JUDY COLLINS TALKS ABOUT ADDICTION

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) Judy Collins says just saying "no" is just
not that easy.

The folk singer says the famous anti-drug campaign wrongly looks at
drug and alcohol addiction as a character flaw.

"It assumes that those who are locked up because of it just didn't
have the willpower to carry out their plan for the evening," Collins
told The Tennessean in an interview published Sunday.

She said she knows from personal experience that addiction is not a
choice and is often inherited.

Collins, a former alcoholic who has abstained from liquor and drugs
for 20 years, said she began drinking as a 15-year-old to mask the
shame and pain that her own father's alcoholism caused her.

Her only son, Clark, a drug addict and an alcoholic, killed himself in
1992.

"They have an illness," she said of addicts. "My desire is to talk
about the public education about this disease and about how far short
it falls."