neighborhoods where they had built up a degree of trust. now, you're an elected official. you're charged with enforcing your law, and if arizona wants it enforced, you have to enforce it. i admire you for that. i'm with you. the only reason arizona passed these laws is because the federal government has not done its job. i hope everybody here understands we are all in agreement on that issue. thank you. >> another question that i've got, and i guess i'll direct this at both bill and robin. both of you come from pretty diverse angles on this thing. you know, i guess a lot of people would say you're kind of the opposites in terms of political spectrum. >> i don't think so. i want you to finish your

question, but i don't think so because i think we have the same ultimate goal. >> well, that's kind of the point to my question. it's just, you know, let me rephrase it, bill. people would perceive you as coming from a law and order perspective. robin, they look at you as coming it from the faith and the human rights perspective. here you are, two people, that, you know, with that different viewpoint wind up at a very similar place. given that -- i don't know if you guys ever met before or had ever heard each other's views before. it's one of the things i kind of hope, because when i decided to bring you to the panel, i was hoping i was going to get this kind of different perspective at winding up the at the same place. does hearing each other's perspectives encourage you or give you a little -- maybe for

lack of a better word hope that there are practical solutions that people on both sides of the political spectrum could bring together and solve this rather than just having this persistent, continuing argument are you for or against sb1070? is securing the border -- must we secure the border first? >> i think that by having this conversation in this forum that regardless of where you're at on the issue of illegal immigration you can hear that there is a law enforcement perspective that recognizes the fact that with our current enforcement mechanism, with the current policies of the federal government that, you know, in the last few years we've averaged 300 deaths in the sonoran desert in arizona. i've asked robin for a copy of his presentation, because the fact is all those red dots

represents a human being, and it is an absolute travesty that we have a system set up where that occurs. where there is a draw for people to risk their very lives that doesn't provide for a systemic, lawful opportunity to be accounted for. without accounting for who is here, we can't allocate necessary resources. and that there is a recognition of the human side of all of this, even in the same sense of wanting to see that the law is enforced and that there is -- there is a large area of convergence for us to get to be able to drive for a solution here. i think that's what people need to hear. regardless of how you come at it, we get to the same place, and there's a recognition that the federal government failed all of us regardless of what the rationale would be. you've heard a variety of different reasons and problem

definitions, although concluding with the fact that -- and concluding in agreement that our current immigration system is broken. so i think the problem definition in that regard we're all in agreement on. we have at least in that regard a shared interest to move forward from. hearing some of robin's ideas, i took notes. i think they're really good. >> that's great. >> for the 25 years that it i've been working in migration-related issues, central america refugees, all kinds of things, we all agrieve, anyo that we have to work toward the actual legal, political machinery to affect change in order to achieve the goals that we want to see. in that sense we're all in the same boat, period. there's no asks, ifs, and buts about it.

i talk about politics to question assumptions of others. i'll question -- it's -- i'm not calling anybody a racist p if there were swedish hookers dying in the arizona desert, we would have done something about this. race is involved. there's no asks, ifs, and buts about it. we target -- if you're looking at the populations, we're targeting a brown population. 43% of the undocumented population of the united states are overstayers of visas of one kind or another. that includes the little white irish nurse from the health care system in st. louis and she has a technical violation with immigration. well, that's all any of them are. so, you know, interior enforcement does not come anywhere near rivalling the

frontier and border enforcement. so brown is involved in this equation. i'm sorry. there are other ways of dealing with it. my job is to question some of the assumptions. some of the assumptions are that we can prosecute this out of existence. that's your job. when janet napolitano was governor and when she was an attorney, same thing. she wanted to do that. that's not going to get it. my critique in my statement was enforcement only is not going to get it. there is the appropriate place for enforcement for prosecution, for all of those, for the distribution and the costs, et cetera. am i hopeful? i'm in the hope business. am i optimistic? i'm not anywhere near as optimistic as doug is. we have really entrenched anti-forces to deal with out there. the power of politics and group

politics that are a raid against rational reform right now are significant. i just want to say that. so i'm here. i'll go anywhere. somebody give me a plane ticket. i'll make my case. i'll read my stuff. i'm in it for the long haul, and i think we all should be. >> one last point, too. just to clarify. you know, when we have these conversations, the racist approach towards wanting to have our laws enforced is one extreme as well as the get rid of all borders and poapologists for whatever infraction on the other end. my goal is to find the overwhelming majority of americans who, again, consistent with our traditions and what it is to be an american in the first place and how our nation was founded and how we've developed to not ignore the role that immigration has played in

