Remarks at a White House Conference on Drug Abuse.

Ladies and gentlemen:

I wanted to say that I asked that all of you come in the office here--I know it is a bit crowded--because I want each of you to feel a sense of the personal appreciation that I have in the responsibilities of this office for your attending this meeting and for whatever you may determine you will do as a result of it.

Of course, perhaps it would be more appropriate to have you seated in an auditorium, and I could make a few remarks with radio and television and others covering it.

I want you to know that I chose this particular forum because I just wished that I could sit down with each of you individually and express my own concern with this problem and how much I think you can contribute toward its solution. Now by "solution" I don't mean anything that is going to solve it magically very soon. There are few instant solutions to anything in the world, as we know, particularly where social behavior is involved.

As you go through the balance of the day with speeches all day long, you will have a lot of statistics pounded out and a lot of facts. All of us know the enormous escalation in the use of drugs in this country.

We think, for example, of the California area where there has been a 2,000 percent increase in drug use between 1960 and 1970. We think, for example, of the State of New York where, if this year the present rate of deaths continues, it will be in excess of 1,000 for a year, of which 25 percent will be young people.

That, incidentally, compares with another area of the world in which we are deeply concerned and which people very properly can be stirred up about, in Vietnam.

Both are wrong in terms of what we want to do about our society. We want to find ways to end wars and to have a just peace which may avoid other wars in the future, or at least discourage them.

We of course, and our young people particularly, must recognize this rather insidious danger, one that is insidious because it appeals to the passion; it is something new; it is something that projects. It is an insidious danger and it is one that is perhaps more difficult to deal with, far more difficult to deal with than having a specific foreign policy problem where we say this action should or should not be taken. That is, of course, where all of you come in.

We had a meeting a few months ago with television producers. As a result approximately 20 television programs throughout the country are going on this fall dealing with the drug problem in one way or another, and dealing with it not in the way of just a straight-out sermon but in terms of that subtle, far more effective, method of approach where a story is told and the individual--and usually the young individual--watching the program becomes interested in the story and, therefore, they get the message.

Now we come to radio. As you may know, in the campaign of 1968 I made a great deal of use of radio, which indicated that I thought the radio was still here and here to stay. I did make great use of it because I have found that while naturally the primary emphasis these days in terms of any public relations program and any political program is on television because of the huge impact that it has, the radio audience is first a very large audience and a very significant audience; second, it is a growing audience--all of your advertising is, too; and, third, it is particularly a large audience in the teenage group.

I read figures before you came in today indicating that 98 percent of those between the ages of 12 to 18 listen to the radio. The average American family owns four radio sets. And I suppose if you were to paint a picture or a caricature of the average teenager, he or she would be holding a transistor radio, whether at the beach or driving a car or whatever the case might be.

Those radio programs which go out usually in the form of music, sometimes talk shows and the rest, of course have an enormous impact.

Now, having defined the problem, you will hear more about that all day long in much more detail, having indicated how you can affect the problem because you hit the audience and hit it very, very dramatically as these statistics indicate, I now would like briefly to tell you what we would hope you might do.

First, I do not think it is proper for Government to come to people in the private sector and say you must do this or that for the public good. We can urge you to, but I think when we get into the position where we cross the line and say that this or that radio station, even where radio and television stations are licensed as they are--as the networks are not but as the stations are, they are licensed by Government--I believe it is very important to maintain that independence. It is not only the independence but the right to criticize and the right to program in the private sector in our American tradition.

On the other hand, I think that all of you would agree that it is the proper province and responsibility of your national leaders, and particularly in the Government, when there is a great national issue to try to present that issue. Then in the event, in your own judgment and in your newsrooms and in your programing, you feel that you could cooperate in your interest and in the national interest, we ask you to do so.

It is in that spirit that I invited you here to this meeting to hear the facts and listen to the facts. If you think the problem is one that deserves attention, then make a decision as to whether or not you can help on the problem. If you do reach that conclusion, I can only assure you that I think the Nation will owe a very great debt of gratitude to you.

I would not suggest, in conclusion, that what we do on radio programs and television programs and Presidential statements and statements by Governors and teachers and ministers and priests and religious leaders and so on will stop this massive escalation in the use of dangerous drugs.

On the other hand, it is vitally important that we recognize the danger, that we slow it down, and eventually reach the point where we can turn it around.

I think it can be done, and I think it must be done.

When I look at the history of great civilizations in the past, many of them have gone down this road and they slip into basically the drug psychology, the drug society; it is terribly destructive of the character of that nation.

We are thinking not only of our young people in terms of the deaths. We are thinking in terms of their lives, their contributions that they can make to the future of this country.

With that, I simply want to tell you again that I am grateful for your coming. Above everything else I realize that in your business, and I hope it will always be this way, your programs will be interesting, and I hope that people listen to them. I am not asking you to put on something or urging that you do, or ordering that you do anything that is dull, because if it is that, you are not going to accomplish any purpose in any event.

But I do suggest that in this powerful medium of radio communications, particularly its impact on the young people, if you, to the extent that you feel it is consistent with your own interests and consistent with the interests that you have to serve in the organization with which you are associated, if you can make a contribution here, I believe you will be serving the national interest.

It is in that personal way that I am making this presentation to you, not to put you on the spot but to ask for your cooperation if the facts, after you have heard them all, lead to the conclusion that that cooperation will be justified.