[House Hearing, 105 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE DRUG THREAT TO TEENS IN OUR RURAL COMMUNITIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
of the
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT
REFORM AND OVERSIGHT
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 7, 1997
__________
Serial No. 105-74
__________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
J. DENNIS HASTERT, Illinois TOM LANTOS, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
STEVEN SCHIFF, New Mexico EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
CHRISTOPHER COX, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida GARY A. CONDIT, California
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEPHEN HORN, California THOMAS M. BARRETT, Wisconsin
JOHN L. MICA, Florida ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia DC
DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
Carolina JIM TURNER, Texas
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
PETE SESSIONS, Texas HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee
MICHAEL PAPPAS, New Jersey ------
VINCE SNOWBARGER, Kansas BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
BOB BARR, Georgia (Independent)
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
William Moschella, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian
Judith McCoy, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal
Justice
J. DENNIS HASTERT, Chairman
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana THOMAS M. BARRETT, Wisconsin
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
STEVEN SCHIFF, New Mexico ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida GARY A. CONDIT, California
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
JOHN L. MICA, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio JIM TURNER, Texas
BOB BARR, Georgia
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Robert Charles, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Sean Littlefield, Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on July 7, 1997..................................... 1
Statement of:
Maakestad, Pam, parent of a victim of drug-related violence;
``Jerome,'' former organized drug dealer; ``Derrick,''
former drug user and gang member; ``Connie,'' a teenager
who has never used drugs; Michael Coghlan, former States
attorney; and Kris Povlsen, project coordinator, DeKalb
County Partnership for a Substance Abuse Free Environment.. 4
Nakonechny, John, prevention and wellness coordinator, DeKalb
Community Unit School District 428; Michael Haines,
coordinator of health enhancement services, Northern
Illinois University; Tim Johnson, DeKalb States attorney;
Richard A. Randall, sheriff, Kendall County, IL; and Bob
Miller, just say no to drugs parade, Lee County, IL........ 47
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Coghlan, Michael, former States attorney, prepared statement
of......................................................... 10
Connie, prepared statement of................................ 12
Derrick, prepared statement of............................... 38
Haines, Michael, coordinator of health enhancement services,
Northern Illinois University, prepared statement of........ 54
Jerome, prepared statement of................................ 26
Johnson, Tim, DeKalb States attorney, prepared statement of.. 67
Maakestad, Pam, parent of a victim of drug-related violence,
prepared statement of...................................... 6
Povlsen, Kris, project coordinator, DeKalb County Partnership
for a Substance Abuse Free Environment, prepared statement
of......................................................... 17
Randall, Richard A., sheriff, Kendall County, IL, prepared
statement of............................................... 71
THE DRUG THREAT TO TEENS IN OUR RURAL COMMUNITIES
----------
MONDAY, JULY 7, 1997
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, International
Affairs, and Criminal Justice,
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight,
DeKalb, IL.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 8:32 a.m., in
Holmes Student Center, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb,
IL, Hon. J. Dennis Hastert (chairman of the subcommittee)
presiding.
Present: Representative Hastert.
Also present: Representative Manzullo.
Staff present: Robert Charles, staff director and chief
counsel; and Sean Littlefield, professional staff member.
Mr. Hastert. Good morning. I want to bid everybody a good
morning and certainly, first of all, the first order of
business, I want to thank the president of Northern Illinois
University, John La Tourette, who is in the doorway, for
providing this facility and this venue for our hearing. It is
such a beautiful day and a nice view, and I hope everybody can
concentrate on the hearing before us.
So, John, thank you very much for your hospitality here at
the university.
I also would like to recognize State Senator Brad
Bruzynski. Brad is in the audience.
Thank you, Brad, for being here.
Also the sheriff of DeKalb County, who certainly has been
one of our key allies in this fight against drugs, Sheriff
Roger Scott.
Roger, you are here someplace too. Thanks for being with
us.
The Subcommittee on National Security, International
Affairs, and Criminal Justice will now come to order. With me I
have Congressman Don Manzullo, who represents the district to
the north. It goes all the way from the Mississippi River to
the Lake County side of McHenry County.
Is that right, Don?
And certainly it was Don's request--a couple of months ago,
he said, you know, in my district, the gangs and drug problems
are moving out from the city of Chicago into the suburbs and
certainly into McHenry County; and he said, you know, I need to
do hearings back home to see what people are thinking, see what
needs to be done. And I said, Don, I have been thinking about
doing the same thing.
So we teamed up today to do this hearing both here in
DeKalb County, and we will be traveling later this afternoon to
McHenry County for a similar hearing. Today we will examine the
dire threat of drugs to our kids in rural communities and in
suburbs.
When residents of rural areas think of drugs and teens,
often the first thing that comes to their mind is kids in
impoverished urban areas being victimized by crack dealers and
gangs. The rural areas in small towns, DeKalb, Kendall, and Lee
Counties, generally are not thought of as places where drug
abuse is a problem.
Unfortunately, times have changed and this image is simply
no longer true. It is a sad fact, but a harbinger of our times
that no young person in any community in America is out of the
reach of cocaine, heroin, LSD or methamphetamines, let alone
marijuana; nor is any community immune from the drug violence
and street gangs and the trafficking which accompany the
arrivals of these poisons in our midst.
The citizens in DeKalb and our surrounding areas have been
shocked in recent years as we continuously see the encroachment
of drugs, drug-related violence and street gangs. No longer are
we insulated from the problems that used to be confined to big
cities, such as Chicago or Rockford. One need only read the
recent series of the chronicled articles on drug use among our
teens here in DeKalb and the DeKalb High School to understand
the magnitude of the problem we are all confronting. As a
parent certainly and a former high school teacher myself of 16
years, I feel this problem is a devastating one and requires
effort by all of us to reverse.
A few examples are illustrative. The results of the I-Say
study on drug use, published on May 18, 1997, is a case in
point. The results are an alarming 40 percent of high school
students polled say they have used marijuana. That is nearly
half of the kids in our schools; 14 percent said they have used
LSD, 6 percent report using inhalants and 5 percent have tried
cocaine. That is 1 in every 20 kids.
The saddest part is that these aren't just statistics, they
are not just numbers, these are our kids right here in our
communities. We must do a better job of educating them about
the dangers of these drugs and their use, and protecting them
from those who traffic in these poisons.
And perhaps the most damning statement was made by a junior
honor student. This student commented that while the drug users
in school use drugs every day there are some responsible people
who care about their future and use drugs only on a weekend
basis. This kind of sentiment of equating responsibility in
caring about one's future with drug use, coming from an honors
student, paints a frightening picture of where we are as a
society and where we are headed.
We must wake up to our collective responsibility, meeting
this collective threat, and become serious about fighting
drugs. I think we will find that our panelists today, the
people who are going to come before us, have insight; some of
them have the experience of having their own practical
experience in this type of situation and some have been parents
and some have been in these communities fighting this problem
for a long, long time. So I am going to ask my colleague from
the northern District here, the congressional district which
lies right over the DeKalb County line, if he would like to
make any opening statements.
