RALEIGH, N.C. -- Rock star John Bon Jovi urged high school students to spurn peer pressure to use drugs and placed part of the blame for teenage substance abuse on parents Friday at an anti-drug rally staged as part of his manager's sentence for drug trafficking.
Bon Jovi, talking to about 2,500 teenagers at Broughton High School, said students could rob themselves of achieving their goals in life if they let friends lead them into drug use.
'I think it's bull--,' Bon Jovi said when asked what to tell drug users who claim they have been pressured into drugs. 'You've got to be your own person. By being your own person you can stand up to anything.'
Bon Jovi said parents often are to blame for kids turning to substance abuse.
'You come home after three or four martinis, you call it a businessman's lunch, and you give your kids a bunch of --,' he said.
The rally was staged by Make A Difference Foundation, an organization formed by Bon Jovi's manager Doc McGhee who earlier this year pleaded guilty to helping smuggle tons of marijuana from Colombia, South America, into North Carolina.
U.S. District Judge Earl Britt last April ordered McGhee, 37, to spend $250,000 and 3,000 hours in the non-profit corporation aimed at deterring young people from taking drugs.
McGhee's sentence also called for him to serve 180 days in a community treatment center, pay a $15,000 fine. He also must produce an anti-drug documentary film with rock stars, an anti-drug recording and anti-drug brochures. Britt's order also required McGhee to raise money from private sources for anti-drug charities and promote and manage free basketball clinics to educate yougs about the dangers of drugs.
McGhee pleaded guilty in January to helping smuggle 18.5 tons of marijuana into Carteret County in 1982. In making his plea, McGhee said he was not active in drug smuggling, but had introduced a smuggler to an acquaintance with a contact for obtaining Colombian marijuana.
Federal prosecutors argued that McGhee, head of McGhee Entertainment Inc. in Los Angeles, was the go-between for an international drug ring.
