Paul Coverdell: “I want this meeting to be a wakeup call. I want it to be absolutely clear in all of our minds when we leave this meeting…”

“I want this meeting to be a wakeup call. I want it to be absolutely clear in all of our minds when we leave this meeting and when we leave here today that there is a new drug epidemic in the United States. Epidemic. You will hear these figures throughout the afternoon, but essentially drug use among teenagers has doubled. What does that mean? That means 2 million more teenagers are involved with drugs today than were just 36 months ago. The increase on the part of teenagers in the last 12 months--12 months--increased 33 percent. You heard the Senator from Texas begin to talk about the fact that we had to restore interdiction efforts on the border. You will hear many other suggestions that we need to restore and reopen the drug czar's office, that we need to double our efforts, we need to quit reducing military capacity involved in interdiction and restore it. But that is going to take some time. That is not going to happen tomorrow. These systems were being shut down, and it takes a lot of funding and time to turn them back on.”