It is back to school time and one drug and alcohol abuse cuts across all generations it is especially damaging to the young people on whom our future depends. Tonight, from our family to yours, from our home to yours, thank you for joining us. America has accomplished so much in these last years. Whether rebuilding our economy or asserting freedom in the world. What we have achieved has been done with your help. With us working together as a nation united. We need your support again. Drugs are menacing our society. They are threatening our values and undercutting institutions. They are killing our children. From the beginning of our administration, we have taken strong steps to do something about this horror. I can report that we have made much progress. 37 federal agencies are working together in a vigorous National Effort and by next year, our spending for Drug Law Enforcement will have more than tripled on its 1981 levels. We have increased seizures of the legal drugs, shortages of marijuana are being reported. Last year alone, over 10,000 drug criminals were convicted and nearly 250 million of their dea,s were seized by the the Drug Enforcement administration. Most important area, individual use, we see progress. In four years, the number of High School Student seniors using marijuana on a daily basis has dropped from one in four, 21 in 20 the u. S. Military has cut the use of Illegal Drugs among his personnel by 67 since 1980. These are a measure of our commitment and emerging signs that we can defeat this enemy. We still have much to do. Despite our best efforts, you legal cocaine is coming into our cocaine isillegal coming into our country. One in 12 persons smoke marijuana regularly. Regular drug use is higher among the age group 18 to 25. Most likely just entering the workforce. Today, a new epidemic. Smokable cocaine, otherwise known as crack. An explosively destructive and often lethal substance which is crushing its users. It is an uncontrolled fire. Drug abuse is not a socalled victimless crime. Is at stake when excess of drugs and alcohol are used by people on the highways or by those transporting our citizens. Drug abuse costs you and your fellow americans as a 60 billion a year. From the early days of our administration, nancy has been involved in the effort to fight drug abuse. She is traveled over 100,000 and 28 statesties and six Foreign Countries to fight schoolaged drug and alcohol abuse. She has given dozens of speeches and scores of interviews and has participated in 24 special radio and tv tapings to create greater awareness of this crisis. Her personal observations and efforts have given her such dramatic insights that i wanted her to share them with you this evening. Nancy . Mrs. Reagan thank you. As a mother, i have thought of september as a special month, a time when we bundled our children off to school, to the warmth of the environment they could fulfill the hope in their restless minds. So much has happened over the last years to shake the foundation of all we know at all we believe in. Drug and alcohol abuse epidemic in this country and no one is safe, not you, not me, and not our children. This epidemic has their names written on it. Many of you may thinking, drugs do not concern me. It does concern you. It concerns us all because of the way it tears at our lives. Because it is aimed at destroying sons and daughters of the united states. For five years, i have been traveling across the country learning and listening. One of the most hopeful signs i have seen is the building oan essential new awareness of how terrible and threatening drug abuse is to our society. One of the main purposes when i started was this so it makes me happy that it has been accomplished. Its time i meet with someone new or receive another letter from a person on drugs, i want to find a way to share the message that cries out from them. As a parent, i am especially concerned about what drugs are doing to Young Mothers and their newborn children. To this account from a hospital in florida of a child born to a mother with a cocaine habit. Liesy named paul motionless in any debater. Incubator. You need a respirator to breathe and a daily spinal tap to relieve fluid buildup on his brain. Only one month old, he is suffered two strokes. You can see why drug abuse concerns everyone of us. All the american family. Drugs steal away so much, they take and take. Until, every time a drug was into a child thomas Something Like loverced out and hope and trust and confidence. Drugs take away the dreams from every childs heart and replaces it with a nightmare. Time we in america stand up and replace those dreams. Each of us has to put our principles and conscious is on the line whether in social settings are in a workplace to set forth solid standards and stick to them. Indifference is not an option. We want you to help us create an outspoken intolerance for drug use. For the sake of our children, i implore each of you to be unyielding and inflexible in your opposition to drugs. Our young people are helping us lead the way. In oakland, california, i was asked by a group of children what to do if they were offered drugs. I answered, just say no. Those children formed a just say no club and there are over 10,000 such clubs over the country. Their participation and courage in saying no needs our encouragement. We can help by using every opportunity to force the issue of not using drugs to the point of making others uncomfortable. Even if it means making ourselves unpopular. Our job is never easy because drug criminals are ingenious. They work every day to plot a new and better way to steal our childrens lives as they have done by developing crack. For every door we close, they open a new door to death. They prosper on our unwillingness to act. We must be smarter and stronger and tougher than they are. It is up to us to change attitudes and simply dry up their markets. Finally, the young people watching and listening, i have a person personal message for you. There is a Wonderful World where you. It belongs to you. It is exciting and stimulating and rewarding. Do not cheat yourselves out of this promise. Our country needs you but it needs you to be clear eyed and clear minded. I read one teenagers story, determined to stay clean but was once strung out on several drugs. What she remembered most clearly about her recovery was that during the time she was on drugs , everything appeared to her in shades of black and gray. After her treatment, she was able to see color. To my young friends, life can be great. Not when you