11:30 A.M. EST
Real Audio of Briefing
MR. PRINCE: Good morning, and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. We're very pleased to have with us this morning John Walters, Director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy; and Calvina Fay, Executive Director of Drug-Free America Foundation.
They have both recently returned from a conference in Brussels that was hosted by three European and international organizations committed to reducing drug abuse. One of the results of the conference was a statement taking a position on harm reduction policies. This text is in your press kit, as well as other related information. Ms. Fay will be able to tell you much more about the conference in her remarks and in the Q&A.
Ms. Fay will start with a statement, and then Director Walters will follow.
MS. FAY: Thank you. Good morning. As was stated, my name is Calvina Fay. I'm the Executive Director of Drug-Free America Foundation, which is a national and international nonprofit drug policy and education foundation based in St. Petersburg, Florida.
On March 1 and 2, we supported a conference in the European parliament in Brussels, Belgium, titled "International Dimensions for European Drug Policy." The conference was hosted by Ms. Charlotte Cederchiöld, a member and former Vice President of the European Parliament. It was organized by European Cities Against Drugs, the Institute on Global Drug Policy, and the International Scientific and Medical Forum on Drug Abuse. It was supported by the Drug-Free America Foundation and the Drug Prevention Network of the Americas.
In attendance were delegates from North and South America, as well as delegates from all over Europe. This included members of the parliament, other high-level European officials and leaders from non-governmental agencies.
The purpose of the conference was to counter the efforts by certain groups, including many that are funded by the Daddy Warbucks of drug legalization, Mr. George Soros. These groups are promoting permissive drug policies in Europe and around the world under the guise of so-called harm reduction. The phrase "harm reduction" and its obvious meaning has been hijacked and cynically employed by those whose goal it is to legalize drugs. They use the obvious universal desire to reduce harm to promote the legalization of drugs. Drug legalizers use the phrase to gain the sympathy of well-meaning people and governmental officials.
I want to make it clear that rational drug policies which recognize that the temporary use of measures to reduce harm, with the goal of ultimately having a person abstinent, are fundamentally different from so-called harm reduction drug policies which accept the inevitability of drug use.
Our conference supported the United Nations' position that the goal of national and global drug policies and strategies must be to prevent and stop drug use. It supported abstinence from drug use as a reasonable and achievable goal for public health policy, and a policy of no use of illegal drugs or destructive use of legal drugs. Speakers at our conference overwhelmingly spoke in support of comprehensive prevention, treatment and enforcement strategies to prevent and eliminate illegal drug use and, thereby, their undeniable harm.
They overwhelmingly opposed usurping multinational treaties and agreements and replacing the goal of preventing and reducing drug use with a strategy by whatever name, whether you call it harm reduction or whatever, that seeks to normalize various forms of drug use.
In preparation of the conference, members of the International Task Force on Strategic Drug Policies met for two days prior to the conference to exchange information on the drug policy issue and to strategize on how to best promote sound drug policies throughout the world in an effort to protect our children from the harms of drugs. The task force, which is a group of worldwide experts on drug policy, issued a statement on so-called harm reduction that was disseminated at the conference in the parliament. As was referenced in my introduction, that statement is in your press kit.
Speakers at our conference included high-level officials, such as Mr. Herbert Schaepe, the former Secretary of the International Narcotics Control Board, or INCB; Mr. Morgan Johansson, the Minister of Public Health and Social Services in Sweden; Cheryl Gillan, member of parliament of the U.K. and a drug policy expert; Mr. Claude Ruey, a member of the Swiss parliament; and a number of medical doctors and researchers from the U.S. and Europe who have closely studied the issue of so-called harm reduction.
One very special speaker was our Director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, Mr. John Walters. Director Walters will now share with you a few words about his participation in our conference and his visit to Europe.
Thank you.
DIRECTOR WALTERS: Thank you, Calvina. Good morning to all of you. Thanks for coming.
