R E S P O N S E S
C L I N T O N	D O L E

I have always strongly and vocally opposed the legalization of drugs. We need to take the exact opposite approach, and send a strong message to our children that drugs are both deadly and illegal. The way to do that is not by making them legal or easily available -- it is by continuing to fight the war on drugs on all fronts: teaching children right from wrong, stopping drugs from getting into this country, and punishing drug dealers for their crimes. That is why we are putting 100,000 new police on our streets, expanding the death penalty for drug kingpins, increasing border patrol by 40 percent, urging Congress to fully fund our war on drugs, and fighting for effective anti-drug programs in our classrooms. We must send a message of "zero tolerance" for drinking and driving, and I support testing our children for drugs before they receive a drivers' license. I am also proposing drug testing for prisoners and parolees, to crack down on drugs and crime. My own brother almost lost his life because of a battle with drugs, and I will never support any policy that in any way condones them.

Both are drugs and hence subject to abuse. In the case of alcohol, a constitutional amendment was passed to prohibit it, and then a second amendment passed over a decade later to repeal the prohibition. Alcohol, as a result, can be made, sold, and consumed in the United States except where local laws limit its sale. While alcohol abuse imposes a continuing toll on society, most Americans continue to approve of its sale to all but minors. Marijuana is a more recent arrival on the social scene, and was identified as a problem and outlawed only in the late 1930s. Illegal use of marijuana was a regional phenomenon and relatively rare until the 1960s, and the problems of both marijuana use and the enforcement of the laws against its use have multiplied considerable since that time. A variety of studies have established a continuum between marijuana use and addiction to a gamut of harder drugs. Most medical and law enforcement authorities, as well as the public at large, have tended to subscribe to that view. As a result, marijuana cultivation, sale, or usage remains illegal. I vehemently oppose the use of illegal drugs. The statistics linking the use of drugs with violent crime are staggering. It is my goal to cut teen drug use in half by the end of my first term. Just don't do it!

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