Bill Clinton: “Thank you, Jim, my good friend Jim Burke. Thank you for devoting your life to this cause. Thank you, Alvah Chapman…”

“Thank you, Jim, my good friend Jim Burke. Thank you for devoting your life to this cause. Thank you, Alvah Chapman, CADCA's founding chair, who first talked to me about this some years ago now. Thank you, Lee Brown, for your distinguished work for all Americans and all American children. Thank you, Marni Vliet. I thank all the families who are here today who have sustained losses. And I want to say a special word of thanks to Lori Plank for having the courage to be here, just 2 weeks after she lost her husband, along with her husband's parents and her beautiful child. I thank them for coming and for devoting themselves to the proposition that the best way they can honor Ed Plank is to do whatever can be done to stop this madness from killing more Americans. Let me say to all of you that this issue is especially close to me. Most of you, because of what you do, probably know I grew up in an alcoholic home, and I have a brother I love very much who could have been killed by the cocaine habit he had. This is madness, pure and simple. And we all have to do whatever we can to get it out of our lives. We have to deal with the question of law enforcement and punishment. We have to deal with education and treatment and prevention. We have to deal with all those things that can be done by the President and all those things that can be done by legislators at the national, State, and local level.…”