Bush Hails TV’s Role in Drug War : Cites Cooperation of Cartoon Characters in L.A. Speech

President Bush--acknowledging the historic moment that is bringing together, for the first time, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles--today praised the efforts of the television industry to use the power of their medium to bring about a change in America’s attitudes toward drug abuse.

In a speech that was interrupted briefly when two members of the audience shouted out complaints that the Bush Administration is not doing enough to fight AIDS, the President said, “The days when popular culture glorified and glamorized drug use are fading fast.”

And so it was that Bush found himself in a discourse on the merits of a Saturday-morning cartoon show scheduled for broadcast April 21 and aimed at the massive audience of youngsters who watch such celluloid stars as Alf, the Chipmunks and Garfield each week.

“Twenty million kids. Impressionable. Just asking to be entertained. And let me tell you something: Those 20 million kids in front of their TVs on any Saturday morning are the same target audience for every schoolyard drug pusher, five days a week,” Bush said.

“Never before in cartoon history have Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck worked with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Muppets, the Smurfs and all the other stars of the cartoon world,” he added, offering praise for Roy Disney, the executive producer and vice chairman of the board of directors of Walt Disney Co. “for keeping all those egos in line.”

The theme of drug abuse has been worked into Bush’s message throughout his public appearances on a four-day visit to Southern California.

At midday--before flying to Palm Springs for a summit meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu--Bush once again worked the entertainment world into a speech, telling thousands of schoolchildren at an anti-drug abuse rally at the Santa Ana Bowl in Orange County:

“We’ll win the war on drugs because you have what a longtime resident of Orange County, John Wayne, had--true grit.”

Urging the youngsters to shun drugs, Bush quoted the late cowboy actor, and said: “ ‘There’s right and there’s wrong. You gotta do one or the other. You do the one and you’re living. You do the other and you may be walking around but you’re as dead as a beaver hat.’ ”

In his early morning speech to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Bush told the gathering of television producers, directors, writers and performers that “drugs and success simply do not mix.”