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okay. Mhm. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hello. I'm Lawton Child's And this is the Lawton Child's update I program This month is about all kinds of young people. Some of our Children are having their lives ruined by drugs to help protect all of them and all of us.

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Congress has debated a major drug bill, and we'll explore the reasons for that bill and what's in it. We'll also pause a moment to examine the sacrifice of thousands of young people who have given their lives in this nation's defense. But we'll begin with a look at the youngest of the young, the babies of Florida and the nation and what's being done to give them a running start on life.

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Way back in the sweatshop days of old England, Charles Dickens wrote that for every baby born in the world is finer than the one before, that was an ironic statement, since conditions were so hard in those days nearly 150 years ago. What's really ironic is that today, with all of our modern medical advances, the United States ranked 16th among nations in the world and infant mortality 16.

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That puts us on a par with Singapore. It also means that there are 15 other countries where babies have a better chance of celebrating their first birthday than they do in the United States. How can that happen in a country with as much medical genius as our own?

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That's the question I want answered. When I called a hearing of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, we held a hearing at Providence Hospital in Washington, D. C. It followed similar hearings in Florida. I've heard from approximately 25 witnesses. Those witnesses included healthcare delivery specialist elected public officials, health and medical officials and individuals who experience some of the problems of trying to get proper medical care during pregnancy.

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I've also in my state visited clinics and hospitals in Tampa and Jacksonville and Tallahassee in Fort Myers in Fort Lauderdale, trying to see what our state and local governments are providing in the way of services for pregnant women and their babies. Many of these places have important and implemented programs that are very important, which make some inroads towards progress on this issue.

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But there is still very much to do. Other states are not making as much progress as Florida. That's why I introduced legislation calling for a national commission to prevent infant mortality. First of all, let me assure everyone that I don't see the commission that will be created by this law as one to issue a report and that be it.

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I agree with those critics who say that study commissions that tell us the obvious are not worth the ink that it takes to create s 12 09 What it would do is create a commission with a clear mandate for legislative and administrative action designed to vigorously attack the problem before us.

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The commission would coordinate and focus the efforts of many groups that have been working in this venue for many years. Also, a commission created by the Congress will be a focal point for action that cannot be easily ignored. The National commission also will force individual states to look at their own programs.

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We want to encourage governors and state legislators, city and county commissions to generate programs to work with high risk pregnant women, particularly those who are poor. But many state and local leaders, like some on the national level, must first be convinced of the tax monies. Such programs would save.

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This is cost effective. We know that we know that for every dollar we spend in the, uh care prevention care, especially at the front end of these services and giving the screening to these mothers and all, it saves us better than $3 probably up to 10.

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If we have these infants that go in or more, and yet county commissions will not fund the service is adequately and these things because they haven't been convinced I see this. But if state and local leaders are not convinced, what about the national government that's supposed to be leading?

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What about the bureaucracy? And that when someone, Dr James Mason is the acting director for health in the federal Department of Health and Human Services? And while the department's job is to help lower the death rate of infants in America, Dr Mason and the administration opposed the commission idea undertaking yet another commission to study the prevention of infant mortality as proposed by S 1 to 9 seems in the light of what's already happened to be of little value.

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Therefore, the administration opposes this legislation because we feel that proposed legislation is unnecessary. What we need to do is decide at all levels federal, state, local that infant mortality is unacceptable. The gap between blacks and white infant mortality is unacceptable, and then we need to proceed and without blaming the victim without putting blame on any area of government, we need to get going with those that information that we already know is available.

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And it isn't until we trickle down to the local level with knowledge that you and I already have that we're going to get progress in doing something about this trickle down to the local level. Doctor, You said in statements before that you think this is a problem with the state and local governments that they ought to be solved.

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I think it's a problem of all of us. But we have seen in this nation that when the community decided that we find this problem unacceptable, and then when they organize themselves and it's already been said, it isn't just a matter of resources. It's a matter of deciding what's going on is unacceptable and then organizing to do something about the problem.

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Do you have enough tertiary care? Have you decided it's unacceptable? Yes, we have, and What are you doing about it? What have you been doing about it? What is your agency been doing about it last year? The year before that. How much money? How much people personnel are we putting into this problem?

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I don't sense that kind of commitment I haven't sensed at all. That's one reason that I thought we needed something to organize it. It's often frustrating dealing with bureaucrats. It's as if they see problems as charts or graphs, but not as real people dealing with real dilemmas.

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Perhaps I'm railing out at you, doctor, and you might not be the person I should be railing out behind you. I don't know who you had to clear your statement with. What you had to do on that and your personal concern and the concern of your team for trying to provide good care may be something that is very strong.

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But I'll have to say from my education, which is sort of late to this field of understanding. I'm ashamed of our country. I'm ashamed of the country that has the resources and is blessed with all of God's gift that this country has has a record so abysmal in this area, and and I'm impatient to see that we do something about it.

