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Tavis: Pleased to welcome Joseph Califano back to this program. He served as special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson before becoming secretary of health, education, and welfare in the Carter White House. He is the founding chairman of the board and president of the National Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia. His new book is called "High Society: How Substance Abuse Ravages America, and What to Do About It." Mr. Secretary, nice to have you back on the program.

Joseph Califano: Nice to be with you again, Tavis.

Tavis: Good to see you again. Let me start by asking you to share more about what you argue in the book is America's predilection to find a fix, as you put it, for ever fret - a fit for every fret. Why are we so hooked on that notion?

Califano: Oh, I think part of it is money. Part of it is we think there is a fix for every fret. Part of it is we're four percent of the world's population; we consume two-thirds of the world's illegal drugs. We consume half of the world's mind-bending pharmaceuticals.

And it's across our society - this problem affects every economic group, every racial group, every ethnic group. There are no - this is an equal opportunity disease, and one of the main points in the book is that substance abuse and addiction is a disease.

Tavis: If it's just about money - we are the US of A, I get that - but if it's just about money, there are other countries that have money. What I hear you suggesting is it says something about us as Americans, as individuals.

Califano: You're absolutely right, Tavis. There's a deeper thing here. We really, as a society, our culture - something's going on in this country that's driving a lot of people to use this stuff, to tune out or get high. And I think we ought to think about that, hard.

Tavis: What's your sense of - is there any research that suggests to us, aside from the fact that the pharmaceuticals like making money and they will sell us any fix for whatever we are fretting about, what's wrong with us?

Califano: Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with America. I do think we do - I think affluence, which we have a lot of, brings with it its own set of problems. Boredom, loss of values. Where are our values? Where are we going as individuals? What do we believe in? Where's our sense of social justice? (Unintelligible.)

Tavis: But the answer can't be poverty, though. It can't be the opposite of affluence.

Califano: No, of course it's not poverty - of course it's not poverty. And actually, the poverty point here, which is very interesting in the book - the rich kid in Beverly Hills or the Upper East Side or Georgetown is experimenting just as much as some poor kid - probably more. But poor kids are likely to get hooked. Why? They don't have access to services.

They don't have access to treatment. They're not in situations where they got people that can call up and say, "Well, send my kid here, help him do this." It's just like the whole prison problem, which I talk about in the book. Our prisons are as arcane as the debtor prisons in Charles Dickens' day. Our prisons are wall-to-wall with alcohol abusers, alcoholics, drug abusers, drug addicts, and people that are mentally ill, and we don't do anything for them in prison.

Tavis: I want to come back to the public policy pieces in just a second, but let me stay with this thought line you created for me here at the moment, which is that so the rich, white kid is experimenting as the poor Black kid or the poor brown kid, but the White kid has more resources to keep from getting hooked. So the Black kid, the brown kid gets hooked, and once they're hooked then they end up doing more and more aggressive drugs and before you know it, they're caught up in the criminal justice system.

So in a very real way, there's a linear line to be drawn between experimentation, with Black men and brown men making up a great deal more of the prison population than anybody else.

Califano: That's right. There's no question about it. The common denominator in the prison population is substance abuse and addiction. About 70 percent or more of the people in prison - maybe 80 percent, have drug and alcohol problems. Okay? Regular drug users, abusers, what have you. But we have, what, 12 percent of the population is Black, for example, in this country.

What proportion of the prison population? You go around this country, you're talking 60, 70 percent. It's preposterous, and we don't do any - we don't give them treatment, and by not helping them when they're in prison, what are we doing? We're imposing an enormous tax on our people. Conservatives have to realize that that's a tax, because we build more and more and more prisons.

We have 2.2 million people in prison in this country. And number two, when they get out, they're going to go right back. So this prison system is a price support system for the liquor stores and the drug dealers.

Tavis: Public policy wise, my sense has been - and you're much more of an expert on this than I am - my sense is that we attack this problem with the wrong kind of - from the wrong prism. That is to say, we look at it first and foremost as an issue of criminality rather than as a health crisis. Are we looking at the problem the wrong way?

Califano: Yes. This is a public health problem of monumental proportions. That's number one. Sure, we should - misconduct should be criminalized, the dealers and all that stuff. But when we have people, we don't use the criminal justice system to rehabilitate people. That's what it used to be all about. And the juvenile justice system, which when I was a kid we'd say it was reform school. Reform. We will reform those children. Today, we don't.

The juvenile justice systems in this country are colleges for criminals, and that's what they are. And in that system, again, we have to give these kids treatment, education, training. Believe me - sure, of the 2.2 million people in prison, 1.8 million have drug and alcohol problems, or are involved - they violated the drug or alcohol laws, they were high at the time of their crime, they stole money to buy drugs. Now, a couple hundred thousand of them are the really bad guys.