Mr. Manzullo. Thank you very much. It is a real pleasure to
be here this morning.
I practiced law in Oregon, IL, a town of 3,500 people, from
1970 until I was elected to Congress in 1992, and handled
hundreds of juvenile cases. Many of those were kids who got
hung up with drugs, so this area of drugs is not new to me.
What is new about this area to me, my 13-year-old son,
Neal, is here today, so I have a very selfish motive and wanted
to make sure my children--13, 11, and 9--are not exposed to
drugs, that they stay away from drugs as a matter of life-style
and as a matter of choice.
Dennis and I both have children, and that is why we are
here, both as parents and as Members of Congress.
What is shocking today about drugs is that they are
cheaper, higher quality and easier to obtain than ever before.
We have now a second generation of kids being exposed to drugs,
and in some cases, three generations.
We had a situation happen about a month ago in Rockford
where a family moved out from the inner city of Chicago to a
home on the west side of Rockford for the purpose of trying to
keep their kids away from the violence and gangs and drugs. A
little 11-year-old child was sitting in the living room
watching a Walt Disney cartoon when a shot rang through the
window and pierced her skull and killed her. What happened was
that across the street there was a party going on, involving
gangs and people that were using drugs.
So what we see happening across America today is not only
the people who are the direct result of drugs, that is, the
kids who get hung up on them, but a whole army of innocents out
there, people who just happen to be in the way of rival gangs
fighting over drug territories. What is shocking about it is
that there is no town too small, to be immune from this scourge
of drugs and from the gangs.
If you look around us, this beautiful rural setting at one
time, who would have thought that the scourge of drugs and gang
activities would come anywhere near us; but that has indeed
come. Congressman Hastert recognizes that and we want to thank
you for the leadership in setting up this hearing today.
Mr. Hastert. Thanks, Don.
Before we begin, let us be perfectly clear about what our
goal is. This community and others like it that both Don and I
represent have changed a lot in the last 20, 25 years, 35 years
since the time that we were youths in schools here. I have a
brother who teaches in Aurora, IL, a classroom, self-contained,
kids at risk; the classroom is probably 70 percent Hispanic.
Most of those kids have been exposed to some type of gang
violence. Several of the students last year were killed,
several in one classroom were killed.
In my view, there is no magic formula to solve the drug
problem. Part of it has to be the demand side, communities,
faith-based organizations, fraternal organizations and groups
working together to clean up their own communities; that is
where it has to start. The Federal Government plays a role,
State and local governments play a role; and we have to
sometimes fight and go beyond where we can even imagine that
this begins, and that is in the jungles in South America where
this stuff is produced and it devastates a population and a
group of people there as well. So it is a whole area.
Finally, we will be remiss in fighting the war on drugs in
saying that all the effort that is done in growing this stuff,
manufacturing it, smuggling it, moving it across the borders
into this country, distributing it, selling it on the street
corners, which costs about $90 billion a year of United States
revenue that has exchanged hands, and about $50 billion, going
back, smuggled back into Colombia or Mexico or the origin of
where the things are. If that money wouldn't be able to be
moved back, then the whole issue and money laundering issue,
there would be no reason to grow the stuff, smuggle it and
distribute it in the first place; and that is something we many
times overlook, and something we won't be talking about much
here today. But it is certainly a very important factor in this
whole chain of drugs that affect our kids and communities and
really the substance that helps gangs form and is their revenue
source in many situations.
So, at this time, I would like to introduce our first
panel. The first four witnesses will provide a human face to
the war on drugs. Some are victims, some have been involved in
gangs and all will provide insight into the scourge of drugs
into rural communities.
The four witnesses are Pam Maakestad, ``Jerome,''
``Derrick,'' and ``Connie.'' I would also like to welcome Mike
Coghlan, who is the former States Attorney in DeKalb County;
Kris Povlsen is a project coordinator for the DeKalb County
Partnership for a Substance Abuse Free Environment; and I thank
you for all for being here today.
In accordance with the House rules, we will ask to swear
you in and so I ask at this time that you please stand and
raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Hastert. Let the record show that the witnesses
answered in the affirmative.
Pam, please start with your statement. If you can pull the
mic up a little closer.
STATEMENTS OF PAM MAAKESTAD, PARENT OF A VICTIM OF DRUG-RELATED
VIOLENCE; ``JEROME,'' FORMER ORGANIZED DRUG DEALER;
``DERRICK,'' FORMER DRUG USER AND GANG MEMBER; ``CONNIE,'' A
TEENAGER WHO HAS NEVER USED DRUGS; MICHAEL COGHLAN, FORMER
STATES ATTORNEY; AND KRIS POVLSEN, PROJECT COORDINATOR, DeKALB
COUNTY PARTNERSHIP FOR A SUBSTANCE ABUSE FREE ENVIRONMENT
Ms. Maakestad. My name is Pam Maakestad. My son Brent
started using drugs when he was around the age of 12. He
started off with casual use of pot, and then he used it more
frequently. He started using other drugs, such as acid. By the
age of 14, my son went to a 90-day inpatient rehabilitation
program.
Three times a week I drove to the drug rehabilitation
center in Wacaunda, IL. I went to group counseling sessions
with my son, Brent Cooper, and others who had become addicted
to alcohol and marijuana at such an early age. Brent did well
in the drug rehabilitation program. We both learned a lot. We
learned each day would be a struggle to stay away from the
drugs and alcohol.
My son stayed sober for about a year; then he started to
use drugs again. He was 15 years old, he started to use acid
and other more dangerous drugs. Along with drug use, he got
into trouble with the law. He also started hanging around with
gang members because they sold drugs. He hung around with the
dealers in the gangs so often that he joined the gang.
Many people don't realize the connection between the causal
use of pot and street gangs. Even in DeKalb, there is a
connection between pot and gangs.
By the age of 16, Brent was back in the drug rehabilitation
program. Once again, he was a model student. He graduated from
the inpatient program and started to attend outpatient
counseling.
At age 17, he was getting his life back together. He was
trying to stay away from the drug people, but it wasn't easy.
On August 17, 1991, Brent was shot and murdered near the
courthouse in Sycamore. He was murdered by a group of people
involved in drugs and gangs at the time he was murdered. Even
though my son was not using drugs at the time he was murdered,
it was his past drug use that brought him to the place where he
was murdered. If it weren't for drugs and gangs, my son would
be alive today.
On August 17, it will be 6 years that have passed since
Brent was murdered. I think of him every day, especially when I
look at his son who looks so much like him. I especially
remember 1 night a few weeks before he was murdered; he was
having a bad reaction to a drug known as Wickie stick. He was
shaking and trembling uncontrollably, and I remember holding
him, rocking him back and forth, until the drugs wore off and
he accepted that everyone in the family was all right and safe.
