What funds terrorism, spawns crime, drives up health care costs, breaks up families, spreads AIDS, promotes unwanted teen pregnancy, and frustrates so many efforts to eliminate poverty?

What attribute do most victims of cancer, heart disease, emphysema, crippling bronchitis, accidents and violence share?

What's the culprit in most assaults and homicides, incest, domestic violence, college date rape and campus racial incidents?

Substance abuse and addiction.

We have many problems in America — entitlement programs that defy reform, the wildfire spread of sexually transmitted diseases, lousy urban schools, homelessness, prisons bursting at the bars, state family courts and child welfare systems on the cusp of collapse, a bulging federal deficit that threatens our economic prosperity and global supremacy, the threat of terrorism. To solve these problems, we have passed thousands of laws. We have spent billions of dollars. Parents, children and spouses have offered endless prayers. We have sent troops to Columbia and even gone to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But these problems persist.

Why?

Because we have failed to confront the most pernicious and pervasive force that lurks behind them: abuse and addiction involving alcohol, tobacco and illicit, prescription and performance enhancing drugs.