our nation in the fact that this is a problem that we have to address collectively at the right level of government to get this solution that we need. >> okay. i have one last question. i'll just ask this for the whole panel. one of the things that we hear all the time is this argument that the federal government is not doing their job. the federal government is often defined as either the president or the congress. in arizona we have a congressional delegation. in texas they have a congressional delegation. in new jersey they have a congressional delegation. why haven't they done anything? you know, are we -- are they using bills like sb1070 and other immigration laws to say, well, we're kicking the can down the road, because we don't have to do anything as long as states might do their own deal.

>> i'd like to start on that one. the federal government makes out like a bandit -- i'm going to say this again -- on increased gdp, on taxes collected, on all kinds of things. the states that border mexico suffer dramatically, particularly the counties that border mexico. so there are a different set of incentives. we have to deal with that kind of reality. so every once in a while i'll take one -- i'll take health care costs as an example. when you get a humanitarian waiver at a port of entry to come in, you get permission from the federal government that says you can go anywhere and achieve and get your unreimbursed health compare. no hospital. doesn't matter if it's city, county, state, federal, whatever it is, whatever third-party system they noshlally use, it's unreimbursed. the counties bury all the costs, and that's simply not right.

every once in a while senator kyl or somebody introduces a bill, so we want reimbursements. they write down bad debts. we need to be much more imagine active and say, okay, this is the federal government granting this benefit. therefore, every time that waiver is written, then the bill gets sent to the federal government. just share the joys and cost of human migration. you don't have to change all of the things that we want to see here today. you can change a whole bunch of things to quiet the political noise associated with migration. that's just one example. the incentives are very, very different. all the other senators say that's real nice, jon kyl, but there's 49 of us and one of you. we're not voting for that this year. there ought to come fundamental questions to be addressed. these are value-driven questions. what kind of people are we going to be? how do we seek order?

how do we share joys and costs? there are ways to do that. >> to dove tail off that is policy approaches haven't addressed in a way that effectively communicates the problems that have been identified and the solutions to be applieapplied. up until now the rhetoric has crowded out real approaches that result in real solutions. i think we've -- we as a nation when we deal with major issues such as this, we're talking about social security and medicare and health care, it takes a while to sink in and resonate at a level that the american people nand the appropriate level of government that something happens. i think we're getting there. >> i think there's unrealized political potential here. before the mid-1990s, immigration went to a handful of states. those governors could go and congressional delegations go to washington and say, you know,

all the benefits accrued to the nation as a whole, but we're paying all the costs here locally. we need revenue sharing formula to take account of the fact we're educating and integrating all these imt grants and their kids. they wouldn't find them any partners, but now immigration is a 350-state phenomenon and lots of places that never had immigrants before have large immigrant populations and face the same costs. so there's a lot more potential for coalition building now than tlfts in the past. the problem is that politics have tended to take the cheap and eedzy way out, which is demonize the immigrants and not deal with the structural problem. everyone agrees want benefits accrued to the nation as a whole but the costs are paid for locally. it's for beneficial to stir up feelings about immigrants and illegals. >> okay. we will let that be the last

word. i want to thank you for attending. yes, you can applaud. [ applause ] david, we have their e-mail addresses, so we will make the presentations available to all of you. we also post on the arizona employers for immigration reform, azir.org website. thank you for your attendance. we have extra lunches and soda. please feel free to take them with you.