Even today, I hear about local kids as young as 12 years
old who use acid and pot. A lot of kids also use alcohol, which
can be more destructive than illegal drugs. I came here today
to share my story in order to help other families avoid the
grief that drugs have brought my family.
Drugs and alcohol education programs find it hard to
compete with the example set at home. Many people are afraid to
tell adults to look at their own drug and alcohol use. The
parents need drug and alcohol abuse education too.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you very much certainly for a moving
statement and something that you lived through. We appreciate
your coming here and sharing that with us.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Maakestad follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Hastert. Next I would like to introduce Mike Coghlan,
former States Attorney here.
And, Mike, I think you would like to introduce one of the
witnesses here. Mike, please go ahead.
Mr. Coghlan. Thank you, Congressman Hastert. The witness I
would like to introduce at this time is Connie. Also, Derrick
and Jerome hopefully should be along shortly; we have their
prepared statements.
Briefly, in preparation for this hearing, I interviewed
eight individuals between the ages of 14 and 18; and as a
theme, one of the things I found that was very interesting,
that you may want to keep in the back of your mind during the
information from the younger people, is a statement that one of
the 17-year-olds made.
These individuals were in fact providing drugs to their
friends, and they had been through drug rehabilitation and
taken a fair amount of drugs themselves, and their focus was
very interesting. Their focus was that they were in fact
sharing, that they were doing something nice, that they were
turning their friends on and being generous, not something that
individuals that are trying to prevent the drug problem view as
something good or something healthful.
So it was with this approach that four or five individuals
mentioned how they supplied a significant amount of individuals
in this specific community with drugs; in other words, they
weren't, in their mind, polluting the community, they weren't
hurting people; they were in fact helping people. And I mention
that mentality because it was a little surprising to me, but I
think it is important to keep the mentality in mind if we are
going to approach solutions for the drug problem.
I am happy to go ahead with my statement or introduce
Connie, whichever is your preference.
Mr. Hastert. Why don't you go with your statement and then
introduce Connie.
Mr. Coghlan. OK.
First of all, I would like to thank the panelists who bring
the current information here today. This is current, local
information--I think that is important--it doesn't come from
some other area. Thank you very much, Congressman Manzullo and
Congressman Hastert, for coming to this community. We
appreciate your show of concern for our drug situation.
In the last 10 years, I've dealt with the local problem
ranging from pot pipes to murder. I would like to share five
things I learned about drugs in this community.
First of all, in the DeKalb and Sycamore area, we have
already solved the drug problem for 95 percent of the 12-year-
olds, 92 percent of the 13-year-olds, 65 percent of 14-year-
olds, 45 percent of the 15-year-olds, and 25 percent of the
local 16-year-olds, so there are some things that are working.
The reason we focus on the positive is because we believe that
brings us more energy to approach the difficult parts.
There are a lot of people around here who've led their
lives without illegal drugs, so we end up giving them credit.
We can also thank the conscientious parents, schools, and
government leaders for the drug prevention efforts. By focusing
on people who do not use drugs, we can help those who do abuse
drugs and alcohol.
Second, many people who abuse drugs and alcohol in the past
have stopped. They represent another large group in our
community who have, ``solved the drug problem,'' at least for
themselves. People who formerly used drugs can help those who
currently abuse drugs and alcohol, and in fact those are the
people who provided the facts for the hearing today.
Third, drugs are drugs. In many respects, it doesn't matter
what drug a person abuses, people abuse both legal and illegal
drugs. If we want to reduce drug abuse, we have to look at
legal and illegal drugs. This approach is less popular because
it focuses on behavior of adults. We should continue to
increase drug programs for adults.
Fourth, age discrimination against young people I believe
contributes to drug abuse. Society might benefit by cultural
diversity classes where adults learn more about youth culture.
As a young person, we could learn about young individuals'
music, clothing, video games and other aspects by their culture
which are often criticized by the adults. More adults could
make special efforts to get to know people between the ages of
12 and 17.
Fifth, the word ``goal,'' I found in my interviews, has a
negative context, and I was surprised to find that. The reason
it did is, they were often confronted with the statement, don't
you have any goals? Well, in reality, they have goals, they are
just maybe impotent goals. And that is what would keep them
away from drugs is a series of goals; because there are young
people who say, I have too many things to do in the day, I
can't find time to do all the activities.
So when people say they are bored--goals can help people
achieve happiness and success, but many people don't do this
because of the negative misconception about goal-setting. It is
a useful skill, like reading or writing. Goals can be fun; like
learning to drive a car, it takes more than a brief effort.
In relation to the drug situation, goal-setting can be
taught at age 12 and again at age 15. There are numerous
commercially sold programs to help individuals develop the
skill of achieving goals, so my recommendation would be there
be programs available for eighth graders and sophomores, and
again this comes from my interview with the eight individuals
between the ages of 14 and 18.
Thank you.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Coghlan follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Hastert. Would you like to introduce Connie?
Mr. Coghlan. Yes. I have known Connie since 1991, and
Connie has some firsthand observations, and I think she is a
great source of information for you for these congressional
purposes.
Mr. Hastert. Connie, if you just pull the mic up so we can
hear you, we would appreciate it.
Connie. I was first exposed to drugs at age 12, that was 6
years ago, in Sycamore. At the age of 12, I saw 15 to 20 people
get high on pot or tripping on acid almost every day. From
talking to other kids, age 12, I estimate that 65 out of 600
junior high school age kids use drugs. That is a little more
than 10 percent of the pre-high school age people in Sycamore.
I went to eighth grade DeKalb. There I saw between 10 and
15 people using drugs on a regular basis.
When I was 14, I saw approximately 50 people my age using
pot, acid, cocaine or some other drug. In school I saw as many
as 40 people who told me they were ``trippin''' on acid or high
on some other drugs. From what I heard, half my class used pot
or acid.
Most of the drug use happened away from schools, and the
teachers offered programs to help kids stay away from the
drugs. Most drug use occurred at friends' houses, behind
buildings or in alleys.
In the last 6 years, I have seen hundreds of people in the
DeKalb and Sycamore areas using drugs. I have seen athletes
turn into burn-outs, students with As and Bs get bad grades, I
have seen parents ignore their children, and a person crash
their car into a pole. I also remember one person go into
seizures and fall to the floor when he mixed alcohol, acid and
pot. I also know one person who went to jail and another who
lost his job, all because of drugs.
From what I have seen only 10 to 15 percent of the drug
users get caught by police or other people of authority, and
the people who get caught use drugs 100 times before they get
caught.
I know four people who have gone through drug
rehabilitation programs. I think the most effective way to keep
people away from drugs is by friends and parents saying it is
stupid to do them.
I stayed away from drugs because I have seen how it messed
up other people who do it. It was a help to me to see people
who fried their brains on drugs.
I believe presentations are more effective in smaller
groups and get more people to pay attention. During school
assemblies, I noticed most of the students look around the room
at their friends rather than watching the drug program.
