Bill Clinton: “Well, let me tell you a little about that. Let me just talk for a couple minutes. First of all, I agree with that. We…”

“Well, let me tell you a little about that. Let me just talk for a couple minutes. First of all, I agree with that. We require countries where drugs are grown to cooperate with us in trying to destroy them and arrest the people who are selling them, if they want to keep getting any kind of aid or any help with trade from us. And I think that's a good thing. But let me tell you what they say. I'll tell you what they say back. They say, ``Okay, we have a poor little country here, and I'm a little farmer. And I can grow coca to make cocaine or I can grow bananas and pineapples, and I'll go broke if I do that and I'll make money if I do the other thing.'' The police officers in these poor countries where the drugs are shipped through--last year we know there was something like $500 million spent in Mexico alone to make payments to police officers that like tripled or quadrupled their annual salary. And so these countries that try to help us that are poor, where the drugs are grown, they say, ``If the Americans didn't buy--the American people have 5 percent of the world's population and buy 50 percent of the world's drugs. And if they didn't want the drugs and weren't willing to pay these outrageous prices for them, we wouldn't have a market, and we'd have to go do something else for a living.'' In other words, I think you're right. We have to be tougher on them. And last year we had record numbers of destruction of drugs in foreign countries and arrests and all that. But as long as there is as much money as there is, and as long as Americans are just dying to have it, it's going to be impossible to completely eradicate. And we need to do more. But all of us have to take responsibility, too. If we didn't have a drug problem in this country, they would go broke, and they would go do something else. Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't do more in other countries, but we have to take a lot of responsibility here, too. Mr. Jennings. A show of hands--radio, again--a show of hands from the kids only, is he convincing? Well, you didn't do too badly. Okay, so we'll continue in just a moment.”