Life's Pleasures Quote by Jon Corzine

Policy talk disguised as family talk: Corzine’s line recruits “parents and communities” as the moral front line while keeping government in the role of facilitator, not disciplinarian. That’s the intent. It’s a politician’s balancing act between public-health urgency and American suspicion of the nanny state. By saying “empower,” he signals action without specifying coercion; empowerment can mean grants, school programs, enforcement partnerships, or just another brochure campaign. The word is useful precisely because it’s elastic.

The subtext is about blame and buy-in. Put the responsibility on parents and “communities” and you distribute accountability widely enough that no single institution has to admit failure. It also softens the edge of regulation: you’re not policing teenagers, you’re “protecting our youth.” That possessive “our” is doing work, too. It invites voters to experience alcohol abuse not as an individual lapse but as a collective vulnerability - the kind of framing that makes funding, legislation, and policing feel like care rather than control.

Contextually, this sits squarely in late-20th/early-21st-century governance where health issues are packaged as behavior issues. “Healthy behavior free from binge drinking” blends a medical register (“abuse”) with a lifestyle register (“healthy”), implying that the problem is both pathology and choice. Pairing binge drinking with “other forms” expands the target beyond frat-party spectacle to a broader spectrum of drinking norms, positioning the speaker as serious and comprehensive while leaving room to pivot: education when that polls well, enforcement when that headlines well.