Today I know between 200 and 300 people who use drugs and
in my view have no intent to stop.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you, Connie.
[The prepared statement of Connie follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Hastert. We will move next to Mr. Povlsen.
Mr. Povlsen. Thank you for inviting me here. I am going to
come from the perspective of prevention. I direct the DeKalb
County Partnership for Substance Abuse Free Environment, which
is a community coalition that we've had in place here in DeKalb
for the last 8 years. I am going to do something I don't
usually do and that is read, so bear with me.
The root causes of substance abuse among teens is very
complicated. For that reason, the solutions of the problems are
complex. Traditionally the government has looked at three
approaches: law enforcement, treatment and prevention. All are
necessary. These three approaches also focus on two facets of
the drug use, that is, supply and demand; and I am glad to hear
that you suggested that that is important.
I do think, however, that we need to focus more on the
demand side than we do the supply side. However, what tends to
be the case in our society with most issues is to react to
problems, spending an enormous amount of financial, as well as
human, resources reacting to problems as opposed to being
proactive and preventing them.
The analogy I commonly hear is, if the community had a
problem with persons drowning at an excessively high rate in a
swift and dangerous river, resources would be spent pulling the
people out of the river, either resuscitating them or burying
them, as opposed to going upstream to see the causes of how and
why they got into the river.
I want to make that statement again because I think it is
an important one. If a community had a problem with persons
drowning at an excessively high rate in a swift and dangerous
river, resources would be spent pulling the people out of the
river, resuscitating them, rather than going upstream and
finding out why they are falling in in the first place.
The drowning we see in our society, as it relates to
substance abuse, includes increased incidents of rape, murder,
assault, burglary, teen pregnancy, dropout rates, gang
involvement, car crashes, medical costs, et cetera. Every
problem we have in our society can somehow be traced back to
substance abuse. While no one will argue we need to get
criminals off the street, that we need to protect our society,
as long as we continue to focus on this as the way of dealing
with it, we will never be able to build enough prisons or hire
enough policemen to solve the problem.
The direction that we need to move in our society comes
from three levels, Federal and State and local. All are
necessary. Start with Federal, since that is who, I guess, we
are talking to here. Leadership begins at the top, and you are
the top.
Until there truly is a belief that prevention is the key,
that prevention works--and without prevention, all the jails in
the world will not stop the problem, and I think leadership is
more than just appropriating money in support of local
efforts--the first and foremost responsibility of the Federal
Government is to take what I think are some very tough stands
against some very powerful industries and financial supporters
of our legislators, namely, the liquor, tobacco, and
entertainment industries.
As long as we have these three industries in the Nation
continuing to influence our young people in terms of marketing,
advertising, and probably the most important thing, setting the
norms of our society, we will continue to have our young people
fall into the perilous river of substance abuse and violence.
Regardless of what anyone says, these industries are
establishing the norms and influencing the life-styles of our
society.
I applaud the direction that Congress has taken against the
tobacco industry. It is a stance in a direction we must go and
should have taken long ago. We must now do the same with the
liquor industry and eventually deal with the violence and other
problems that we see, that are seen in the entertainment
industry. These types of issues can best be dealt with at the
top and certainly it's the role of the Federal Government.
The second responsibility of our Federal Government is to
provide adequate financial supports to States and communities
in establishing and maintaining community prevention
collaborations. While the government must not pay the way--and
we have not had our way paid here with our local partnership--
it must be there to support the startup costs and the
continuation as local communities struggle to continue.
This also includes the rural areas, and I am glad to see
you are out here in the rural area, as well as the urban. In
fact, rural areas have unique problems in establishing
coalitions not present in the urban areas.
I think it is also important to note that urban
communities, like DeKalb and surrounding areas, don't need
hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the RFPs that I have seen
come out where, unless you have a community where there are
hundreds of thousands of dollars necessary, were not eligible,
and that sometimes eliminates us from the smaller amounts,
where the community can use $10, $15, $20,000 and do a
tremendous amount of work. That is what I see the Federal
Government needing.
The State government, their role is similar to the Federal
Government; however, it is more important in providing a
modeled structure and guidance, and I guess I will talk to Brad
on this one.
Although it is important that each community address the
prevention issues related and implemented and monitored to the
outcomes of the effectiveness, the State can act as an
effective administrative and fiscal agent in monitoring and
distributing Federal funds, the State should not be in the
business of doing prevention, but rather administering
prevention, which I think Illinois does a good job of.
And locally--and I think this is where the key is--it is
local communities' role to develop local community coalitions
to address the needs of the community. Most communities are
rich with service clubs, school prevention programs, law
enforcement, religious organizations, employee assistance
programming in businesses, media coverage, social services,
recreation, parents and families. It is the role of the
community to develop a coalition of these efforts to maximize
their efforts to attain the common goal of reducing alcohol and
other drugs.
The community must look inward to its own resources and not
outwards. It must develop its own strategies, it must develop
its own expectations and its own community norms. I think the
community needs to look at what norms it has in its community
that glamorize or promote substance abuse, and we see that in
the families, most certainly.
Communities don't need money to develop new programs, they
don't need money to start new agencies, they don't need money
to invent new bureaucracy; they need some financial support to
begin developing and maintaining cooperative efforts.
In conclusion, the drug threat to our teens in our rural
communities is not going to get better until the norms of our
society--and I want to stress that, the norms of our society as
it relates to alcohol and other drugs and violence change--
these norms are not going to change as long as we continue to
embrace the very dangerous and influential industries such as
the alcohol, tobacco, and entertainment industries. As long as
we have these three industries glamorizing the very things that
prevention programs are trying to address, as negative
instructions to our youth, we will continue to lose the battle.
Thank you.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Povlsen follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Coghlan, I am going to ask you to
introduce another one of our witnesses.
Mr. Coghlan. Congressman, this is Mr. Cole. I have known
Mr. Cole for several years. He is originally from the Chicago
area--actually, Chicago and New York--and he has been in the
DeKalb area for a number of years, 10 or so, and he is a very
rich source of information. He has a statement for Congress
today.
Mr. Cole.
Mr. Hastert. And for the record, you will be introduced as
Jerome.
Jerome. Hi. My name is Jerome Cole. I am here to tell you
about the drugs in the DeKalb area and the surrounding areas
around here.
I know a lot about the drugs because I used to use drugs. I
also sold drugs to people, and I organized people to sell drugs
in this area. Until recently, I lived in the area that had the
highest drug rate possibly in DeKalb. The building I lived in
was considered a haven for drug users and people that wanted to
drop by and sell different types of drugs.
I know different people in DeKalb that are using drugs
right now, and it is getting--I can't say it is getting way out
of hand, because I think it is leveling off and drugs are
picking up pretty much everywhere. I know a couple young kids,
10, 11, 12, all the way down to 8 and 9 years old, that use
drugs. Cocaine use in DeKalb has leveled off a little bit, but
different drugs are coming into DeKalb to attract a different
type of people.
