Paul Coverdell: “I think this is exactly the time to do it. I think that it sends the wrong message for us to be talking about teenage…”

“I think this is exactly the time to do it. I think that it sends the wrong message for us to be talking about teenage addiction and wrap our arms around it like it is only involved in tobacco. About 14,000 teenagers die from drug addiction every year. And, as I will enumerate in a bit, teenagers, parents, our society in general view the No. 1 teenage addiction problem as drugs. Tobacco is a problem and tobacco use among teenagers has increased by 40 percent. Drug abuse among teenagers has increased by 135 percent in the last 6 years. The figures used last week were that 400,000 people, according to CDC, die each year of smoking-related illnesses. We are dissecting those numbers. I do not dispute them. But the point I make, Mr. President, is that of course this is of the entire population. You can't just measure the effects of teenage drug abuse by measuring the deaths. Fourteen thousand young people die each year, but the societal cost of drugs to our society are just staggering. Illegal drugs, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, represents $67 billion in an annual drain on the United States. According to the University of Southern California, it is $76 billion.”