JON KUMIN: Thanks very much. I'm Jon Kumin and this is a joint World Affairs Council and Commonwealth North luncheon meeting. I tossed and I lost, so I got to handle the question and answer period. As this is not a very large group compared to some other meetings we sometimes have and as we thought it would be interesting to use the standard World Affairs Council format of just open questions from the audience instead of submitting written questions, which is the normal Commonwealth North format. I would like to, before we get started, make a couple points. One of which it is my understanding that you have a flight to catch so we've got about probably 20 minutes or so to do this.

And so in order to get as much interesting dialogue and interchange between the audience and our guest, as possible, I would ask that questions please be as succinct as possible so that we can really hear from our speaker. This is an opportunity to pick his brain a little bit and ask some good questions. So with that I'd like to turn it open to the audience and see who would like to break the ice and start with a question. Okay, please.

BILL NOLL: My name is Bill Noll. You covered it already, but would you say again how many states are being approached to this kind of advertising campaign we're seeing here at this time? And has this happened before?

SCOTT BURNS: Yeah. Last year they went into Missouri, they went into Arizona, they went to Nevada, they went to Ohio. And same type of advertising campaigns. And as I said, it was a bad year for them. The hard part is when they're funded at such a great level people wonder well, who funds the other side? The answer is how many of you in the room here have given money to support Proposition 2? I doubt that no one here is using money to pass this. It all comes from Washington, D. C., for Mr. Soros and Mr. Lewis and Mr. Sperling (ph). And it's difficult to get people to oppose it. So it has to be kind of a grass roots and it has to be common sense and not whoever has the biggest megaphone wins.

MR. KUMIN: Thank you. Other questions? Yes?

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Where are they.....

MR. KUMIN: It would be good if.....

MR. BURNS: Oh, he wants to know where they're at this year. This year they are in Oregon for six pounds, they are in Missouri again, and they -- they were in Nevada but they didn't get the last box of signatures in under the deadline so that one is being litigated. And I believe in Vermont.

MR. KUMIN: Thank you. If you could just please stand, state your name and then ask the question. Thank you very much.

GREG MANANA: Good afternoon. Greg Manana (ph). My question relates to a legal drug. One that is really grabbed by society and it's the cost of tobacco. When you look at the cost to the society for the health care of those who consume it and are under insured. What kind of push back of the tobacco lobby is being done in Washington that we recently had legislation that was going to tighten regulation on the tobacco industry, and it seemed to slip through without it?

MR. BURNS: My understanding is that there is still a great effort to do the tobacco buy out. So once and for all where all the farmers are not out of the tobacco business. I think it's at about a $10 billion fiscal note right now. And that has to be done I think before there is more control. But if we could do, in the illegal drug and in the alcohol field what successes have occurred in tobacco, we'd be very happy. This country turned around in terms of time of abating addictions and social problems almost over night with respect to tobacco. The ads that came out, the health effect. Doctors talking about it, people talking about it that -- if you're as old as I am you remember when your parents in the '40s and the '50s and the '60s, everybody smoked. It was a great thing to smoke. Movie stars smoked. It was a cool thing to do. And the most effective ads that showed people coughing and hacking and yellow teeth and burnt fingers, and almost over night we saw a decline in tobacco. So we could learn from the efforts that they made in reducing use.

MR. KUMIN: Thank you. Please? MR. Fagnani: Mr. Burns, thank you for coming to Alaska. First of all, I'm Matthew Fagnani. And you gave me a good segue. And I am the chairman of The Alaskans Against the Legalization of the Marijuana attempt. And this organization does need your financial contribution in order to help educate Alaskans to the social dangers of this initiative. But if you would, to follow up on what the governor said, would you answer, if this initiative worked passed, Alaska is so dependent upon our economy on the federal spend, the military, the construction projects, the highway fund, how would the federal government possibly view now a drug export state like Alaska if this thing were to pass?

MR. BURNS: Well, I can say for sure it would not be helpful. I can tell you this. There is no safe harbor in these laws. No one wants to hear that. I didn't want to hear it when I was a county attorney that a federal law trumped my state or my county law in any aspect. But we settled that at Appomattox. There is the clause in the United States constitution that federal law in certain areas supersedes state law. Drug laws are one of them. No matter what is passed, Proposition 2 here, Proposition I-48 in Montana -- that's the other one, Montana -- it will not be a safe harbor. It will still be illegal to possess, smoke, use, sell, distribute marijuana in the state of Alaska.

What it has done in those states that have passed those laws is cause a great deal of tension because state locals now have to call on the DEA and others to come in and solve problems. And there's been a great deal of litigation. California has spent literally millions on this issue and notwithstanding the perception that it's legal to smoke and possess marijuana in California, it's not. I mean they had a, I want to say 20,000 plants confiscated, about 12 people went to jail within the last couple of weeks in that state. So I don't know the positive side of this other than it does bring in conflict between state and federal government. And as the governor mentioned -- I mean use your imagination. School bus drivers, transportation, teachers, the military, people on the North Slope, the fishing industry. Alaska would be unique in the effects it would have on her citizens.

MR. KUMIN: Thank you. Please?

CAROLYN RADER: Carolyn Rader. You mentioned Afghanistan. What is and what will be the thrust of our policy there for drugs?

MR. BURNS: Yeah. The policy has been one, to try and stabilize the country. And frankly, I think even the people on the ground would tell you that the opium and the drug problem has not been the first priority. And it is a difficult, difficult issue. I'll give you an example from an Army Ranger that I talked to. How is the drug problem in Afghanistan? And he said when we first got there and you have somebody telling you that here are the bad guys over here, those are the terrorists, those are the ones with the rocket launcher, and they're pointing at a village or a stronghold, and indeed those were those people trying to blow up our women and men over there in uniform, it's kind of hard to come back and say oh, by the way, I need to burn down your plants. Thanks for the information, they were in fact a part of the Taliban, but now we need to wipe out the only source of economy that you have. So it has been slow going. But everyone agrees that at the end of the day Afghanistan should not rely on opium as the basis for its economy. It is a losing proposition. It will take time. And our policy is to phase out the opium but to do it in a manner where we don't leave people without food and means to survive.