For instance, like the skateboarders like to use a lot of
drugs to make themselves trip, or what you call hallucinate.
And then you have the athletes. A lot of athletes use a lot of
marijuana and use a lot of cocaine. Recently in DeKalb, people
have been sprinkling crack cocaine on blunt. Blunt is a cigar
which is hollowed out and refilled with marijuana or weed, and
this mixture of cocaine and pot can stop a person's heart.
Heroin is also used in DeKalb. I know six people in DeKalb
who are hooked on heroin. Heroin is the lowest of the low in
the drug chain. Most people snort it, but others pocket it or
shoot it in their arms. Heroin is not sold in the DeKalb area,
as far as I know. They drive to Chicago to get heroin. When the
heroin high is over, the users usually get a lot of physical
pains, like back pains, stomach pains, leg pains. They function
when they are on heroin, but they walk around like zombies when
it wears off.
I have seen many people going from smoking pot occasionally
to like full-time drug users, guys who were real close to me,
athletes, people considered respected in the community as
businessmen.
Some police have been more effective with the young kids by
speaking to them, talking to them, getting to know the
different people and getting to know the people they hang
around and the drug users. Local church programs and job
programs and the youth activity programs are also very helpful
to reduce drug use.
I am a local business manager, and I have hired at least 25
people to help them stay away from the drugs. I have also
helped organize youth activities locally. I have come into
contact with 200 or 300 people in these positive activities,
and I think church programs, jobs, and sport activities keep
kids away from drugs. It deters their mind to doing other
things when they have positive programs to help them out.
The drug and gang uses in DeKalb will only stop when they
stop at the top, because behind every puppet is a puppeteer,
somebody pulling the strings. So when there are enough
activities in the areas to get the kids to do other things, I
think kids would make positive choices among themselves. And
that is basically why I go with that.
[The prepared statement of Jerome follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Hastert. Thank you very much. We are going to come back
and ask you questions.
Jerome. No problem.
Mr. Hastert. Let me lead off the questions.
First of all, Mr. Coghlan, you talked about setting goals
in communities and you said busy kids don't use drugs. So you
are saying kids that are involved in school communities or
school activities, community activities, basically are kids
that don't necessarily--or aren't apt to get involved.
Mr. Coghlan. As part of my survey, I also talked to young
individuals who, I had assumed, never used any drugs, and they
told me they never did, and that was based upon a lot of
activities, extracurricular activities.
And the interesting thing I would also like to note is, the
individuals heavily involved with drugs estimated the people
that partied were at 80 percent. That means people that use
drugs, alcohol, under age are 80 percent. Whereas nondrug users
estimated it at 40 percent, which is a significant perception
difference. The non-drug estimated users are lower, in answer
to your question.
Mr. Hastert. And this is all survey.
Mr. Coghlan. This is a very unscientific survey of eight
individuals, and I am the telephone messenger.
Mr. Hastert. Connie, you talked about getting involved in
drugs when you were 12 years old or being confronted with a
drug situation when you were 12 years old, and you said at that
time you were a sixth grader, and your estimation is 10 percent
of the kids in your class in your community that were in some
way involved in drugs, that is sixth grade, 12 years of age.
Connie. Yes.
Mr. Hastert. What is the defining factor between kids who
get involved in drugs and don't get involved in drugs, in your
opinion?
Connie. I feel most people that do get involved in drugs
are because of like their friends and stuff, and their friends
have gotten involved in drugs that have like older siblings,
and they get into it, either the older siblings or the parents
get them into it, and they see everyone else doing it.
Mr. Hastert. Jerome, you talked about you were distributing
drugs and kind of running an organization. Was that a gang?
Jerome. It was through a gang.
Mr. Hastert. It was through a gang.
Jerome. It was through gang activity.
Mr. Hastert. Is that one of the reasons you ended up in
this area in the first place, to run that organization?
Jerome. I came here to go to school. I was recruited here
to play football, and after my football career ended, things
kind of got out of hand.
When you are young and you look at a football career, every
young kid playing football thinks he is going to be a big-time
athlete, and when that gets cut from you, I am not saying that
that is a reason to do that, but I needed other things to do. I
was already, quote/unquote, involved with small gang
activities, and they knew that I knew a lot of people, so I was
kind of used for that purpose. I mean, in the gang every person
has a purpose, if you are not a soldier. I was not a soldier, I
had a position, so my purpose was to do other things like
recruit and bring money to the organization.
Mr. Hastert. Why don't you tell us for a minute, to give us
some insight, what are the differences between soldiers and a
person with a position.
Jerome. It's like an army; you have soldiers and the guys
that go out and do the fighting or do the looting and the
drive-bys, and then you have guys that tell them to do it, guys
in the back, guys who recruit more gang members, to make the
gang stronger.
Mr. Hastert. What is the appeal--if somebody in a gang
would go out and recruit, what is their appeal of young kids? I
think they are pretty young when they start recruiting those
kids to a gang. What is the appeal? What is the sales pitch?
Jerome. Well, a lot of the young kids, when activities are
not present, they need something to do or something to be a
part of, and the main thing is to get the energy. The energy of
youth is misguided. If the energy was guided toward more
positive things, it would be harder to recruit a kid.
For instance, if I was to go to a kid and he had a strong
family background and was involved in things, he would be real
hard to get. There is nothing I could tell him to get him to
come to the dark side. But if the kid is dysfunctional and is
from a dysfunctional family, I could easily get him. I could
tell him that, ``We are your family now. What do you want,
money?'' And that whole time, if you get them high, they are
not thinking clearly anyway, so the rhetoric that I am giving
them, it sounds even more enticing, because they are not
thinking anyway.
Mr. Hastert. One of the recruiting methods is to offer kids
drugs.
Jerome. Well, no.
Mr. Hastert. I misunderstood you then.
Jerome. What I am saying is, if the kid is high, it is more
likely that he is not thinking clearly, so I have an even
better chance at recruiting him, because once he makes the
oath, once he comes down from the drugs, he has made the oath,
so he is almost automatically in.
Mr. Hastert. Let me ask you another thing. The function of
the gang itself is a lot of the things that finance the gangs,
the activities.
Jerome. Drugs usually finance the gangs.
Mr. Hastert. So drugs are the financial arm of the gangs. A
lot of the problems we see in some of our urban and suburban
communities, even places like Aurora and Elgin, are fights
between gangs. I mean, we hear there are turf battles. Is that
really areas where they sell drugs? Is that part of the turf?
Jerome. If it was an area that more drug users will come by
and buy the drugs, the rival gangs would try to take over the
area, because the area, obviously, would be the money-making
area.
If it was a building that a lot of people had drug problems
in, drug sellers want to be in that building, because he has a
lot of people that are consuming the drugs as product. So if a
rival gang sees that the building is where all the drug users
are going, you know, his team wants that, so that is where the
battle begins.