I wanted to talk to the press because I think the developments of the world, and particularly in Europe, in regard to drug control are quite rapid and are somewhat unappreciated. The effort I made to meet European delegates at the conference in Brussels that Calvina referred to -- as well as individual meetings I had in the Netherlands, in London, in Paris and in Vienna at the U.N. meeting, where I had bilateral meetings with a variety of nations, including Russia, Italy, Japan, Sweden, Nigeria, China, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, India and Australia -- allowed us to review current activities and, I think, the status of international agreements.
Overall, I would say that there is a kind of cartoon out there that says we're all divided here, and the particular poles of the division are the United States, which is on the one hand in the cartoon excessively harsh, and the other hand there is the Netherlands, which is irresponsibly lenient. In meeting with Dutch officials, I found them to be concerned about the state of their current drug problem; concerned about the increased problems of addiction and abuse, fueled by higher-potency cannabis that some of them have asked to look into research about whether or not it should be treated as a different drug. I found them concerned about synthetic drug production and trafficking throughout the Netherlands, and the use of cocaine and transit of cocaine through their country.
They are looking at expanding. I visited a treatment center for teenagers outside The Hague and visited with officials, city officials in Amsterdam and looked at some of the areas where they've had particular problems over the years with the distribution of drugs in coffee houses and other crime associated with sections of that city. They’re concerned about reducing that threat, and as the Dutch Health Minister told me, that there's a great deal of misunderstanding of what the Government of the Netherlands is doing. He said to me their first and foremost priority is prevention. The second priority for them is treatment for those who are addicted. And only third is harm reduction, and that's only just ahead of the fourth option, which is do nothing. The view that they believe harm reduction is first and foremost is not consistent with their policy, he told me.
And I found the same true in talking with government officials in Paris, who are concerned about trafficking and use in that country, who are using a media campaign not unlike that in the United States to try to discourage teenage drug use. I found the efforts in London to work on the issue of smuggling and crime -- they're concerned about the problem of increased cocaine use in parts of the U.K., as well as obviously, their concern and partnership with us on controlling global heroin and opium trade in Afghanistan and other nations, as well as cooperation in this hemisphere between the U.K., the Netherlands and other governments of Europe.
We're looking at expanding those, and I think the other area that's important here is they were interested to hear that we actually have seen, for the first time in 10 years, declines in teenage use drug use, a 17 percent decline over the last three years, 600,000 fewer teenagers using illegal drugs in the United States in 2004 than in 2001.
They were interested to hear that our efforts to expand treatment capacity, as well as the combination of efforts to control supply, the preventing of over 500 metric tons of cocaine through interdiction and eradication of coca in the Andes, preventing that cocaine from either coming to the United States or being moved to Europe through joint efforts, we're trying to expand those, and the efforts to stand up greater cooperation in building institutions in Afghanistan that will help to control the flow of opium and heroin -- which was not only an interest to Europeans, but at the U.N. meeting, of course, also of interest to those from other parts of the world, Africa and Asia.
We are identifying increasingly, I think, areas where we can work cooperatively. The fact that these meetings exist, the fact that the treaties exist are a recognition that the illegal drug trade, as with other criminal and terror activities, try to use borders as a means of evading pressure to stop. And as, I think is more widely recognized, consumption doesn't know the limits of borders. Almost all the countries of Europe are concerned about people moving across borders, both moving drugs and coming across borders to consume them, and to create either a problem at the point of consumption or to bring that problem back to the nation that is their home.
I would say that having worked in this area for almost two decades, I've never seen the level of international cooperation as extensive. And actually, despite what there are, and I don't deny there are real areas of difference in some of the policies and measures, there is a great deal of unity on the part of both the concern for this and, I think, the measures that need to be undertaken.
The single biggest area, I think, is being presented as harm reduction. And I think the real division is less about whether one nation or another has a certain mix of policies or tolerates one kind of policy or another. I think the real fundamental difference is that there are some people, yes, some in government, but a lot of them also outside of government, as Calvina referred to it, who make the division really be those who see the seriousness of the problem of drugs, both distribution and trafficking, and disease, and addiction and associated crime and human suffering; and those who want to cover up the harm of drugs and say we ought to tolerate it, and under the guise of harm reduction say, well, we ought to just manage the harm, that drug use is okay, that the drug problem is actually something that you can manage, and it will lead to a better situation.