They're the dealers that don't use. The rest of those people - most of the rest of those people would be taxpaying, law-abiding citizens if we gave them a shot. And the shot is training for real jobs - not $5 jobs in a $20 economy - and substance abuse treatment.

Tavis: How would we fundamentally start the process of getting elected officials to view this first as a public health crisis, rather than an issue of criminality, particularly in the world in which we live - politically, that is. People get elected because they're tough on something, so I don't understand how you even go about that process of getting elected officials to see this first and foremost as a public health crisis.

Califano: You put your finger on the toughest problem. I've talked to state legislators all over this country. What we've got to say to them, and what they've got to understand is they're taxing their constituents unnecessarily. If they make the investment to help these people - and it's not a lot of money. Residential treatment, the most expensive part is the residence.

They're already in residence. Some states like California and New York are paying $50,000, $55,000 a year per person. Add a couple of thousand dollars to that and we can provide all the treatment they need. So we have to get that across, and we need some courageous people that are willing to take that out to their constituents. What are the two costs driving the states nuts? Medicaid and prison costs.

Tavis: So to your point, why does that require - I get the point you're trying to make, but why does that require courage? It sounds like common sense, it sounds maybe like empathy, maybe a little sympathy, maybe some common sense that what we're doing ain't working. I don't call that courage, though.

Califano: It's courage because all these guys - they want to say what they think people want to hear.

Tavis: Of course, yeah.

Califano: I'm tough on crime. It's like saying if all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again, then give me more horses and give me more men. It's ridiculous, and it's wrong, and it's the same thing - but what I propose in the book, we need a revolution in this country. We're talking about not only the number one cause of crime, the number one cause of disease in this country. Doctors aren't trained.

And our child welfare system - three million kids in the child welfare system, 70 percent of them there because of drug- and alcohol-abusing parents. Let's help those parents.

Tavis: I was giving a speech the other day and this subject came up in the speech, and one of the arguments that I made, and I want to see what you think about it, more importantly than my particular point of view. But my argument was that we are ultimately going to start to better deal with problems like these - and to your point now, the lack of healthcare for every American - those problems are ultimately going to be resolved because corporate America is going to get tired of taking it in the pocket.

And where there are employees who have substance abuse problems are concerned, where there are employees who have other health concerns come up - as they keep paying out more and more money, it's corporate America that ultimately is going to push government to do something about these kinds of issues. Am I right or am I smoking crack?

Califano: No, I don't think you're smoking crack, and let me give you a small example. Look at smoking in this country, okay? I started that campaign when I was at HEW in '78, as you know. But look at what corporate America has done because of the cost of smoking to their employees, because of the cost of smoking when they damage the rug or they damage - there's virtually no workplace you can go to anymore where you're allowed to smoke.

No buildings you're allowed to smoke in. We found out years ago when I was on the Chrysler board, a smoker costs about 70% more than a nonsmoker over the course of his 30 or 40 years working for the company. So, and corporate America has moved on the smoking thing. You're seeing the cultural change in this country. And two-thirds of regular drug users work full or part time. So there's a big responsibility there.

Tavis: Finally, what about this notion that we hear more and more from the left, quite frankly, and from some folk on the right, that it's time to legalize a lot of this stuff?

Califano: I think it would be a disaster. The question is, what's the impact on kids? We have two legal drugs in America: alcohol and tobacco. And we have shown no ability to keep those drugs out of the hands of kids. Marijuana, which people talk about, we have got to recognize is not the marijuana of the 1970s. It's stronger, it's more dangerous, we've learned a lot more about it, that the UN drug czar says that it's as bad as cocaine and heroin.

It savages short-term memory, it savages ability to concentrate. We have to recognize that these are dangerous drugs. That's sort of a - it's a non-issue to me. What you really need to do is get parents engaged, get families engaged, and get the whole country to do for substance abuse what we've done - what Ralph Nader's book did, "Unsafe at Any Speed," what Al Gore's book is doing for the environment. That's my dream for "High Society." Wake up, America, and deal with this problem. It is eating at us, and it's the most dangerous problem our kids face.

Tavis: He's a former Johnson and Carter administration official. His name is Joseph A. Califano, Jr. The new book is called “High Society: How Substance Abuse Ravages America, and What to Do About It." Mr. Califano, nice to have you here.

Califano: Great to be here, Tavis.

Tavis: Always good to see you.

Califano: It's always good to see you.

Tavis: Thank you, sir.