Mr. Hastert. Ms. Maakestad, one of the things I wanted to
ask you--and you have certainly been through the other side of
this pain and problem. You may want to pull the mic over to
answer.
In retrospect, you have lost a son, kind of a unique
situation, but it happens, unfortunately, more than it should
in this country. If you saw and you could do things different
or manage events differently, what would be the things to keep
your son off the drugs and to actually, if he was on them, to
make him whole again?
Ms. Maakestad. I think if I would have had the education,
maybe through schooling, or through the schools, or maybe
outside education or something, more on the gangs and the
drugs, I would have been able to recognize the signs and the
symbols and all that, you know, that he was doing the drugs and
that he was in the gangs.
Mr. Hastert. You basically were unaware--what age did he
get involved?
Ms. Maakestad. I was told around 14 or 15.
Mr. Hastert. And sometimes--I have had teenagers myself,
and you really don't understand the changes they are going
through, different personalities and stuff. You sense that that
is what happened at that age and that you were really unaware
his involvement in drugs was going on at that time.
Ms. Maakestad. Yes, it was that strong, I didn't realize.
Mr. Hastert. How did your son finance his use of drugs?
Ms. Maakestad. Through the gangs.
Mr. Hastert. Through the gangs. OK.
Mr. Povlsen, a couple things. I want to tell you, first of
all, I appreciate your testimony, and I don't disagree with
you; I think we need to have a balance, to look at the business
side of this. There is a lot of money being made from drugs,
and I think we need to make sure that those people who make
billions of dollars from this business are taken out of the
other end of the river, where people are falling and drowning
as well.
But, I just want to tell you that just 10 days ago I was at
the White House, and the President signed the bill called the
1997 Community Antidrug Coalitions Act, which is what you
said--not a lot of Federal money. I don't think throwing money
at problems is always a solution.
But the whole gist or focus of that act was to have
organizations within the community come together if they needed
a little help, some matching funds, to help them get a director
or secretary or something. But they have to be in place, the
funds have to be there, and there is a little help on the
Federal side to help make that work. So I hope that is
certainly in the focus of what you are talking about.
One of the things I wanted to address, when you are talking
about communities setting goals, that those--sometimes the
norms that you speak of--how do you change from inside out?
Because I don't think it works outside in. How do you change
the norms of a community or society? How would you change the
norms of a DeKalb, IL?
Mr. Povlsen. First of all, you have to get the people
together, talking and look at hard issues, and that is why I
said it starts at the top. I think we need to look at those
things in our community that made--and I just need to say
something, that we are focusing a lot on drugs and gangs, and I
think we need to focus on that, but I think if you look
statistically, I think the most dangerous and destructive drugs
we have in our society and if you walk into any high school, it
is alcohol, and that's a tougher nut to crack. We have to look
at our own societal norms that relate to that and the way we
ourselves drink or we promote drinking or glamorize drinking.
So I just want to say that we don't lose sight of what is
a--maybe not as glamorous and maybe is an intensive thing as
looking at a gang-type drug deal, but going to the high school,
we have Mr. Nakonechny here, and he can tell you--I hope he has
a chance to speak--the most dangerous drugs we see at our high
school is the alcohol use, and that is where we need to start.
We need to start looking at our own homes and communities and
our beer gardens in our community. We need to start looking at
what our coaches and our teachers and our police officers and
our politicians and things that every one of us do as a
community leader, whether we are a Little League coach or
whether we're a teacher, that every one of us have a
responsibility in the community to mentor youth, to talk with
youth, to set the standards, to set their own personal goals.
And, you know, the Little League coach, who goes out and
Little Leagues does a good job and is seen at the corner tavern
drinking in a blatant fashion, is not acceptable. That is a
norm that we need to look at.
And so I think that that is where we need to start in the
community. We need to start with us as individuals and not
point the finger somewhere else and look at our own family use.
The one question you asked of Connie: What are the most
influential things or what things would stop a child, a young
person, from drinking? We held a youth forum here in DeKalb a
few weeks ago, and the single most important factor that
influenced the young people to stay off alcohol and other
drinks was their parents. And I know that, as parents--I have
children myself, you have children--we often don't think we
have influence over our kids because they will fight us the
whole way, but children will say it starts at home. The example
you set and the norms you set in your home are what make me who
I am today.
Mr. Hastert. So part of this is communication. And, you
know, I taught for 16 years, so I have a little bit of feeling
about how kids communicate. You have families that, quote/
unquote, sometimes are the ideal families, and the reality is
that you also have families that are struggling to get along.
Many are single-parent families, not the ideal, but it has
become more the norm than the other situation.
So you think communication--not everybody is going to be
the ideal, whatever that ideal is, in raising them or whatever.
So how can communities support or help that? Is it just the
dialog itself? Are there other ways you can reach kids, in your
opinion?
Mr. Povlsen. I think the communities need to do what they
need to do, and there are different social services that can
provide that, and I think we need to reach out of our own homes
and reach down the street to that neighborhood and become aware
of that single mom or that child that is struggling or is out
past curfew, help the neighbor, as the lady at the end said,
``if I could have gotten some more education.''
My guess is that there were other people that recognized
that her son was having problems. We can't be afraid to step
forward and try to help our neighbors out, network with each
other as parents. One of the things that got me through to my
teenagers, that are off on their own now, is that I would talk
to the other parents and community leaders, I would not be
afraid to go into the school and talk to the teacher.
Communication is exactly it. We can't go into our own shell and
lock our door and think of our kid as safe and then the
community as safe. We need to be the parents, guardians, and
mentors for our entire community.
Mr. Hastert. Connie, what do you feel about parental
support?
Connie. A lot of my friends were from single homes or
single-family homes, or single-parent, and a lot of times their
parents weren't around. So, you know, a lot of times they came
to my house. They were at my house more than they were at home.
Honestly, around my friends, I don't see the parents helping
them out or anything or that they are really there for them.
Mr. Hastert. A lot of parents were working, this type of
thing.
Connie. Well, a lot of the parents went out, themselves.
Mr. Hastert. I am going to turn the mic over to my
colleague, but I would like to reserve and come back in the
second round of questions.
Mr. Manzullo. Thank you, Congressman Hastert.
The 1997 Community Antidrug Coalition Act was known in the
House of Representatives as the Hastert-Portman Act, and I just
want to commend Denny for the leadership.
We have a group of about eight Members of Congress that
meet once a month, Wednesday at 8 a.m., and we met with so many
people that are involved in all aspects of this plague on our
young people. But if I recall, about 2 months ago, Denny, we
had the generals and the admirals in charge of interdiction of
drugs coming in from South America. It was quite interesting.
Mr. Povlsen, let me ask you a hypothetical question. For
every 100 kids that are involved in drugs, how many come from
two-parent households?
Mr. Povlsen. Well, I think statistics show that only about
half of the kids, to begin with, come from two-parent
households, or very few.
