Paul Coverdell: “I suggest my colleagues need to ask Americans what they think the most important teenage problem is today. When you ask…”

“I suggest my colleagues need to ask Americans what they think the most important teenage problem is today. When you ask American families, not CDC or some think tank, but you ask American families what they think the No. 1 teenage problem is, it is drug abuse--No. 1, and there is not even a close 2. The Senator from Iowa has a chart from CDC that shows the numbers of deaths. Of course, that is over a lifetime of the entire population. It shows substantial more deaths related to tobacco than to drug abuse on an annual basis. I don't dispute the numbers, but I do dispute the point he is trying to make. He is trying to say that tobacco is the most significant problem, and I guess just measured against deaths, he is correct. But I wonder if he would be interested in looking at America's prison population, the millions of Americans in prison today. There is just one little kernel, one nugget that would be of interest to him, and that is that 80 percent--80--8 out of 10 prisoners in America are in prison on a drug-related charge, direct or indirect--80 percent of the prison population.”