Betty Ford claims war on drugs needs education, treatment

By LARRY GERBER
AP
YORBA LINDA Doctors and teachers might win a war on drugs, but
police probably won't, Betty Ford said Monday.

The former first lady, whose name has become a synonym for facing up to
addiction and other health problems, got a standing ovation at the
Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace.

Wearing a light plaid outfit and looking healthy, Ford planted a
rosebush after her speech in a garden near the graves of the late
president and Pat Nixon.

Since it opened in 1982, more than 30,000 people have sought drug and
alcohol treatment at the Betty Ford Center she chairs near Palm Springs,
Ford said.

Although she didn't say so, the clinic's patient list sounds like a
Who's Who of American celebrity. Athletes, politicians, film and
television stars and many of their bosses have checked in to change their
lives.

Government spending to curb drug abuse has been skewed in the wrong
direction, Ford suggested in response to a question.

Sixty percent of funds go into interdiction and 40 percent go to
education and treatment, she said, when it should be the other way
around.

"Unless we educate and treat the drug users so there is not the demand
for the drugs, we're still going to have that problem," she said. "It is
just going to compound the number of drug users that we have."

She had kind words for an Orange County program for firsttime
nonviolent drug convicts. Most of them probably belong in counseling, not
in jail, Ford said.

"There's a very good opportunity to treat these persons and have them
become very solid citizens and turn their lives around," she said. It was
her first speech at the Nixon Library.

The Fords succeeded the Nixons in the White House, and most of her talk
recalled their children, grandchildren and the Ford White House years
from 1974 to 1976.

In 1973, she said, she was looking forward to her husband's retirement
after 25 years as a Michigan congressman. A year later Gerald Ford had
been appointed vice president, Nixon had resigned in disgrace, and
Gerald Ford had moved into the nation's highest office.

"Certainly I said and did some things that no other first lady had done,"
Betty Ford said.

That included talking publicly about her mastectomy.

"It got hundreds of thousands of women to their clinics for breast

cancer exams,' she said. "I am always proud of that frank discussion of
breast cancer."

In 1978, she went into treatment for painkillers and alcohol. Mterward,
she talked about it and wrote a book, "Betty: A Glad Awakening."

"I'm so glad it had the same miraculous effect" on others, she said.

About 400 guests paid up to $25 for the lecture. Betty Ford was also
guest at a $50perplate luncheon in the foyer of the private museum.