Life's Pleasures Quote by John Powell

The sentence has the cadence of a press conference, not a score: measured reassurance, a moral anchor, then a quick retreat from triumphalism. “Significant” does the careful work here. It frames a seizure or crackdown as meaningful without claiming it’s transformative. The real rhetorical engine is “out of the hands of children” - a phrase that bypasses policy nuance and goes straight for consensus. Nobody wants to be cast as the person arguing against protecting kids, so the speaker borrows innocence as political cover for enforcement.

Then comes the strategic deflation: “It certainly is not going to stop the drug problem.” That admission functions like credibility insurance. In an era when drug rhetoric often leans on absolutist promises, the line signals adult realism: this is harm reduction by attrition, not victory. The subtext is also institutional self-protection. If the drug market predictably adapts, the speaker has already warned you; if anything improves, the earlier “significant” still counts as a win.

“We have to work very, very hard” is deliberately vague, but its vagueness is the point. It keeps the coalition intact: police, schools, parents, treatment advocates can all hear their own agenda in it. For a composer, that’s an interesting kind of orchestration - not of instruments, but of audiences. The intent isn’t to solve the drug crisis in a sentence; it’s to justify an action, acknowledge limits, and keep the public emotionally aligned while the long, unsatisfying grind continues.