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And by gosh, I'm gonna see with other people that are that are concerned about this, too, that we do do something about it, and I can't stand When I hear someone say this is a very complicated problem, It's going to take a long time to get to the bottom of it when we know that we don't need to study low birth weight.

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We know what the principal offender is, and we know we're giving some kind of education and a little nutritional help. We can do so much about low birth weight when I go to Liberty City, and I see the death rate in that city, uh, among blacks in that portion of Miami is one of the highest that we have in the state.

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Uh, it's, uh it's double more than double what the state averages. And yet we've got one lady there that set up a program, and she has reduced it to two per 1000 uh, and her program, and she's got very few bucks to do it. But she's educating those, uh, those young black girls.

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She's telling them what they need to eat. She's telling them they don't need to know that they shouldn't smoke, that they shouldn't drink. She's giving them a screening process, and so she's gone from more than double the national average and the rest of the city down to two.

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Uh, it's a cost effective proven. It works, it can be done. And the question is, how in the world do we get that coordinated across the country? I think the national government has got to play a role in that. I don't think we can stick our heads in the sand and say, That's a state and local problems I agree with you Totally.

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Uh, I think what we're disagreeing about is is the process not the outcomes, and And that when someone becomes concerned at the local level and guess things organized, then things really happen. You're absolutely right. Well, but you say in your statement we need to be about the task of of acting on what we know.

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Doctor, I don't think we're about that task. I don't think anybody is in charge or anybody is about that. Tell me, is there a coordinated plan now to get this information out to bring together the state and local governments to convince those people that this is cost effective as weather well as humane, that it makes sense for us as a country that we don't want to be creating this morbidity problem out there, where we have to care for these Children that survive now the machines that we can put them on for the 1st 28 days.

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But then we care for those, take care of those Children and put them in the welfare system and the other systems and pay for the rest of their life. This makes sense. I can sell it to the the rank is conservative or the the bleeding heart liberal because it makes sense for both sides.

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But there is no attack plan. I'm afraid you can't help but get impatient when you see people in our own state working so hard. While there's so much indecision in the federal bureaucracy, the point is we've just got to do the job. The top goal is to save Children and to start them off in life with an even chance.

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So the charge This spring I addressed the National Conference of American Academy of Pediatrics they met in Orlando. Pediatricians are convinced that the more care you provide early, the more money you save later. On average, the cost of prenatal care in a normal pregnancy is less than $1000 poor mother and infant.

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But the cost of intensive care for low birth weight infants can be as much as $120,000. A program in Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers cost $1450. That covers the full nine months. Care for high risk pregnant women? Strangely enough, that's the cost for just one day in the intensive care neonatal unit.

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Since a lot of women in this program on welfare, you can see how much money could be saved if we invested in prenatal care. The Mailman Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami is another institution in Florida working to reduce the infant mortality rate. Public seminars like this one are helping they bring hospital staff and members of the community together in an effort to educate high risk pregnant women.

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Word after the seminar, I toured the center with some of the dedicated men and women who worked there. The frustrating part of their work is that many of these birth defects could have been prevented if the mother had only known how to take care of herself.

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The Florida experiences being discovered elsewhere at Providence Hospital. Like Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers, a special program guides low income mothers from conception to birth. It provides counselors who teach the prospective mothers good nutrition habits and how to avoid drugs, alcohol and tobacco. The women also come to the clinic for regular examinations by nurses and doctors.

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An outreach program is aimed at pregnant teenagers, whose poor health habits make them twice as likely as women in their twenties to have low birth weight babies. Low birth weight babies are those weighing less than £5.5. This program also tries to bring in low income black women whose babies are twice as likely to die before their first birthday as Children born to whites.

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The infant mortality rate in America is 10.6. That means that nearly 11 out of every 1000 babies die before their first birthday. Sadly, the rate is even higher in the southeastern states, but it's not just numbers we're talking about. We're talking about the lives and the health of real Children, our Children.

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And our goal isn't much different from what Dickens said. At the very least, we should do all we can so that every baby in the United States has a better chance than the one born before. That was the idea of my commission on infant mortality, an idea the Senate has endorsed as it passed the bill just before the recess last month.

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I'll be right back after this joyride. I'm out of the crash dummy business for good. But Vince, it's a great job. They'd have to pry me away from it. Anybody home? Larry? They do pry you away from Oh, yeah. For years I've been eating steering wheels for what?

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To prove how safety belts save lives. But thousands die every year in car accidents because they don't buckle up. Vince, we're dummies. We don't wear safety belts. Larry, you really know how to hurt a guy. Hit it. You could learn a lot from a dummy. Buckle your safety belt.

