Michelle Obama: Increase Opportunity to Fight Drugs

Young people will make smarter choices about using and dealing drugs if they have better alternative opportunities, first lady Michelle Obama said during her visit to Mexico last week.

The Associated Press reported April 14 that Mrs. Obama discussed drug prevention and Mexico's bloody drug war during remarks with U.S.  reporters, but not in her public comments. “If young people don't have an alternative in their lives, whatever country they're in, they're going to choose drugs, they're going to choose (the) drug trade. That's the way they make money,” she said.

Mrs. Obama said she didn't talk publicly about drugs during the trip because she wanted “to remind us in the U.S. and our partners in Mexico that there is more that connects us than the violence and the drugs.”

The drug issue did come up during Mrs. Obama's visit with Mexican first lady Margarita Zavala, where the two political wives discussed Mexico's new drug-treatment facilities funded with money seized from drug cartels.