I have never known any woman to need an abortion who was not already pregnant. So if we prevent pregnancy, we won't have to worry about abortion. We have got to be about preventing problems, not intervening once they happen.

We have to reach out and be responsible. We must be responsible for those powerless people who are in need of powerful friends like yourselves. We've got to be the ones who stand up and fight and make a difference. We've got to be the people who go in and twist arms.

We've got to be the voice and the vision for the poor and the powerless — for those powerless children in need of powerful friends. We must make sure that all children have an opportunity, have a voice in their ear, a vision in their eyes, a scroll in their hand —which is a good education — and a song in their hearts when they leave us. We've got to empower them, and we can't empower them if we don't educate them. We cannot keep worrying that, if you tell them about it, they'll do it. They're already doing it! So it's time we teach them, stop trying to legislate morals, and try to teach responsibility.

We've got to stand up. We've allowed the other side to stand up. We've been silent too long.

We've got to start forming networks. We are the world's greatest coalition-builders, but we all build our own little coalitions, and we all run around talking to each other all the time. I think it's time we begin to network with the church, for instance — those churches can be very powerful, but you've got to educate those ministers.

We've got to network with our schools, network with our businesses, and we've got to convince people that the criminal justice system cannot do it alone. Show people that drug use is a medical problem, is a public health problem; it is not just a criminal justice problem.

We all have to be committed to doing something about these problems. The tools of commitment are time, talent and treasure. Yes, we have to give of our money, too, if we are going to make a difference. We've got to learn to use all of those resources. Just think, if this whole country had spent as much time trying to learn more about drugs, or more about violence, as we've spent during the past 16 months watching the O.J. Simpson trial, how much better educated we would all be!

We have to be innovative in our approaches, and we have to use every opportunity we get to make a difference. My husband always told his basketball players that opportunities were like a hair on a bald-headed man: It only comes around once, and you have to grab it when it's there. We have to grab every opportunity when it comes along.

YOU MAY ASK, WHEN ARE WE GOING TO DO these things? I think we've got to do them now. I think time is slipping away. Our bright young people are slipping away from us.

I know we can't do everything that we want to do. But sometimes we get so involved in letting what we can't do get in the way of what we can, that we don't do anything. So I hope that we'll all begin to do all the things we can to make a difference for all those bright young people out there.

We need to look at those important issues of what we should do about the drug situation in our country: How should we do it? How should we approach it? Should we decriminalize drugs? Go to harm reduction? You know, when people talk about legalization, nobody's talking about putting drugs on the grocery store shelf. We are talking about at least getting some regulation and making the drugs available for the people who are already addicted. That is the starting point. We've got to start treating addiction like what it is: It's a medical problem, not a criminal justice problem.

So all of that is what I feel we need to do, what we need to be about, if we are going to make a difference. People often say, "Don't you get tired?" Well, sometimes I'll be so tired that I feel I can't even move. But, all of a sudden, when I get an opportunity to try to make a difference for the bright young people of our society, I totally forget I'm tired. And I don't remember I'm tired until I've done what I was going to do.

I know you get tired. I know some of you have been out there fighting for a long time. But I want you to always remember what my bishop told me when I got ready to leave Arkansas. He said, "Dr. Elders, always remember, in your work, it's like dancing with a bear. When you're dancing with a bear, you can't get tired and sit down. You have to wait until the bear gets tired, and then you sit down." So I'm always out there trying to get some new partners to help me danCe with that bear. And I am very thrilled that I'm getting a lot of new partners here to help dance with that bear.

Again, I want to thank the Drug Policy Foundation for this wonderful award. But, most important, I want to thank you for all the wonderful people I met here today and for all the things you do each and every day.

You sound like you're a group of people that's about what I like to be about. I want you to know that I support your efforts, support what you're doing, and want to see you just keep moving forward. Thank you very much.

Joycelyn Elders is the former U.S. surgeon general. She was awarded DPF's top annual awardfor 1995, the Richardf Dennis Drugpeace Award. This article consists of edited excerpts of Dr. Elders' keynote speech at the DPF conference in Santa Monica, California, on October 20, 1995.