[Congressional Bills 106th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 1390 Introduced in Senate (IS)]







106th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                S. 1390

To help parents and families reduce drug abuse and drug addiction among 
                  adolescents, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             July 19, 1999

Mr. Grassley (for himself, Mr. Sessions, Mr. DeWine, and Mr. Coverdell) 
introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the 
                       Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To help parents and families reduce drug abuse and drug addiction among 
                  adolescents, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Drug-Free Families Act of 1999''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress makes the following findings:
            (1) The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that in 
        1962, less than 1 percent of the nation's adolescents had ever 
        tried an illicit drug. By 1979, drug use among young people had 
        escalated to the highest levels in history: 34 percent of 
        adolescents (ages 12-17), 65 percent of high school seniors 
        (age 18), and 70 percent of young adults (ages 18-25) had used 
        an illicit drug in their lifetime.
            (2) Drug use among young people was not confined to initial 
        trials. By 1979, 16 percent of adolescents, 39 percent of high 
        school seniors, and 38 percent of young adults had used an 
        illicit drug in the past month. Moreover, 1 in 9 high school 
        seniors used marijuana daily.
            (3) In 1979, the year the largest number of seniors used 
        marijuana, their belief that marijuana could hurt them was at 
        its lowest (35 percent) since surveys have tracked these 
        measures.
            (4) Three forces appeared to be driving this escalation in 
        drug use among children and young adults. Between 1972 and 
        1978, a nationwide political campaign conducted by drug 
        legalization advocates persuaded 11 State legislatures to 
        ``decriminalize'' marijuana. (Many of those States have 
        subsequently ``recriminalized'' the drug.) Such legislative 
        action reinforced advocates' assertion that marijuana was 
        ``relatively harmless.''
            (5) The decriminalization effort gave rise to the emergence 
        of ``head shops'' (shops for ``heads,'' or drug users--``coke 
        heads,'' ``pot heads,'' ``acid heads,'' etc.) which sold drug 
        paraphernalia--an array of toys, implements, and instructional 
        pamphlets and booklets to enhance the use of illicit drugs. 
        Some 30,000 such shops were estimated to be doing business 
        throughout the nation by 1978.
            (6) In the absence of Federal funding for drug education 
        then, most of the drug education materials that were available 
        proclaimed that few illicit drugs were addictive and most were 
        ``less harmful'' than alcohol and tobacco and therefore taught 
        young people how to use marijuana, cocaine, and other illicit 
        drugs ``responsibly''.
            (7) Between 1977 and 1980, 3 national parent drug-
        prevention organizations--National Families in Action, PRIDE, 
        and the National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth (now 
        called the National Family Partnership)--emerged to help 
        concerned parents form some 4,000 local parent prevention 
        groups across the nation to reverse all of these trends in 
        order to prevent children from using drugs. Their work created 
        what has come to be known as the parent drug-prevention 
        movement, or more simply, the parent movement. This movement 
        set 3 goals: to prevent the use of any illegal drug, to 
persuade those who had started using drugs to stop, and to obtain 
treatment for those who had become addicted so that they could return 
to drug-free lives.
            (8) The parent movement pursued a number of objectives to 
        achieve these goals. First, it helped parents educate 
        themselves about the harmful effects of drugs, teach that 
        information to their children, communicate that they expected 
        their children not to use drugs, and establish consequences if 
        children failed to meet that expectation. Second, it helped 
        parents form groups with other parents to set common age-
        appropriate social and behavioral guidelines to protect their 
        children from exposure to drugs. Third, it encouraged parents 
        to insist that their communities reinforce parents' commitment 
        to protect children from drug use.
            (9) The parent movement stopped further efforts to 
        decriminalize marijuana, both in the States and at the Federal 
        level.
            (10) The parent movement worked for laws to ban the sale of 
        drug paraphernalia. If drugs were illegal, it made no sense to 
        condone the sale of toys and implements to enhance the use of 
        illegal drugs, particularly when those products targeted 
        children. As town, cities, counties, and States passed anti-
        paraphernalia laws, drug legalization organizations challenged 
        their Constitutionality in Federal courts until the early 
        1980's, when the United States Supreme Court upheld Nebraska's 
        law and established the right of communities to ban the sale of 
        drug paraphernalia.
            (11) The parent movement insisted that drug-education 
        materials convey a strong no-use message in compliance with 
        both the law and with medical and scientific information that 
        demonstrates that drugs are harmful, particularly to young 
        people.
            (12) The parent movement encouraged others in society to 
        join the drug prevention effort and many did, from First Lady 
        Nancy Reagan to the entertainment industry, the business 
        community, the media, the medical community, the educational 
        community, the criminal justice community, the faith community, 
        and local, State, and national political leaders.
            (13) The parent movement helped to cause drug use among 
        young people to peak in 1979. As its efforts continued 
        throughout the next decade, and as others joined parents to 
        expand the drug-prevention movement, between 1979 and 1992 
        these collaborative prevention efforts contributed to reducing 
        monthly illicit drug use by two-thirds among adolescents and 
        young adults and reduced daily marijuana use among high-school 
        seniors from 10.7 percent to 1.9 percent. Concurrently, both 
        the parent movement and the larger prevention movement that 
        evolved throughout the 1980's, working together, increased high 
        school seniors' belief that marijuana could hurt them, from 35 
        percent in 1979 to 79 percent in 1991.
            (14) Unfortunately, as drug use declined, most of the 4,000 
        volunteer parents groups that contributed to the reduction in 
        drug use disbanded, having accomplished the job they set out to 
        do. But the absence of active parent groups left a vacuum that 
        was soon filled by a revitalized drug-legalization movement. 
        Proponents began advocating for the legalization of marijuana 
        for medicine, the legalization of all Schedule I drugs for 
        medicine, the legalization of hemp for medicinal, industrial 
        and recreational use, and a variety of other proposals, all 
        designed to ultimately attack, weaken, and eventually repeal 
        the nation's drug laws.
            (15) Furthermore, legalization proponents are also 
        beginning to advocate for treatment that maintains addicts on 
        the drugs to which they are addicted (heroin maintenance for 
        heroin addicts, controlled drinking for alcoholics, etc.), for 
        teaching school children to use drugs ``responsibly,'' and for 
        other measures similar to those that produced the drug epidemic 
        among young people in the 1970's.
            (16) During the 1990's, the message embodied in all of this 
        activity has once again driven down young people's belief that 
        drugs can hurt them. As a result, the reductions in drug use 
        that occurred over 13 years reversed in 1992, and adolescent 
        drug use has more than doubled.
            (17) Today's parents are almost universally in the 
        workplace and do not have time to volunteer. Many families are 
        headed by single parents. In some families no parents are 
        available, and grandparents, aunts, uncles, or foster parents 
        are raising the family's children.
            (18) Recognizing that these challenges make it much more 
        difficult to reach parents today, several national parent and 
        family drug-prevention organizations have formed the Parent 
        Collaboration to address these issues in order to build a new 
        parent and family movement to prevent drug use among children.
            (19) Motivating parents and parent groups to coordinate 
        with local community anti-drug coalitions is a key goal of the 
        Parent Collaboration, as well as coordinating parent and family 
        drug-prevention efforts with Federal, State, and local 
        governmental and private agencies and political, business, 
        medical and scientific, educational, criminal justice, 
        religious, and media and entertainment industry leaders.

