[LC]

HENRY KISSINGER, SUGGESTED REMARKS

OPEN ON MR. KISSINGER IN AN APPROPRIATE SETTING, WITH MAP OR OTHER
BACKGROUND SUGGESTIVE OF NATIONAL SCOPE OF PROGRAM

MR. KISSINGER: One of the problems of launching a full-scale
national effort against drugs has been the
proliferation of drug programs nationwide,
the lack of a focal institution or clearinghouse
for information about those programs,
and a general uncertainty about their effectiveness.

As a result, perhaps millions
of dollars that corporations and foundations
earmarked for donation
toward a truly effective anti-drug campaign
have been withheld.

Hope for a Drug-Free America
can call on the nation's highest authorities
to identify truly effective programs,
to define their needs and coordinate their efforts,
rally the private sector around a common cause,
then direct those dollars
where they will do the most good.

HOPE FOR A DRUG-FREE AMERICA.™

MAY - 7 1987!

Bob Hope
NATIONAL CHAIRMAN

Vic Maitland
VICE CHAIRMAN

May 6, 1987

Dr. Henry Kissinger
Kissinger Assoc. Inc.
350 Park Ave., 26th Fl.
New York, New York 10022

Dear Dr. Kissinger:

Jack Kemp introduced us at his Waldorf fund-raiser last year and mentioned my retirement work as a dollar-a-year volunteer for the Youth of America. It is in that regard that I write to you.

This past January, our mutual friend, Bob Hope, announced that he would lead a massive effort to make America a drug-free society in response to President and Mrs. Reagan's appeal, and as a climax to his many years of charitable and public service work.

Bob has asked several of our country's best known and respected citizens from sports, entertainment, government, and industry to become the backbone of a Washington-based foundation designed to resolve what the White House described as the most serious dilemma in the entire effort to fight drugs ... THE DELUGE OF DRUG RELATED REQUESTS OF CORPORATE AMERICA FOR CONTRIBUTIONS from over two thousand sources.

Bob's Foundation, simply put, will be the United Way of the drug industry ... the collection of donations, the research of requests for grants and the disbursement of monies to organizations worthy of support.

2866 East Oakland Park Boulevard
200 N. CENTENNIAL WAY,
P.O. Box 91668

☐ Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33306
MESA, AZ. 85201
L.A., CA. 90009-8554

☐ (305) 564-6118
(602) 844-7797
(213) 776-1009

Dr. Henry Kissinger

-2-

May 6, 1987

Bob has asked his friends to take a few minutes to screen a
tape workprint which I took the liberty of leaving with your
secretary, together with a few pages of additional explanation
about the HOPE FOR A DRUG-FREE AMERICA movement which is being
prepared in brochure form.

At this stage of its development, the most important asset of
HOPE FOR A DRUG-FREE AMERICA is a Board of Directors comprised
of the most visible and influential citizens in our country.

Dr. Kissinger, I hope after you reflect on the magnitude of
what Bob Hope has established, that we can count on you to
make a brief statement on tape in support of the movement and
that you will permit me to visit you to explain more.

With your permission, I'll phone your office the week of
May 11th to request a fifteen minute appointment.

Respectfully,

The National Crisis

American youth is in a crisis,
and the strength and character of the nation
for generations to come may depend
on how adults react to this crisis
and how successful they are in that reaction.

3 to 5 million Americans are using heroin,
20 million smoke marijuana,
15 million use cocaine in one form or another,
Of the millions affected,
more than half are under 25 and over 80%
have tried an illegal drug
during their teenage years.

Americans are spending
25 to 30 billion dollars a year on drugs,
and the nation is losing
47 billion dollars a year
to drug-related problems.

For all of the talk
about this plague on mankind,
not much is actually being done about it,
because nobody knows exactly what to do.

On September 14, 1986,
the President and Mrs. Reagan
appealed to entertainers and athletes
to use their enormous influence
to warn the American people
of the spreading epidemic.

The response was immediate.
A movement was started
by entertainers and athletes,
joined by religious leaders,
supported by concerned corporations
and leaders at every level of government.