I did not see [the government leaders of] a single nation that I visited believing that drug use is okay. It's bigger than they want in every single nation I visited. They are worried about distribution and crime. They want to control the supply. And they are worried about disease and addiction. And they are worried about the growing danger this poses to young people in many of those countries. So I actually think as the future months and years present themselves, we're going to see greater unity here.
And lastly, I would just say that there's been some debate, and some of this has been reported in parts of the press here, that there's a great deal of disagreement in the international community, even about the meeting of the international treaties that stand here. That is not my experience. An overwhelming majority of the signatory nations, roughly 130 that were at the U.N., support the treaties. They do not want to open the treaties. They do not want to change the treaties. They want to implement them. They want to implement additional agreements that will allow better cooperation against both supply and demand. That was encouraging. And I think even though I follow this regularly in my job, the extent of that agreement was a pleasant surprise for me in this meeting.
So with that, there's a lot of issues in this area. I'll be happy to be guided by areas you're interested in and take your questions with Calvina.
MR. PRINCE: Very good, thank you very much. We'll begin the Q&A. As always, please state your name and the name of your media organization.
Yes, right here. Please wait for the mike.
QUESTION: Thanks. Mr. Walters, I'm Tim Harper from the Toronto Star. Could I bring you to an issue closer to home? And that is the growth in the grow-op industry in Canada, concerns I know you have about the way the judicial system in Canada deals with those convicted of drug offenses, and the growth and the manufacture of ecstasy in Canada. Can you share with me some of your concerns about what is happening north of the border and the increasing transit of illegal drugs into this country?
DIRECTOR WALTERS: Yes, we have been concerned about this. It's grown dramatically, as Canadian estimates have already documented, as has from Canadian surveys of consumption inside Canada, which is now, I believe, for teenagers, some of the recent surveys, rates exceed that of United States teenagers.
We have had an outstanding working relationship with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in joint operations in trying to protect citizens on both sides of the border effectively. And I'd like to take this opportunity to extend my government's condolences to the RCMP, the people of Canada, and the families of the officers who were killed last week. This is one of the finest police organizations in the world. Everybody recognizes that. And when officers are brutally murdered, it lessens the capacities of all law-abiding citizens. And we're very sad, and we'll remember those individuals in our thoughts and prayers.
The larger issue of the use of the Canadian border as a way of producing and transiting drugs is a continuing concern. And one of the conversations I had with some of the leaders in Europe was the movement of synthetics into Canada in the form of precursors. We are trying to work to cut off both the things that are used to make the actual illegal drugs, but also the illegal drugs themselves.
That's an ongoing struggle. And I think the current data suggest that we have not yet fundamentally changed the trajectory of growing production of high potency marijuana, the kind of marijuana that both the Europeans and we see as particularly addictive and dangerous; the doubling of our emergency room mentions from 60,000 to 120,000 in roughly the last 10 years for -- or the last five years for marijuana alone; the increasing admission of teenagers to treatment -- more teenagers in the United States receiving treatment for marijuana dependency than all other illegal drugs combined, more than for alcohol now.
And frankly, the other problem of the use of the border as a way of moving product largely to a market in the United States is what the Canadian officials' own data shows. At a time when we're trying to open the market for trade, and we've always obviously prized the free movement of people across this large, unguarded border, the largest in the world of its kind for many, many years.
So this is a problem, and it requires joint action. And we will continue to work with the Canadian Government on this. But I would say right now the trends are not that this is getting smaller.
QUESTION: If I could just follow up, the possible repercussions in bilateral trade, or bilateral relations if this is -- if the trend doesn't start going down?
DIRECTOR WALTERS: Well, the first repercussion is that, I think is most important is that -- especially young people on both sides of the border are being victimized by drugs. This is not also a problem that's just being exported to the United States, although part of it is. Use inside Canada is growing by Canadian Government estimates.