The question was how many drug users would come from----
Mr. Manzullo. No, no. For every 100 kids that become
involved in drugs, how many come from two-parent households?
Mr. Povlsen. I really don't have the answer to that
question. I would think that--I would ask you a question back.
Where are you wanting to go with that?
Mr. Manzullo. Well, the reason I asked the question is that
it is easy to make the assumption that one of the main reasons
children are hung up on drugs is that they come from a, quote,
dysfunctional family, and most people will translate
dysfunctional family into a one-parent household.
Mr. Povlsen. I would not say that is the key.
Mr. Manzullo. OK. That is the question.
Mr. Povlsen. And nowhere in my testimony did I say anything
about one-parent households.
Mr. Manzullo. All right. So the question really is, explain
what is meant by a dysfunctional family.
Mr. Povlsen. From my own perspective, a dysfunctional
family, I think, is a family where there is little direction,
there is little support, the parents are using drugs themselves
or setting standards in the household that I think are not good
ones for the community. That is what I would consider
dysfunctional. It doesn't have anything to do with income,
marital status----
Mr. Manzullo. Or the number of parents.
Mr. Povlsen. Or the number of parents in the household.
Mr. Manzullo. I know that was a loaded question, but it was
very critical to get that out, because there is such a
misconception in the community that if a child is from a one-
parent household, the chances are more likely that the child
may get involved in drugs, and you don't agree with that
assumption, do you?
Mr. Povlsen. No.
Mr. Manzullo. Neither do I.
Let me ask you a question, Pam. You have suffered the
ultimate tragedy as a result of a child being involved in
drugs. You said that if you had been able to tell the signs or
to observe the signs of a child being pulled into drugs, that
you might have been able to do something. What are the signs?
Ms. Maakestad. To give you an example, I have a 26-year-old
daughter who was about 15 when she went into Rose Crantz with a
drug and alcohol problem, and we went through the same things
that we did with Brent, with the treatment programs and all
that kind of stuff.
Well, while we were going through this, we were getting
information from Sheila about where they were getting their
drugs, where they were getting their alcohol, and it happened
that she was getting it from the school.
Mr. Manzullo. What do you mean, from the school?
Ms. Maakestad. From some man. I am not sure who it was, but
there was a gentleman who would come to the back of the tennis
courts and was selling them alcohol and drugs, and he would be
there at a certain time every day and do whatever--you know,
deal whatever to the kids, and they would do whatever, I assume
whatever they had to, to get the drugs and the alcohol.
My daughter didn't have a lot of money. I know that,
because we didn't have a lot of money. When I confronted the
school about it, they said, ``Oh, yes, we have been watching
that problem for about 6 months now,'' and I said, ``But why
hasn't anything been done?'' And so I called the police
department, and within a couple of weeks the man was busted.
But they didn't have a clue. The school hadn't even
communicated with them that they were even watching these
people. And then the principal of that school also told my
daughter, after she got out of treatment, that she may as well
just quit school as soon as she turns 16 because she was a
worthless piece of shit anyways, and that was the exact words.
So, she did quit school, and she never did go back. She now has
three children.
Mr. Manzullo. So both of your children were hung up on
drugs.
Ms. Maakestad. I have three children. Connie is my daughter
also.
Mr. Manzullo. Oh, I didn't know that.
Well, Connie, let me ask you a question. You are how old
now?
Connie. 18.
Mr. Manzullo. What are the telltale signs? What did you do
differently as a person who became introduced to drugs that
parents should look at?
Connie. I watched my brother and sister, and I seen what
happened to them, how the drugs messed them up, and I didn't
want to be like that, so I stayed away from it.
Mr. Manzullo. And, Jerome, you are a very interesting
person, and I appreciate you coming here to share your
testimony this morning. Children get pulled into gangs,
regardless of social, economic background; is that correct?
Jerome. Sure.
Mr. Manzullo. Tell me what you have seen in terms of the
background of the children.
Jerome. You get a lot of kids from the suburbs that will
come to the city just to see the life-style that they see on
TV. They see it on TV, and they think this has got to be cool
because it is on TV. So you get a lot of suburban kids that
come out of the city, and those are the easiest prey. You can
almost make them do almost anything, because they are trying to
fit and trying to glamorize anything they say on TV anyways.
So if I knew a group of kids that were coming from afar
just to hang out in the, quote/unquote, hood, that is it, you
could get them to do anything, you know.
Mr. Manzullo. These were suburban kids coming to the city.
Jerome. Just to see that type of life-style that they see
on TV.
Mr. Manzullo. How old are the kids?
Jerome. As young as 12 or 13.
Mr. Manzullo. How are they getting there? Are the parents
taking them there?
Jerome. By car. 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds
have a license, drive to the city, want to hang out in the
projects, just to see what it is about.
Mr. Manzullo. A lot of that goes on?
Jerome. A lot of it goes on because of the way the media
covers what happens in the ``hood.''
Mr. Hastert. I just want to followup. Some of the movies,
people go to the movies and see the ``hood'' and all this
stuff. Is that kind of pushing them?
Jerome. That is exactly what will do it.
Mr. Manzullo. A question to you, Jerome, or you, Mr.
Povlsen: What movies? Name them. What movies are detrimental to
the children in getting kids hooked on drugs? You mentioned the
entertainment industry. Let's mention them by name here.
Mr. Povlsen. Well, I am not going to mention them by name,
because I choose not to go to them.
Mr. Manzullo. The reason I ask the question is, one of the
purposes of the hearing is so that parents can be more aware of
what is out there. The movie producers are doing things to get
our kids on drugs. If you don't mind, let's name them.
Otherwise, how are people supposed to know? It is a generic
answer. I do not want to put you on the spot.
Mr. Povlsen. Well, I can't think of any off the top of my
head, but any movie where you see violence and cigarette
smoking. I guarantee you will not see a movie where you don't
see cigarette smoking, and cigarette smoking and alcohol are
the gateway to other drugs, and it is glamorized. It is being
paid for by the tobacco industry; it is being paid for by the
liquor industries.
Movies have violence, cigarette smoking, gangs, and it is
all the glamorization. You walk into the ``hood,'' and people
get blown away, and at the end you see the excitement of it and
the glamour of it and not the trauma of it that this poor lady
at the end here had to deal with, and that is an industry that
we are not willing to tackle.
Mr. Manzullo. Connie, do you agree with that statement?
Connie. In some ways.
Mr. Manzullo. Well, tell me which ways you agree, because
alcohol and tobacco are not going to be illegal, at least at
this point. Drugs are illegal.
Mr. Manzullo. I don't think cigarettes and alcohol are the
gateways--maybe alcohol. I know a lot of people who smoke that
don't get into drugs. I don't feel that is a gateway to drugs.
Mr. Manzullo. Jerome, do you agree with the statement or
disagree with the statement?