MR. KUMIN: Thank you. Please?

CADET NICHOLS: Hi. I'm Cadet Second Lieutenant Nichols. I would just like to ask what you would say to someone who compared the problems we're having now with the problems that we faced during the Prohibition of alcohol? How those correlate or may not correlate?

MR. BURNS: I don't look that old, do I? I don't know what the problems were during Prohibition. I watch it on television and I see the old movies and there was a lot of bootlegging. And there is often comparison made between alcohol or alcohol and tobacco. I get asked all the time well, if alcohol's such a bad thing, you know, it's worse than drug abuse or tobacco is worse than somebody smoking marijuana or using cocaine. The only response that I have is this country has determined that alcohol is an acceptable product to be used. We have. For social reasons, for historic reasons. During the brief period of Prohibition we did not, but it didn't curb anything. We have decided that it is. We have heretofore decided that just because we have chosen that form of abuse, in some cases, doesn't mean we might as well just start using heroin and crack cocaine and methamphetamine and expose our children to all other kinds of drugs. Alcohol, I think we all know the trail of tears and the deaths and the DUIs, and we've come a long way in that field. When my dad was district attorney and a judge in a small town, he said people used to laugh in the '50s and '60 when somebody would get pulled over. And, you know, Guy, Bob was out drinking. Yeah, he got -- and they took him home. We don't do that any more. It's deadly business. Our children die. Our wives, our husbands die. And so I think we have changed the perception in the use of alcohol.

MR. KUMIN: Other questions? Yes, Mary Ann.

MARY ANN PEASE: Hi. I'm Mary Ann Pease. I certainly appreciate you being here today.

MR. BURNS: Thank you.

MS. PEASE: As the mother of a son who has just started high school, your statistics today shocked me. I certainly hope they're nationwide, not Alaska wide. But with that said, Tim Burgess, does an incredible job with the business community on.....

MR. BURNS: Good.

MS. PEASE: .....enlightening us on the issues. What specific programs have been developed nation wide that are being targeted to our children in school?

MR. BURNS: Every state and every community is a little bit different. DARE came under fire nation wide. I don't know if did in Alaska -- I haven't had a chance to talk to anybody since I got here yesterday, as having diminishing effects on children. But different states and cities have ways of getting responsible people into the classroom and talking about the dangers of drugs. We have also, on a national level, if you've seen the media campaign. Some of the ads were bad. Three and four and five years ago the focus groups and the polls said, you know, you're wasting your money.

We tried to get smarter. John Walters, the drug czar, I think -- he is a bright guy. He sat down with mothers and fathers and experts and psychologists and others and we found out that we need to target out kids. If that's where the disease of addiction starts, all right. And how do we do that most effectively? Through every study and every person interviewed we found out -- really, the only two things that have an effect on our children are parents and peers. Their friends and their parents.

Sometimes parents don't believe that. They are shocked to learn that their children look to mom and dad more as role models and for leadership than anyone would ever know. The other interesting thing we also found is that kids want parents to be parents. They want them to draw the line. They want there to be rules. They want there to be boundaries.

But concomitant with that we found that hundreds and thousands and millions of parents in America, who grew up in the baby boom age, want to be their kids friends. They want to hang with them. They want to dress like them. They want to be cool. They want their child to think that mom and dad are hip. And so one of the things that the ad campaign has tried to do, and I don't know if you've seen the ads, but it's kids talking to their parents saying I hate you, you made me come in early; you grounded me. I hated you when you wouldn't let me go to camp. And then at the end, thank you.

And then we also have ads directed at parents. My favorite one is the slamming door one. I don't know if you've seen that. A mother and a father slammed the door, I hate you. It was just a little part, you went in my room, and they slammed the door back and forth, and then they finally said are you ready? Yeah. Afraid of a few slamming doors? Get over it. Talking to parents about trying to teach them how to be parents and to set rules with their children.

So those are some of the things that we have tried to do. The real answer you all know is it happens in the home, around the dinner table, mom and dad. And I've always said we can everything we can to encourage schools and think base groups and others to help us, but at the end of the day, if we're parents, it's our job to do better.

MR. KUMIN: Thank you. We've got time for a couple more questions if we have any. Please?

JEFF RANF: Hi. Jeff Ranf. I was wondering what the trend was in alcohol utilization for that middle school grade group that you mentioned versus the trends in what's going on in the drugs. How does that correlate?

MR. BURNS: You know, I don't know the answer to that. I could find that out for you. I know that generally alcohol has been pretty stable. There are certain parts of the country where they've seen spikes and problems and we monitor some of the universities in binge drinking and deaths. But that's an excellent question. And I will find that out.

MR. KUMIN: Good question. Thank you. Other questions? Well, I'd like to thank you very much for coming and sharing your.....

MR. BURNS: Thank you.

MR. KUMIN: .....thoughts and experience with us. And it's always of interest to talk about. It's I think of great interest to everyone in this room and to all of us actually. And we appreciate your coming and spending time with us.

MR. BURNS: Are you going to invite me back during fishing season? You said.

MR. KUMIN: Well, I guess the question is will you -- does it depend on the results of our election?

MR. BURNS: Yes, it does actually. That's right.

MR. KUMIN: Thank you all for joining us today. Thank you.

(END OF PROCEEDINGS)