Secondly, this money is going into organized criminal groups, Asian organized crime, outlaw motorcycle gangs. And that has gone, as you know, from the western provinces across to the east. That money is extensive, billions of dollars. And there are wide differences in exactly how many billion that are being estimated are part of that trade. That goes directly into criminal groups who then use that money to further destroy institutions of justice and create other criminal activity to victimize citizens on both sides of the border.
Obviously, we've had to both expand our efforts to stop the movement across the border. We try to target this so that we preserve trade obviously and the movement of innocent people and stop those that are engaged in crime. But it's not perfect. And frankly, as has been reported, we've had to move measures that were previously only seen on our southern border with Mexico to help stop drugs more and more up into the northern border at vulnerable ports of entry. That's unfortunate. But it has been partly as a result of the terror threat, but also the growing volume of drugs coming across the border.
I think our best hope now is to work as we have been with the RCMP and Canadian law enforcement to cut off some of these organizations that are trying to function in both countries, and to continue a discussion with officials there about the dangers this poses and the kind of measures that, as I said before, that we have learned painfully.
I went to school in Canada for graduate school, and I certainly understand that the Canadian people are as concerned about the threat to the health of their children as citizens are in the United States. I know that they are particularly a people that like to obey the law, and they believe the law is good for everyone in society and spend a great deal of time trying to make sure that it's humane and it's effective. And so I have great confidence that we will be able to continue to work cooperatively.
I think the question that was always on our side of the border and on theirs is when these problems arise, how many more people will suffer until we are able to change the trend line here. And that's the always the responsibility people in public positions have.
MR. PRINCE: Yes, right there.
QUESTION: Hugo Alconada, from La Nación, an Argentine newspaper. And I wonder if in your trip, you discussed about the networks Colombian and Andean drug dealers use via Argentina to reach Europe and the U.S. Mainly, the U.S. it's heroin; and Europe, it's cocaine.
DIRECTOR WALTERS: I did not have separate discussions with the officials I met with about movement through Argentina. I was at the meeting in Vienna only for a relatively brief period of time, so I didn't get a chance to meet with all 130 nations there. As I said, I did have bilateral meetings with a number of them, but I did not talk separately about the routes through Argentina. I am aware that there have been some efforts to move additional drugs. I don't believe that we are able to quantify them. The Argentine authorities may have more detailed information, obviously.
MR. PRINCE: Let's go back to Canada again, in the blue shirt.
QUESTION: Tom Blackwell from the National Post in Canada. Those figures you gave about the increased emergency room admissions for teenagers using marijuana, and I think you said addiction to marijuana, would you say that's largely attributable to the high potency marijuana coming from Canada over the last couple years?
DIRECTOR WALTERS: Well, certainly it correlates with the increase in THC content, or potency in marijuana. Not all high potency marijuana comes from Canada into the United States. Some of it is domestically produced and we're doing more to go after both the indoor production and the cultivation on our public land. My office is coordinating with U.S. agencies.
But the big new factor on the scene, aside from marijuana which still comes from Mexico as well, which we've been working on, is the enormous growth of very high potency marijuana coming from Canada. And as I said, the changes that we've seen have been a change in the parameter of THC content going from one or two percent in cannabis in the United States to about eight percent or nine percent over the last five years.
Now, that, as you may be aware, that's an average of what we seize and what we see on the market. There are varieties that routinely go to 14, 15 percent THC. And there are, of course, specially cultivated varieties available both in Europe and from Canada and some parts of the United States that go to 20, almost 30 percent THC content.
Why are we concerned about that, aside from a correlation here which is enough of a reason for concern? Because if you look at the traditional misunderstanding, you could say that most people believe that marijuana is not a serious drug of abuse. If you hear about anything as you categorize drugs of abuse, you will hear marijuana use referred to as a "soft drug."
Of the seven million people that we have to treat today in the United States age 12 and above for dependence or abuse on illegal drugs, over 60 percent have as a primary dependence marijuana. People my age do not believe that marijuana is a serious drug of abuse. It is the single biggest cause of treatment need among the illegal drugs by a factor of two. It's more than twice as important a factor than the second most important factor among the illegal drugs, which is cocaine.
And in addition, while it is true that many people, when they were young, my age and even older, may have been involved with marijuana in the '60s or '70s or even in the early '80s, it's important to remember that the average THC content of that marijuana and whatever problems that may have caused, and it did cause problems at that time, was one or two percent. Today, if you look at our 12- to 17-year-olds, young people who would have been exposed, and their initiation to illegal drugs is not only younger than it was in 1970s when you're talking about 17 or 18, they're starting at 15, 14, 13, 12, and 11, but they're now exposed to an average THC content that is several times higher. Of those 12- to 17-year-olds, based on our best epidemiological surveys, there's about five million who have ever tried marijuana in their lifetime between age 12 and 17. Of that five million, over one million have already progressed in their use to the point where they need intervention and treatment. That is not the way marijuana use was moving a decade ago or two decades ago.
And I think that is a particular reason why the ignorance of people about this as a kind of drug that you don't really need to be concerned about is a problem. It's not only a bigger source, as I said, of treatment need than alcohol among teenagers, but it's apparently a much greater cause of pathology than people thought.
While I was in London, I met with researchers doing work in the U.K. about mental illness and its relationship with the use of cannabis, especially by young people, schizophrenia, depression and other forms of mental illness. There is a considerable body of work, both in this country and in the U.K. especially, that is showing some troubling information about the influence that teenage use of cannabis, especially some of it with -- were concerned about with the higher potency, and mental illness and the onset or the triggering of mental illness.
So the problem here is that we both have a growing problem, and we have a general degree of ignorance and resistance to the information that we need to have in order to be able to respond against and to tell young people what they need to know.
QUESTION: With that in mind, do you think the Canadian Government and judiciary are taking this problem seriously enough, or what more could they do in terms of penalty for grow operators, that kind of thing?
DIRECTOR WALTERS: Well, again, I've talked to some prosecutors in Canada over the last several years in this job. It's not my job to judge Canadian domestic policy. Obviously, it is a different matter when those substances are being sent to the United States. That is a problem for our officials.
But what Canadian officials have told me is that they don't believe they have sufficient sanction against those who are involved in trafficking, that the law in some provinces, and I'm not an expert on Canadian law at the present time, is that unless you actually commit a violent crime against another individual, the tendency is for you not to get serious jail time. And so extensive involvement in trafficking, which would bring a different kind of sentence in the United States, does not bring serious consequences, and they're concerned about that.
I think the other part of this is that without it, the ability to use more extensive enforcement pressure, they're concerned about how this will continue to grow, the thousands of indoor grows that are now estimated, not only in British Columbia, but even in the Toronto metropolitan area by Canadian officials, is troubling, I know, to them.
So I think there are many Canadians that are worried about it. And I also think it's important for -- (inaudible) U.S. audiences -- that it took us a while to put the tools in place that we now use and rely on, laws that allow us to bring serious penalty against those involved in conspiracies, because many people involved in managing trafficking organizations don't carry the drugs around, don't actually get involved in some of the more vicious and violent dimensions of that trade. They stand aloof and they direct others. We needed to put in conspiracy laws, and now we have conspiracy laws that even allow us to reach individuals that are outside the United States who may be trafficking here.
In addition, we have been working with nations to put in better money-laundering statutes and the ability to share information in that regard. And frankly, we've also, with a lot of continued controversy, put in statutes that have very tough penalties for trafficking. The caricature here is that we lock up users, which, of course, is simply an absurd cartoon, but what we do use is serious penalties for, including mandatory minimums, that require judges, if a certain set of facts are found to be true, to determine a sentence. That has been and continues to be some controversy, as you probably know, in the United States, but it was a way to say, we need to be more forceful about holding people accountable who are causing this pain.
And in addition, we've also used the court system. I talked to people in the U.K. about this where they have drug courts. We'll use a court system where essentially users come into the system to have court-supervised treatment to divert people from jail and the expenses of jail, but not just to say, well, because they're petty drug users, we're going to let them continue to use and continue to be involved in destroying themselves and others. I think building a referral system in the health care, where people are screened when they come in, because we know drug users are more victims of disease, accidents, and perpetrators and victims of crime, to refer them to treatment as a routine part of emergency room care or physician care, to use the court system to refer. And I spoke to a number of the officials about our plan to expand the number of schools, now limited, who use random testing as a way of preventing drug use among our teenagers.