newt gingrich announced the end of his cam taken today. he won only two contests in south carolina and his home state of georgia. his campaign is reported being more than $4 million in debt, so the campaign is suspended so he can continue to raise money to it retire that debt. you can see his comments at 8:00 eastern on c-span. while congress is on break this week, c-span2 and 3 are features special primetime programming. c-span2 has memoirs of soldiers that served in iraq and afghanistan including the story of an ill-fated unit in afghanistan and the biography of the most lettal sniper in military history. that begins at 8:00 eastern. also tonight here on c-span3, american history tv primetime

looks at two battles of the civil war beginning at 8:00 eastern with the battle of fort donalds donaldson. this marks the 1509th an verary of the civil war in year. now the white house drug director of challenges in the national drug control strategy released on april 17th. it emphasizing treating substance abuse disorders as a chronic disease. from the center of american progress in washington, this is about 40 minutes. >> thank you. good morning. welcome to the center for american progress. i'm glad you could join us today for this important and timely event. i'm pleased to welcome to the center gil, who is the director

of the office of national drug control policy at the white house. gil is here to talk about the administration's drug strategy announced a few weeks ago. we look forward to hear his perspective on these important issues and how he has transformed the policy of the obama administration. 40 years ago president nixon declared that drug abuse was public enemy number one. that declaration launched one of the costliest wars in our nation's history. for decades the united states treated drug abuse as a moral failu failure. instead of building treatment centers we built jails, and as a result the u.s. has the highest rate of incars nation in the world at a dear cost to state and federal budgets and at a time when those budgets are very constrained.

the human cost of this so-called war on drugs is more tragic still. to the families and communities whose loved ones haven't gotten the support they need to overcome substance abuse. it's so important that we have gil who has a long history in law enforcement championing the message ensuring we address this fl a public health perspective. as gil has said, the administration recognizes we're not powerless against the challenge of substance abuse. people can recover and millions are in recovery. the administration has laid out a strategy to speed up and improve that process, which gil is here to discuss. we welcome the changes that reduce the sentencing between crack and powdered cocaine and shifts in funding that saw more money spent in the last three years on drug education and treatment than on drug law enforcement. i think that is a critical, important issue. over several decades progressives have been arguing

for a rebalancing in the so-called war on drugs and making it more of a public health issue. we've really seen that work championed by gil. so it is my honor to introduce gil who knows how critical this effort s. he brought 37 years of law enforcement drug policy experience to the ndpc. most recently he served as nine years as the chief of police for seattle, washington where he helped reduce crime to it's lowest poemth point in 40e years. he's a champion of innovative strategies to reduce crime working within communities dealing with the leadership of different xhunlts to ensure that police are working in partnership with communities to reduce crime. he was elected twice to be president of the major city chiefs which comprises the largest city and county law enforcement agencies in the united states and canada. so we're very excited to have gil here today to talk about new strategies to address this

important issue. dprz >> good morning, everyone. it's nice to see you. it's nice to be here at athe center. first, let me thank the executive director and her staff for making this happen. it's really a good opportunity for us to talk about the recently released national drug control strategy. let me start by sharing a concern that i think many of us in public health and safety community share about drug policy. over the past few years this public debate lunching between two extreme views. let me characterize those views for you. on the one side we have a vocal, well-funded advocates who insist that drug legalization is a silver bullet for addressing our

nation's drug problem. then we have the other side. on the other side of the debate are those who insist that a law enforcement only war on drugs approach, the one that was just mentioned, is the way to create a drug-free society. you know, if only we could spend more money on prisons and enforcement and increase arrests and the seizures of drugs that logic goes, the drug problem will at some point just go away. the obama administration strongly believes that neither of these approaches is humane. they're not compassionate. not realistic. probably most importantly they are not grounded in science. the approaches also do not acknowledge the complexity of our nation's drug problem or reflect what science has shown us over the past two decades. whenever you put the answer to a complex problem on a bumper sticker, you know you probably

don't have much of an answer. that's why two weeks ago we leased the national drug control policy, and it pursues a third way. for our nation to approach drug control. this is a 21st century approach to drug policy. it's progressive and innovative and evidence-based and represents what we believe is a way ahead for drug policy. you know, along these lines i was very pleased sunday night to see the "60 minutes" featuring dr. nora and her staff at the national institute of drug abuse. the piece showed the institute's ground-breaking work in the science of addiction, and reflecting what we have learned about the disease and highlighted the future direction of drug policy. you know, in fact, nida, the national institute of drug abuse, is the source of 85% of the world's research on drug abuse. we could not be more proud of that. i recommend that all of you take a few minutes to watch that "60

