Perhaps the fact that Big Booze is generous at campaign time explains the contradiction.
Drugs are bad, except the ones that finance campaigns.
If young people have emptiness in their lives, if they have a lack of respect for the larger community of which they're a part, if they don't find ways to feel connected to the adults who are in the community, if they feel there's phoniness and hypocrisy and corruption and immorality, then they are much more vulnerable to the drug dealers, to the peers who tempt them with messages that are part of a larger entity of evil. So spoke Al Gore in February 1999, denouncing illegal drug use by young people. First, one might ask why Gore spoke exclusively about illegal drugs. While the White House, to its credit, is making a concerted effort to reduce youth smoking, it has said little about alcohol and done even less. Unlike Big Tobacco, Big Booze remains a bipartisan briber.