From: kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Clinton in _Rolling Stone_ on civil liberties and the WOD
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 18:38:09 GMT

Clinton is gang interviewed in this month's _Rolling Stone_. Here is
an excerpt from that interview.

=============
Hunter Thompson: I hate to seem to be antihealth, but I'm concerned
about a nation obsessed with law enforcement and rules. I'm worried
about the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment.

Clinton: I don't have the same view of the crime issues as you have. I
came here from across the river in North Little Rock, talking to a
couple hundred kids -- and their parents -- who participated in a
midnight basketball league the mayor started and we helped him with.
It's one of the reasons we've had a significant decline in crime on
that side of the river this summer as compared with last.

Almost all of them I was talking are black almost all of them are
middle- or low-income people. Crime's a real big deal to them. They
feel very threatened, and they were very pleased about this 'cause
they thought it gave their kids a chance to do something good and to
be part of something good.

My problem with Bush is that he's been more show than go on crime. He
goes for symbolic things that are popular ideologically but don't do
much to reduce crime. I don't agree that he's trying to put too many
police on the street. He's cut back on aid to cities.

If you want less police brutality, you should have more police on the
street, walking the streets, doing community policing.  New York City
went to community policing and has just reported its first crime drop
in thirty-six years.

P.J. O'Rourke: We also engaged in what seems to be a losing war with
drugs. Is the continued criminalizaiton of drugs a wise move? Or
should we legalize them?

Clinton: The war on drugs has enormous costs, but legalized drugs
would have enormous costs, too. Particularly if you legalize drugs
that carry a high probability of death of generational addiction. It's
a very tough call. My own view is that you should not legalize them,
because the cost on the backside -- increased usage -- would swamp
you.

Wenner: But then what are you going to do about the war on drugs?

Clinton: The Bush administration has put a lot of money into federal
agencies, and I think a lot of it ought to be street -- into drug
treatment, into proven preventive programs and into community-based
boot camps. In the long run [... can't read my photocopy ...]  and
with the winding down of the Cold War, we actually have some
opportunities to do more. But the fact is that five percent of the
world's people are using fifty percent of the world's drugs. Those are
the states in America. So you have a demand culture in America which
is overwhelming. That's what we need to focus on.

Most of the people in the drug culture are profoundly disconnected
from the rest of our country. They live in places where it is harder
to answer the question "Why not?" The issue is, how do you reconnect
them? How do you give them some reason to live the life you're calling
them to live?
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--
Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign