Frank Lautenberg: “This is one of those debates that I really do not enjoy because the friends who are opposing this are not people who are…”

“This is one of those debates that I really do not enjoy because the friends who are opposing this are not people who are against what we want to do. They are not against eliminating underage drinking--not at all. What we are arguing about is somewhat about process. Frankly, though, we are on the same side of the issue. But I see them as having an argument that I can't buy, and I don't think the American people will buy. We are saying let's preserve as much of the $1 billion that we have to fight drugs through the media campaign, plus all of the other money spent on fighting drugs, even though we are not doing it quite successfully. But we ought to be looking more critically at how we deal with the drug problem. We are building more jails. We are penalizing those in institutions and jails, or in other facilities of incarceration, who are not drug addicts. We are spending billions of dollars. And we don't put alcoholics in jail. We don't punish them. We don't stigmatize them the same way we do drug users. But I point out that alcohol kills six times more children ages 12 to 20 than all other illegal drugs combined. What does that say? Does that say that the children who die from alcohol are worth less to us as a society than those who die from illegal drugs?”