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Congress has just passed the most sweeping and far reaching anti drug bill in the history of our country. The real push behind this bill, The reason why it was passed by Congress in so short a time was the public outcry over crack cocaine. Crack has permeated every economic and social level in our country, and it spread its horrors to every neighborhood.

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I introduced legislation to deal with crack cocaine four months ago. Two months later, I was appointed co chairman of a task force to draft a comprehensive drug package. Senators Hal Heflin of Alabama, Dennis DeConcini of Arizona served on my task force, and they also serve on the Judiciary Committee.

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They've been working on the drug issue. From that perspective. Senator Heflin was chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court until his election to the Senate eight years ago. He asked me to join with him and Dennis DeConcini after the bill's passage to talk about its likely effect.

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The new penalties for crack cocaine dealers are among the bills. Most publicized features the ability to tighten up the laws that we were able to do in this bill, especially for crack cocaine, uh, and and to have those mandatory sentences, I know that's something that that you've been pushing for and saying that we had to have that, Uh, and reducing the amount down to 5 g is all it would be necessary for you to have in your possession.

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I think that's going to be very helpful. And I think doubling the penalties if they have a minor involved 40 years for the first offense in life imprisonment in the second offense. If they have a minor, that's again, something that I know that that you've been pushing.

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And I think that I think that helps us build well. We're pleased with those provisions as well as many other provisions in it. And there's a provision relative to education in this. The casino you were interested in this would you give us sort of a very important.

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We have about 300 million correct Megalodon in that neighborhood of education and rehabilitation money in this bill, and a lot of it goes to Senator Childs is the leader of the Working Group of Democrats, which you and I worked with him in not just focusing in interdiction.

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I've spent a good part of my career up here trying to stop the drugs coming across the border and stiffen the penalties with you on the Judiciary Committee. Lawton and others have done that also. But they also have moved, and I've joined him. I'm glad to do it.

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Something on educating the public. Just how bad is it when you put all this foreign stuff substance into your body and how dangerous it is and to get people to start thinking about it? It's no longer just young people we're talking about. We're talking about across society.

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And what do you do once you get hooked? Or once you think you're hooked mentally or physically to get over it? And that is an important part of this bill. Assistance for local law enforcement agencies is another key provisions of the new drug bill. You're right.

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A lot of the local law enforcement don't have the capabilities. They don't have the communication, uh, capabilities to communicate between the federal and local law enforcement and to have voice privacy. So the drug dealers can't listen in to what they're what they're doing. They don't have the laboratories or the capabilities of equipment to chase airplanes or automobiles or boats from coming in.

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That's what the federal government can be involved in and That's what we gotta do to help the states like Loughton said. Two. In the education area, we're just not handing out money here. We're saying You've got to come up with the program and here's a council to work with and we're gonna listen to you.

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The federal government's gonna listen for the first time because you know what's happening on the Arizona border. You know what's happening? The Mobile corridor better than these federal agents because you live there and you know it were also requiring that they put up some new dollars of their money to match this.

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About 25% of this money will need to be matched with their new dollars. So again, only if they're ready to make an extra effort to receive the federal money will they receive it. And I think that's beneficial. We've got an amendment on this bill that I think will be helpful, and that is an amendment that says, if state and local law enforcement officials have helped the I.

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R. S in making a seizure of money, you know, in most many of these drug cases, the way we actually come down on these people is is through. Uh, I r s seizing money, uh, through the tax, the fact that they haven't declared any of this this money for tax the way it is now.

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State and local law enforcement can help make that case, spend a lot of their meager resources in doing that, and they get nothing in return. And yet we're encouraging people to help the RS make its collection all the time. This amendment says they can share up to the amount of their expenses if they've been an assistance in making that case.

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And I think this will encourage the state and local law enforcement people again to participate in these drug cases because it will help them. They will know that they will be able to get this this confiscated money to a lot. My recollection in this bill does not just go back into the treasury.

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It is set aside, it's not for partial part of this environment. And we took the sealing off the four. We had a we had a forfeiture. Provisions were using some of the money, but we had such a tight sealing that most of it was going to also liberalized the ability to forfeit your both cash and airplanes and equipment, as I understand.

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Absolutely. And I think that could go a long ways into helping paying for this bill. Uh, with the encouragement that we have for state and local governments, with the extra assets that we have, we're going to seize more, and that money is now going to be able to be used in the fight.

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So we're gonna put the druggies assets and monies back to work against how we worked on that bill and that forfeiture Bill and Judiciary Committee. We passed it out the committee, thanks to your leadership there, and it finally got incorporated into this drug package, it probably would have been the only way we would have got it through the Senate and through the Congress during this period of time.

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A big concern in Florida is the lack of prison space for drug dealers. This bill earmarks over a billion dollars over the next three years for new prison construction. Well, the one other feature, I think, Hal, is that we're doing something to increase prison space in this drug.

