Bill Clinton: “I know it does, but in some ways it's the thing that puts the most at risk over the long run. And we have to do…”

“I know it does, but in some ways it's the thing that puts the most at risk over the long run. And we have to do something about the other things, too. I've fought very hard to get the assault weapons out of the hands of gang members, to pass the Brady bill, to put more police officers on the street. The crime rate is going down in almost every--almost every big city in this country, the crime rate is going down. We have to--we're doing a better job trying to keep big shipments of drugs out of the country. We're working hard on that. But this is a serious problem. On alcohol, it's less accessible than cigarettes. It's still a problem, but I want a zero tolerance drunk driving law for young people in every State in the country or here in the Congress. But the cigarettes--the magnitude of the damage caused is greater than all of that right now. And we just have to focus on it. I know it--because there normally is a period of several years between the time you start and keep smoking and the time you face the consequences, and when you're young you think you're going to live forever, I know that it's going to be harder to get young people to focus on that. But we have to. There's a lot of destructive behavior in America we need to attack at the same time, and I just think that we can get these numbers way, way down. You gave the number--a billion packs of cigarettes or a billion cigarettes a year--we can get that way down. And when we do, we'll get the life expectancy of these young people and their quality of life way up. Ms. Soren. Did you ever experiment with cigarettes as a teen? Did you go through that phase?”