The mandate was to offer kids alternatives
to the substance-abuse lifestyle;
involvement instead of boredom,
information to offset confusion,
achievement to build self-confidence,
self-confidence to resist peer pressure,
and highly visible role models
for kids who are looking for direction.

This is the story
of the development of that movement.

The Leader

Bob Hope, perhaps the most respected and honored entertainer in the world, took his President's mandate seriously.

He called on the Director of the NFL Alumni, a man well known for getting things done.

He called on his many friends in sports to ask if they would join a movement against drugs; he was assured that the nation's athletes would follow wherever he led if it meant finding real solutions.

He called on his fellow entertainers in motion pictures, television, music, and the media, and they volunteered almost as one.

From his thousands of friends in high places, he enlisted religious figures, corporate leaders, broadcasters, producers, and government officials.

He devised a plan to use those American role models in the widest-reaching mass media, to teach, to counsel, to communicate, to help and to raise the money to find the solutions.

As the vehicle, he planned a telethon that would reach over a hundred million homes, with the greatest stars from sports and entertainment as the attraction, hard information on drug abuse as the message, and a two-way format to give telephone access to those in the audience seeking answers.

He formed a foundation around a leadership group that is a who's who in America, to fund and produce the program on the night before Super Bowl, in the host city, beginning in January 1988.

That leadership group already includes a dozen of the most powerful and influential men and women in America. If you want to get something done, ask the busiest person you know.

And through all of that, not one individual asked has refused to be a part of the Hope for a Drug-Free America movement.

The Foundation

The Hope for a Drug-Free America Foundation
was formed to serve as the focal point of
this growing movement, and to meet yet
another need.

Man has sought an answer to drug abuse for
centuries and has failed, because there is no
single solution. In that confused environment,
more than two thousand anti-drug programs
have sprung up in this country alone to offer
some kind of response.

Some are fine organizations and capable
individuals, and some have real answers, but at
best their theories and methods are pieces in a
puzzle that has yet to be assembled. Some
others, inevitably, are self-serving opportunists
that prey on the desperation of victims and
families willing to grasp at any straw no matter
what the cost.

In that confusion, financial support that
might have brought real solutions has been
withheld for lack of an institution that might
provide real answers, and for lack of a structure
so unassailably honorable that no contributor
need hesitate to help fund it.

The Hope for a Drug-Free America Foundation
was formed to fill that void. For the first
time in history, an organization of the finest
minds and greatest skills of the greatest nation
in the world has been formed to bring the force
of those minds and skills to bear on the oldest
and most terrible curse of mankind - drugs.

We believe that America can become a
drug-free society by the turn of the century, if
enough of the right kind of people join us and
make it happen.

If you are reading these words it is because
you are in a position to help, and because we
want you on our team.

Whether it's your name and story we need,
your talent, your facilities, your time or your
money, we want you.

And we're asking for your commitment
right now.

The Plan

Commissioner of Baseball Peter Ueberroth, a man well known, not only for bold plans, but for decisive execution as well, outlined a plan to make America a drug-free society within this century.

He called for the President to assume the role of leadership, and for the government to use its sweeping powers to end the cultivation of drug source crops by the most extreme means.

Then he called for the truly influential Americans to form an interdisciplinary committee to launch and carry on a massive campaign of information and pressure to interdict the demand for drugs.

He agreed that the cost would be enormous, then pointed out that it would be less than three percent of the advertising budgets of the top hundred corporations, and less than ten percent of the cost of drug abuse in America today.

He estimated that the plan could succeed in eliminating drugs at the source in months, and in effectively reducing demand in a generation.

Those who questioned the wisdom of his plan had only to be reminded that Peter Ueberroth was the man who planned and brought off the first Olympic Games in a generation not to bankrupt its host city, and whose foresight and leadership earned developmental funds for future Games as well.

The President of the Hope for a Drug-Free America foundation is John F. Lehman, Jr., former Secretary of the Navy who said it all by declaring: "Drugs have infiltrated American society and are undermining our nation's health, moral fiber and family structure.

Nothing but an all-out frontal assault will be enough to stop this plague.

In the Navy, we had a straight forward policy: Not on my watch, not on my ship, not in my Navy.

Now we must take that policy public: Not in my family, not in my neighborhood, not in my country."