minutes" piece. if you haven't already, that link to the video is on our twitter feed at omdcp. let me take a moment to state the extent of the challenges and why our policies, i think, kooncould not come at a more important time. today more americans die from drug-induced deaths than any other form of injury death including traffic crashes and gunshot wounds. while making matters worse, drug use among young people is increasing while youth perceptions of harm regarding some drugs are weakening. apart from its impact on the health and safety, our nation's drug problem always continues to place obstacles in the way of our economic prosperity. just last year the department of justice released data that the health, workplace and criminal justice costs of drug abuse to american society totaled $193

billion. that's using 2007 data. contributing to the immense cost are the millions of drug offenders who are under the supervision of the criminal justice system. for states and localities across the country, which is where the vast majority of this work against done, it is costs of managing this system have grown significantly. these facts underscore the need for a different approach to drug policy. one that creates drug addiction as a disease and promotes a criminal justice system where drug-related crime is addressed in a fair and equitable manner for every american. simply put, myself and many of my colleagues, in fact, almost aum of my colleagues say one thing repeatedly. we cannot address our way out of the drug policy. we're trying to learn to recognize the signs of drug addiction and intervene before it becomes a criminal justice

issue. before i talk about the approach, let me take a moment to give you some facts just about how we have accomplished these changes in reforming the system and trying to restore, trying to restore balance to a drug policy over the last three years. well, in 2010 president obama signed the fair sentencing act into law. it was the first time in four decades that a mandatory minimum drug law has been rolled back. this was an important and long overdue criminal justice reform, and it dramatically reduced the 100:1 disparity between sentences for powder and crack cocaine that disproportionately affected minorities. during the past three years we spent 31 doll $31 billion to su programs. to break the cycle of drug use and crime, we have worked to

divert nonviolent drug offenders into treatment instead of jail through drug courts. there are now more than 2600 of these specialized courts across the nation diverting 120,000 people annually. when i had the great opportunity to work for attorney general janet reno and we had one drug court in miami, to see the expansion to 2600 is amazing. to see as an executive member of the drug court program in seattle, the changes that are made was absolutely heartening whenever someone tells me that government doesn't listen or that government -- taxpayer dollars are being wasted in this area, i just ask them to attend a drug court graduation. if you're not moved and motivated by that graduation, well, you have a pretty cold heart. during the past three years we've spent this money to increase a number of programs

that support education and treatment. to break the cycle of drug and use in crime, we have put into place policies and procedures that actually help to intervene early. we provided more than $370 million in funding through drug-free community programs to more than 700 local coalitions made up of organizers working to prevent drug use among teens. those grassroots efforts are important. those grassroots efforts are backed up with evaluation, and they're backed up with research that shows that young people that have been exposed to those programs are more resistant to using drugs than those who haven't. recognizing drug use is a public health issue, the obama administration released the first ever national strategy which calls for eliminating health disparities and increasing education.

to help lift the stigma associated with drug addiction and the support that millions of americans who are in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, we created the first ever recovery branch here at the white house office of national drug control policy. internationally we've devoted more than $1.2 billion during the last three years to alternative development programs. they provide economic incentives and they have increased security to farmers in drug-producing regions in our hemisphere. three years ago the obama administration became the first in history to lift the long-standing federal ban on needle exchange programs. unfortunately, congress has reinstated that ban through a policy rider on an appropriations bill. the strategy we just released builds on this record of drug policy reform, and it outlines more than 100 specific actions that will realign the day we

deal with our nation's drug problem. i encourage you to take a look at that document and the action items which spread across all of the continuum of drug policy and the complexities dealing with it. for example, our policies include support for programs like screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment. that works to medicalize our approach to the drug problem by helping health institutions recognize the signs and symptoms of drug addiction early. i wouldn't be a good federal employee if i couldn't make an acronym out of that. so esprt is in fact that acronym. most people in the country see a health care professional about once a year. in that confidential setting, hopefully that health care professional through esprt and other programs will have the tools and information they need to make an accurate assessment regardless of why na person is visiting that health care

professional to make that accurate assessment of the drug abuse problem. we know if they ask the right questions and people trust their health care professionals, perhaps an intervention can be started early and we know that early interventions can work better and they're more cost-effective. so these are important issues around the health care area. well, the strategy we just released builds on the record of drug policy reform. it outlines a number of these important actions, and it's really important to recognize when i went through this entire list how it helps us to frame and understand the complexity of the drug problem. let me give you another what i think is an xlenexcellent examp and that's the affordable care act. it's revolutionary.