Bill Clinton: “Thank you very much. Thank you, Joe Califano, for your singular determination to keep this issue before the American…”

“Thank you very much. Thank you, Joe Califano, for your singular determination to keep this issue before the American people. There is not another citizen in the entire United States of America who has done as much as Joe Califano to help us all to come to grips with the implications of substance abuse. And every American is in his debt. I also want to thank the other honorees for the work they have done, the late Frank Wells and Tony Bennett and our friend Betty Ford. I want to thank the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia for helping us all to learn more about this, and all the performers tonight for making this a very special evening for the United States. This mission of ours cuts across politics, geography, income, and race. It must unite all of our people in a common purpose. Tonight in 3,500 cities and towns all across our beloved country, community antidrug coalitions are gathered in auditoriums and town halls to watch this broadcast. These people have played a large role in our antidrug efforts, many of them part of an important campaign led by Lee Brown, our Director of National Drug Control Policy, who accompanied me here tonight. With their help, he is getting an urgent and very straightforward message to our teenagers: Stay drug-free; you have the power. With marijuana use on the rise among our teens, that's a message every one of us must now help to spread every day.…”