SEC. 3. PURPOSES.

    The purposes of this Act are to--
            (1) build a movement to help parents and families prevent 
        drug use among their children and adolescents;
            (2) help parents and families reduce drug abuse and drug 
        addiction among adolescents who are already using drugs, and 
        return them to drug-free lives;
            (3) increase young people's perception that drugs are 
        harmful to their health, well-being, and ability to function 
        successfully in life;
            (4) help parents and families educate society that the best 
        way to protect children from drug use and all of its related 
        problems is to convey a clear, consistent, no-use message;
            (5) strengthen coordination, cooperation, and collaboration 
        between parents and families and all others who are interested 
        in protecting children from drug use and all of its related 
        problems;
            (6) help parents strengthen their families, neighborhoods, 
        and school communities to reduce risk factors and increase 
        protective factors to ensure the healthy growth of children; 
        and
            (7) provide resources in the fiscal year 2000 Federal drug 
        control budget for a grant to the Parent Collaboration to 
        conduct a national campaign to mobilize today's parents and 
        families through the provision of information, training, 
        technical assistance, and other services to help parents and 
        families prevent drug use among their children and to build a 
        new parent and family drug-prevention movement.

SEC. 4. DEFINITIONS.

    In this Act:
            (1) Administrative costs.--The term ``administrative 
        costs'' means those costs that the assigned Federal agency will 
        incur to administer the grant to the Parent Collaboration.
            (2) Administrator.--The term ``Administrator'' means the 
        Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
            (3) No-use message.--The term ``no-use message'' means no 
        use of any illegal drug and no illegal use of any legal drug or 
        substance that is sometimes used illegally, such as 
        prescription drugs, inhalants, and alcohol and tobacco for 
        children and adolescents under the legal purchase age.
            (4) Parent collaboration.--The term ``Parent 
        Collaboration'' means the legal entity, which is exempt from 
        income taxation under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue 
        Code of 1986, established by National Families in Action, 
        National Asian Pacific American Families Against Substance 
        Abuse, African American Parents for Drug Prevention, National 
        Association for Native American Children of Alcoholics, and the 
        National Hispano/Latino Community Prevention Network and other 
        groups, that--
                    (A) have a primary mission of helping parents 
                prevent drug use, drug abuse, and drug addiction among 
                their children, their families, and their communities;
                    (B) have carried out this mission for a minimum of 
                5 consecutive years; and
                    (C) base their drug-prevention missions on the 
                foundation of a strong, no-use message in compliance 
                with international, Federal, State, and local treaties 
                and laws that prohibit the possession, production, 
                cultivation, distribution, sale, and trafficking in 
                illegal drugs;
        in order to build a new parent and family movement to prevent 
        drug use among children and adolescents.

SEC. 5. ESTABLISHMENT OF DRUG-FREE FAMILIES SUPPORT PROGRAM.

    (a) In General.--The Administrator shall make a grant to the 
Parents Collaboration to conduct a national campaign to build a new 
parent and family movement to help parents and families prevent drug 
abuse among their children.
    (b) Termination.--The period of the grant under this section shall 
be 5 years.

SEC. 6. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

    (a) In General.--There is authorized to be appropriated to carry 
out this Act, $5,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2000 through 2004 for 
a grant to the Parent Collaboration to conduct the national campaign to 
mobilize parents and families.
    (b) Administrative Costs.--Not more than 5 percent of the total 
amount made available under subsection (a) in each fiscal year may be 
used to pay administrative costs of the Parent Collaboration.
                                 <all>