The Nation - News from June 10, 1988

President Reagan said that America’s problem with drug use in the workplace stems in part from students of the 1960s and 1970s who experimented with illegal substances and retained their “destructive drug habits.” “In many ways, our country is still paying for the erosion of our values and the decline in self-responsibility that occurred in the 1960s and the 1970s,” Reagan said in a speech to corporate leaders trying to drive drugs from the work site. “The students of that period who used illegal drugs in high school or college have, in many cases, taken their destructive drug habits with them into their places of employment.” The President said that what was once defended as a victimless crime “is costing America billions of dollars a year in lost productivity.” In his speech to the National Conference on a Drug-Free Workplace, Reagan did not advance any new steps to combat drug abuse.