I think for a number of nations, we're all looking at measures that will need to be stronger in order to turn the trend.
MR. PRINCE: Yes, right here in the back, please.
QUESTION: Hello, Vytenis Didziulis, UPI. Can you elaborate a little bit about the similarities and differences between the United States and Europe regarding policies for interdiction and eradication in the Andean region?
DIRECTOR WALTERS: Yes, I would say that in terms of interdiction, there is pretty strong consensus. The Dutch Government has been helpful to us in both equipment and personnel, in trying to cut the flow of cocaine from South America through the Caribbean. I visited Schiphol Airport, and they went through the routine they use with some arriving aircraft -- one actually arrived while I was there -- from one of their Caribbean, former Caribbean possessions, to do 100 percent checks. And other nations, including the U.K., provide personnel, materiel, and in some cases, financial support to these efforts.
So I actually think on the issue of interdiction, there is the broadest areas of agreement.
We have different laws that have to be dealt with, in terms of going after the organizational structures that operate within different countries and manipulate that trade when it shifts, as well as distribute it, although I also saw more nations engaging in bilateral agreements for enlisting the flag ships and the duly authorized personnel to stop shipments where they may divert from one country to another, whether it's Spain, West Africa, or other nations of Europe.
The degree of sharing information has become much more extensive, and we're working, as the Europeans are, to expand that as rapidly as possible.
I think the other area that's growing similarity is a result of the growing recognition of addiction as a disease, frankly. One of the things that's divided policies, and one of the things, I think, that's led to the harm reduction, where it's been used as a game among some people, mostly on the outside of government, but by some, is the view that addiction is something like a choice of entertainment or a choice of how you want to live your life, that it's harmless, that the only thing that really makes it bad is when we say, you know, what's wrong, and we try to make people change their behavior.
The growing scientific evidence of the disease of addiction, of the chemical changes of the brain, of the movement from something that you choose as a user to something that's a compulsion, that impairs judgment, that leads you into other risky behaviors, that causes enormous catastrophic effects on your ability to function in your life, is something that is spreading quite rapidly, not only in Europe, but throughout the world.
And when you understand this as a public health threat, once it becomes something that we recognize as a public health threat, as we have other diseases, the arguments about it as something we should tolerate and simply try to allow to continue and continue to spread and that harms will be less is really impossible to sustain.
And most of these nations have quite robust experience with public health concerns and disease, and once this is understood and the current science is implemented, or as part of what policies are implemented, this radically changes things. And I think you see that in discussions international bodies are now having.
And it's for the good, because it allows us to use medical personnel more effectively. It allows this to be seen as not something -- I don't want to be judgmental. This is not about whether or not you wear one style of clothes or another, or what kind of music you like or what kind of hobbies you have. No, this is a public health threat that is a contagion, that's a contagion to you and the people around you; and, in addition, the other part of this threat is, it’s based on the ingestion of substances and poison that are supplied by criminal organizations that use the money to attack institutions of decency and democracy in other parts of the world as well as your own. That's causing, I think, an enormous amount of consensus. We're not there yet, obviously, but the changes that I saw, even over the last five years, have been quite, I think, quite extensive.
MR. PRINCE: Yes, right here, please.
QUESTION: Yes, my name is Geeke Rennetts, I'm from Dutch Public Television. And, well, you have the difference between hard drugs and soft drugs, and I think the policy on soft drugs in the Netherlands is quite different from everywhere else in the world. But do you think that poses a real problem? Because they don't see the use of soft drugs as big as a problem as you think it is. You're talking about abuse, but you can also use soft drugs in a way that's not abuse. The same with other instances like alcohol, as long as you do it in a decent way, it can work for some people. So do you think the difference in policy is a big problem?