cannot see it. Open your eyes to life. See it in the given colors that god gave us as a precious gift to his children, to enjoy life to the phyllis and to make to the fullest and make it count. Yes to life and when it comes to drugs and alcohol, just say no. President reagan you can see why nancy has been such a positive influence on all that we are trying to do. Nancysahead is clear, personal crusade should become our national percent. It must include our National Crusade. It must involve government and private efforts. I announced six initiatives that will do that. We seek a drugfree workplace at all levels of government and in the private sector. We work for drugfree schools. We want to ensure the public is protected and the treatment is prone available to abusers and the chemically dependent. Our fourth goal is to expand International Corporations while treating Drug Trafficking as a threat to our national security. In october, i will be meeting with u. S. Ambassadors to discuss what can be done to support our friends abroad. We must move to strengthen Law Enforcement activity, such as those initiated by Vice President bush and attorney general meese. We seek to expand Public Awareness and prevention. In order to further implement the six goals, i will announce tomorrow, a series of proposals for a drugfree america. These proposals will toughen our laws against drug criminals, encourage more research and treatment, and ensure that you beal drugs will not tolerated in our schools or in our workplaces. Ongoing efforts, these proposals would bring the federal commitment to fighting drugs to 3 billion. As much financing as we commit, we would be fooling ourselves if we thought that massive new amounts of money alone would provide the solution. Lets not forget that people solve problems and no National Crusade has ever succeeded without human investment. Winning acres eight against drugs will not be achieved by just throwing money at the. Roblem your government will act aggressively. Nothing would be more effective than for americans to quit using drugs. We seek to create a massive change in National Attitudes which will separate the drugs from the customer. To take the user away from the supply. I believe that we can help them quit. That is where you come in. Howeneration will remember america swung into action when we are attacked in world war ii. The war was not just fought by flying the planes are driving the tanks, it was fought at home by a mobilize nation, men and women building planes and ships, Closing Sales salessolars clothing sailors and soldiers. We are in another war and it is time for us to pull together. If your friend or neighbor, or a family member, has a drug or alcohol problem, do not turn the other way. Go to his help, or hers. Get others involved, clubs, service groups, Community Organizations and provide support and strength. Many of you have endured through treatment and selfhelp. Have been each you are through treatment and selfhelp have been cured through treatment and selfhelp. Being friends to others is the best way of being friends to ourselves. It is time, as nancy said, for america to just say no to drugs. Those of you in union halls and workplaces everywhere, please make this challenge a part of your job every day. Help us preserve the health and dignity of all workers. Two businesses law and does large and small, we need your enterprise apply directly to this national problem. Help us. Those who are educators, your wisdom and leadership are indispensable to this cause, from the pulpits of this spirit filled land, we would welcome your reassuring message of reduction and forgiveness. On the athletic fields, you men and women are among the most beloved citizens, a childs eyes fill with your heroic achievements. Few of us can give youngsters as special as strong to look up to as you. Do not let them down. This camera in front of us is a reminder that in nancy and my former profession and in the newsrooms and production rooms of our media centers, you have a special opportunity with your enormous influence to send alarm signals across the nation. To our friends in Foreign Countries, we know many of you involved are involved with us and we need your success as well as ours. When we come together, united, striving for this cause, then those who are killing america and terrorizing it was slow but sure chemical destruction will see that they are up against the mightiest force for good we know. Then, they will have no dark alleyways to hide. In this crusade, let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything america is. The destructiveness marks our heritage. Heritage. Ur only a Divine Providence place this land, this island of freedom as a refuge for all the people in the world who urine to betray. Ye to breathe freearn. Emigrants came seeking a safe harbor from the oppression of cruel regimes. They came to extent escape starvation and disease. Those surviving the holocaust came. They chanced that for a glimmer of hope they could have a. For ay chanced death glimmer of hope they could have a new life. One more thing, the freedom so many seek in our land has not been reserved without a price. Nancy and i share that remembrance two years ago in the American Cemetery in france. In the still of the june afternoon, we walked together among the soldiers of freedom, past hundreds of white markers was our monuments to courage and memorials to sacrificeto. Too many are the final resting places of teenagers who became men in battle. Look what they gave. Never what they see another day. Corn pushing up against the open sky of our planes. The pristine air of our mountains and the driving energy of our cities are there is no more. They would never again the a son to their parents or a father to their own children. They did this for you, for me, for a new generation to carry every democratic experiment proudly forward to that is something we are obliged to honor. What they did for us, we owe as an act of stewardship to use our freedom wisely for the common good. As we mobilize for this National Crusade, drugs are a konstantin tatian for tested. Americans, the product of the freest society mankind has ever known. No one has the right to shatter your dreams. Down the end of this hall is the lincoln bedroom. That was the one president lincoln used as his office. More than anything, that memory drives us to see vividly what president lincoln sought to save. Above all, america must stand for something. Our heritage lets us stand with the strength of character made more steely by the you layers