Respondents to such surveys during that period typically rated crime and AIDS as the number two and number three problems-both of which are associated with drugs. After President George Bush's televised address in September 1989 (his first as President) on a national drug control strategy, 64 percent of respondents to a New York Times-CBS poll rated drugs as the nation's number one problem ( New York Times, 1990). The 1980s saw the emergence of cocaine, particularly crack cocaine, as a new focus of concern. In 1971, President Nixon called drugs, especially heroin, America's public enemy number one. It is a serious and many-faceted problem" (President's Advisory Commission on Narcotics and Drug Abuse, 1963:1). In the early 1960s, a presidential commission stated: ''The concern and the distress of the American people over the national problem of drug abuse is expressed every day in the newspapers, the magazines, scientific journals, public forums and in the home. The use of illegal drugs has been a long-standing problem in American society, a problem that has taken on a particular urgency in the last 30 years.
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