DIRECTOR WALTERS: Well, I think that obviously, we get further when there's a unity of policy, when we have a problem that crosses lines or borders among countries. But again, my conversation with Dutch officials, I was struck by two things. One, a growing concern that the distinction, in terms of cannabis as a soft drug, between what may have been the potency of marijuana and may still be to some degree cannabis in the Netherlands and elsewhere, and the new higher potency that is apparently being produced, also domestically, in large numbers. The concern that Dutch officials had about the equipment for running indoor grows, and obviously, the long-known capacity of some in the Netherlands to be amazingly successful at agriculture, that the ability to cultivate special varieties in special ways that are particularly destructive in this case is something they expressed concerned about and they're looking into.
So I think the previously viewed distinction between hard and soft is something that is under reexamination everywhere, including in the case of the concern here with Canada, but certainly among Dutch officials, and certainly among officials I met with in the U.K. and many of the international representatives I talked to.
Secondly, I do think that the concern in a number of these nations also about alcohol consumption by young people is something that is striking, and it's something we see paralleled in the United States.
The reason I think that there's a difference is you have now rates of use by younger adolescents that have not been prevalent in the past, not 17, 18, 19, but 13, 12, 11, and 10. And also, I think what had maybe been the past custom in some places, you know, with a meal or as a part of a family or in a moderate setting where alcohol is consumed; but a pattern of abuse, of using alcohol as a drug, to use the drug, use alcohol, to fundamentally change your awake state to one of intoxication that, you know, we see this in the United States. Young people do not have wine and cheese parties. They do not go out and have a glass of sherry together after study. They tend to get drunk, drink to get drunk. And they will then take additional opportunities to repeat that experience in shorter and shorter intervals.
The way you make somebody dependent or an addict is to get them intoxicated and to continue to get them intoxicated at more and more frequent intervals because that causes the body to change. It tries to adjust. It then actually begins to change the structure of the brain so that you also, in order to feel normal, need the substance, whether it's heroin or alcohol or cannabis. Once you become dependent, one of the characteristics is you feel sick when you're not using the drug, in addition to seek the euphoria you may get from the intoxicated state.
And the problem is, the younger you start, as an adolescent especially, we know that the human brain is continuing the process of full maturation, and it's more subject to the changes that are associated with addiction when you start younger.
So all of these countries have expressed to me a concern, not only about rethinking "soft drugs" in the form of cannabis, but also alcohol, because the attitude has been one of -- the distinction between hard and soft has led to, they fear, or contributed to a greater threat to the young people.
Now, at the same time, they are concerned with heroin, obviously, and with cocaine. I think what's troubling to those of us who lived through the 1980s and 1990s in the United States is the degree to which some officials are saying, you know, professionals in the U.K. or in other parts of Europe believe using cocaine, you know, in the social setting after work is okay. Not only did we go through that in about 1983 here, but we made a lot of movies about how crazy and stupid that was. And unfortunately, those movies don't seem to have registered to the same degree, and the alarm expressed by some officials who do know that about this behavior was something -- the extent of that alarm was something I did not entirely expect.
And so I think the concern here is always, look, what's the problem with drugs and abuse? It's like Russian roulette. Yeah, you can use it a few times, and every time you use it, it doesn't have catastrophic consequences. You can pull the trigger and your head doesn't get blown off. And so you begin to say, well, it never happened. I can handle it. That's the lie. It's fun, you can handle it, everybody does it. The problem is, it is a process of using that sense of false safety to make you continue to use, and if you do, you will have a problem. Human beings are subject to addiction, whether it's from alcohol or illegal drugs. That's why these are substances of abuse.
And yes, there are times when societies make compromises and try to manage that, but -- and not all substances are equal --but the fact of the matter is, some of them are quite dangerous. Of the 19 million Americans who use illegal drugs once a month or more frequently, seven million are dependent. We have over 50 million cigarette smokers. We have 120 million people who use alcohol once a month or more frequently, 13 million of which are estimated to be alcoholics. So you can do the math and figure out the current rates of use and abuse were to play themselves out, and you had 50 million or 120 million illegal drug users, how much more addiction and abuse you might have.
MR. PRINCE: Okay, thank you very much.
