Campaign Statement About Crime and Drug Abuse.

FROM the day we took office, this Administration has made the battle against crime and drug abuse one of our highest domestic priorities.

During the two preceding Administrations, serious crime in America had increased by 122 percent. Drug addiction had mushroomed into a national scandal during those permissive years, with the number of heroin addicts in this country more than doubling from 1965 to 1969.

Now, through the outstanding efforts of our local police forces and with massive Federal support, we have succeeded in stopping the spiraling growth in criminal activity. The FBI crime index showed an increase of only one percent for the first half of this year--the closest the Nation has come to an actual decrease since the index began 12 years ago. In nearly half of our Nation's largest cities--including Cleveland, Columbus, Youngstown, Akron, and Purina, Ohio--crime has already begun to decrease.

As a result of our total war on drug abuse, the rate of growth in new heroin addiction has declined dramatically since 1969. By next June, we will have created the capacity to treat up to 250,000 heroin addicts annually--a thirty-fold increase over the amount of federally funded drug treatment which existed when I took office.

A key to our successes against the drug menace has been the all-out attack on drug pushers. The pusher's crime is one of the most reprehensible known to man-the enslavement of other human beings to a life of degradation, dependence, and suffering. The punishment for this crime must be strict, and it must be certain.

We can be encouraged that Federal narcotics law enforcement officials are arresting pushers at twice the rate of the previous Administration, that illicit drug seizures have quadrupled in the past 4 years, and that more narcotics traffickers are being brought to justice than ever before.

Here in Ohio, the Federal Government has already put almost $6 million of treatment funds into communities across the State, with further grants nearing completion. The U.S. Office for Drug Abuse Law Enforcement, which I created last January, is currently working with State and local enforcement officials in Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati to root out the heroin traffickers and bring them to justice.

Similar efforts are being pressed in other cities throughout the country, but much still remains to be done. To keep the pressure on, I intend to take the following steps:

--I will urge the Congress to appropriate whatever funds are needed for Federal drug law enforcement and to build the clinics needed to treat those addicts who seek help.

--I will expand our present massive funding for local law enforcement assistance, and will again ask the Congress to enact my proposal for law enforcement special revenue sharing.

--I will appoint judges who will help to strengthen the peace forces as against the criminal forces in our country, and who will oppose without equivocation the permissive trend toward light or suspended sentences for convicted drug pushers.

--I will ask the Congress to amend the Federal drug statutes so as to require tough, mandatory sentences for heroin traffickers.

--I will not hesitate to suspend all military and economic assistance to any country which condones or protects the international drug traffic.

--I will continue to carry out my 10-year reform program for the Federal prison system.

My goal for the next 4 years is for every American city to begin realizing the kind of victories in the war on crime which we have already achieved in the Nation's Capital--where the crime rate has been cut in half since my Administration took office, and where heroin overdose deaths have almost disappeared.

This kind of progress can and must be made all across America. By winning the war on crime and drugs, we can restore the social climate of order and justice which will assure our society of the freedom it must have to build and grow.