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Good point and our problem in Florida and I have since you all have the same one were under these court mandated orders. Under the federal courts, if we put a drug dealer in the front door, we let a drug dealer out the back door, you know, because of this court thing.

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So I think again you have to face up that costs money. And you've got to say we're going to build a space and the bad guys, we're gonna lock up and we're going to keep their, uh and And the bill actually increases the prison space. And it also says, Mr President, look at our abandoned basis and are closed military basis and give us an inventory of one of those we can open up for the stockades that are in them so we can lock up some of these guys and those stockades.

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The drug war has many fronts. It involves education. It involves law enforcement, and it means treatment for drug victims. It's something Senator Heflin asked me about. What does the bill do to provide for treatment of drug users with the idea of getting them off drugs and helping them rebuild, rehabilitate themselves?

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Well again, it's Dennis's pointing out there's about $150 million available for treatment like about 150 available for education. That money will be grants to the states to be used in their rehabilitation and treatment programs. Uh, this is going to be a godsend to Florida. We've got a 500 bed waiting list right now for crack cocaine, and, uh and this is just the tip of the iceberg, because we know if when we look at the at the cocaine hotlines that there are a lot of them out there now that they know they need treatment and are trying to find out about it.

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And you basically have to have these people, uh, in a situation of confinement, at least for a period of time, as you're detoxifying as you try to get them. Under this treatment, there is such a strong addiction to crack. When I talk to people in the treatment facilities, they say, for goodness sakes, and and a lot of them have been put in, there is an alternative to going to jail, and they're saying this is the best thing that happened to me.

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If I was out right now, I would be going to get some crack. As much as I know what it's done to me, I cannot resist that urge. Uh, I've got to have further help. So the period of time in this, uh and it's expensive, its costly.

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Uh, but it's something that we're having to go through with, and I think this treatment will help. We're trying to find out how we can do more of it on an outpatient basis, and we really have to do that because of cost. Uh, but I think the the funds in this bill are certainly going to help the state Enactment of this package is a major stride towards ridding our streets in our communities of drugs.

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In a moment, a tribute to our nation's veterans and two and three. Could you save a life if you had to? Two. Tens of thousands of all heart attack deaths could be prevented if everybody knew Red Cross CPR. All right. That's why the Red Cross offers classes in this life saving procedure not just at their local chapters, but right where you were learn how to save a life called the American Red Cross.

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Washington is a city of tributes to the men and women who have one and kept our freedom. John Paul Jones, the naval hero of the American Revolution, is here. We honor the CBS, the men of the Construction Battalion, who gave such gallant service in the Pacific during World War Two.

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Virtually next door is to the White House is an 80 ft column. It honors the 10,000 soldiers of the first division who gave their lives in World War One and World War Two and not far away as a tribute to the more than 17,000 members of the Army Second Division who died in our two world wars.

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In their separate ways, these and other tributes to heroism are just as majestic as the one to George Washington, the founder first in war, first in peace or to Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. Or to Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence. These are national symbols of our commitment to liberty.

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America's newest tribute, the Vietnam Memorial, quickly became the most visited memorial in Washington after its unveiling two years ago. Four million people will visit it this year. Many of the visitors or relatives or friends of the 1939 Floridians whose names are cut into these stones. They're among the 58,113 Americans who died in Vietnam.

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Think of that sacrifice 58,000 people. That's like having a city the size of Lakeland wiped out from the summer of 1964 to January of 1973. A service last year saw a rose for each of our slain warriors woven into a 25 by 10 ft flag and draped across the tablets.

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Each year on Veterans Day, we remember those who have fallen in the service of freedom. The nation's official Veterans Day ceremony is held here across the Potomac River from Washington. This is Arlington National Cemetery, where more than 200,000 Americans from all of our wars are buried.

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A reef laying ceremony takes place at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the exact time when the World War One armistice was signed. This is the Tomb of the Unknowns, the remains of unknown soldiers from World Wars one and two, the Korean conflict and Vietnam rest here.

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It's guarded every day, 24 hours a day by the army's old guard to pay tribute to their fallen comrades in this solemn patrol. All right, what's really being honored here? Or the thousands of brave Americans who died without a gravestone? No one will ever know who rests here, but none of us will ever forget why they die around the nation.

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There are more than 100 veterans cemeteries. Three of them are in Florida. And 1/4 1 in the with the Coochie State Forest in Sumpter County is due to open in 1988. More than 600,000 Floridians have answered the call to arms for more war one to Vietnam.

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15,000 of them have died. And today, more than 1.4 million veterans live in Florida. To them and to all the other men and women who have fought for our freedom, we all say thank you. That's our report. I hope you'll join me again next time for the Lawton Child's update.

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Yeah, Yeah, I do too. Mhm. You? Yeah. Yeah,