Jerome. I can't say that. I just think the key is to have
preventive measures, regardless of what they see, as far as
drinking and smoking. If they have preventive measures, I think
a lot of them will make the right choices. It is the other
things, besides the cigarette smoking and drinking, that are
attracting the kids. I know that for a fact.
Mr. Manzullo. Mr. Povlsen is coming from a much broader
perspective.
How many kids have you dealt with?
Mr. Povlsen. Hundreds over the last 25 years.
Mr. Manzullo. And these are observations that you have made
based upon what the kids tell you, so you have a lot of inside
information to which we are not privy.
When kids see people drinking on television, that
encourages them to drink or not to drink? What does it do?
Mr. Povlsen. It is such a subtle--if you ask a kid, ``Did
you start drinking because of a movie you saw?'' they will say
no. But it gets back to the entire social norm. You can't tell
me an 11-year-old kid who is sneaking a cigarette, doing
something illegal, that is exciting, enticing, something he
shouldn't be doing, doesn't lead to the next step of trying to
get the beer and then trying to get the whatever up the road.
The entertainment industry and what they see their parents
doing are what is an acceptable thing to do. It's so subtle and
so long--so much over a long period of time that it is not any
one single incident that creates that.
Mr. Hastert. So what you are actually saying is that in
your open illustration--is that every society should pull the
people out that are drowning, and we do that, and it is very
expensive, and treatment is expensive, recidivism is very high.
Basically what you are saying is, you have to go up river
anyway and stop people from falling in, and you put up the
fences, you put up the gates, you put up the detours so people
don't fall in the river and drown in the first place. Is that
what you are really saying?
Mr. Povlsen. Yes, absolutely, and sometimes building the
fences forces us to look in our own pocketbooks and our own
behaviors, and that is what we don't want to look at. It is
easier to pull and label the individual who happened to fall in
or was pushed in.
Mr. Hastert. Congressman, we are going to come back for a
second round. At this time, I would like to have Mr. Coghlan
introduce another witness. I understand this witness has been
involved in gangs in another life and is now working in faith-
based operations to try to keep kids from getting involved.
Give us a little introduction, and we would like to hear
your testimony.
Mr. Coghlan. Mr. Smith is here today, and he helps perform
a very helpful function in the DeKalb area to reaching out to
individuals around the seventh and eighth grades. He has done a
lot for the community, from organizing basketball and church
events to this father's program, and Mr. Smith also has
familiarity with the street gangs from the city of Chicago, and
he sees the cycles they have gone through in the city of
Chicago from perhaps 30 years ago, and he also has a good idea
of what is occurring here locally in the DeKalb and Sycamore
areas.
Mr. Smith.
Mr. Hastert. We welcome you as well.
Derrick. Like I said, I am Derrick Smith and I have been in
DeKalb since 1972. I came to DeKalb from Chicago, and when I
was growing up in Chicago, I was telling Mike that I was
involved in gang activity, drug activity, of which I came up
here to DeKalb and brought some of that activity with me.
But in 1977, I got my life back together and turned things
around, and so right now my crusade is to try to help
individuals that are falling under the same umbrella that I was
in and to come out of it. And what I wanted to do for most of
the kids, I am trying to show them a good side as well as a bad
side of the city, because I grew up in the projects in Chicago.
When you see 75 percent of the good of drug use and being
involved in gangs, and 25 percent of, you know, what is not
good, you end up taking that 75 percent. But if I can show them
50 percent of what is good, things you can do with an
education, things you can do with somebody as a mentor, because
I found out the best thing we have done so far in DeKalb County
with the young people is our mentoring program, because we
found a lot of parents coming back to school in DeKalb and a
lot of parents trying to get out of Chicago and other urban
areas to try to find a better place for the kids.
And you find a lot of single parents, and you find a lot of
young people who are just not involved in positive things that
they want to get involved with here in DeKalb. And I don't
think DeKalb at the time was ready, because I look at the
school system, and you have in DeKalb and you had--we had one
black teacher now that they hired for the fall, and one of the
mentor programs that we started was seventh and eighth graders,
because we were having a lot of problems with the African
American males in the seventh and eighth grade Hunter Middle
School.
So we went ahead and observed what was going on, and we saw
a lot of teachers just didn't understand, because it is a
different culture and they weren't experienced in dealing with
African Americans. So we came in and tried to help them make
the transition and tried to help young people make the
transition too. And we found out through our efforts that the
teachers were more willing to help students with special needs
and students were more willing to listen to what the teachers
were saying.
So with that group we had there, we targeted eight
students, but we had maybe 20, and we ended up--with the help
of Mr. Rodriguez, the principal at Hunter Middle School, we
developed a relationship with their school and with those young
people, and it was a positive relationship, because I think at
the seventh- and eighth-grade level is the level you have to
look at. That is the group that is looking. They don't know
what they want to do.
And if you have someone come in showing fast money and with
the current situation you have, currently, economically, where
I was growing up, we had jobs they had for the summer, but
through different Presidents that came through, that took a lot
of the youth programs and a lot of the youth summer jobs and
just kind of left young people out there.
So what we are trying to do is give them something to do.
And I think the idle time is what really kills them, and so the
time we try to give them something positive to do, it takes
care of the idle time and it develops a relationship where they
could see some positivity with older African males and make
them a positive asset as far as in the community.
[The prepared statement of Derrick follows:]
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Hastert. Let me ask you, you came out to DeKalb in
1972. Did you come out here just to organize a gang, or did you
come out here because you are an athlete, or what happened?
Derrick. I came out because I was in school and I was an
athlete.
Mr. Hastert. So let's go down to what you are doing now.
You are working with--basically, churches, basically faith-
based organizations--and the success rate you had with the kids
is not just teaching them or mentoring them, but also giving
them something else as a replacement that drugs gave them
before; is that right?
Derrick. Right.
Mr. Hastert. How does that work?
Derrick. It works very well. We have men from our Men's
Club and we bring the young guys in. Like we had a grant from
DCFS for positive youth development. It was a grant for $5,000
for 3 years, which--unfortunately, it ran out.
But we would have self-esteem workshops at a hotel where we
would take 25 young guys from fifth grade to eighth grade to
the hotel, and most had never been to a hotel, and so this was
something outstanding to them. And at the hotel we would have
eight men from the Men's Club, somebody that was--had a
professionalism in health. We would teach them health, we would
go into gang prevention, we would go into drug prevention, we
would go into all the parts of education, young fathers, sex
education, and we would have various topics on the subjects,
and we would discuss them thoroughly for 2 days like--the young
men, and we tried to find out where their heads were.
Through that relationship, that is where we began a
relationship where if something was going wrong, like say we
have a basketball team and one of the guys on the basketball
team was using drugs or he knew somebody that was using drugs,
one of the players, that got to the point where we developed a
relationship, where they had so much faith in it, they would
tell us, you know, Mr. Smith, you need to talk to so-and-so,
because I think he is involved with drugs, or he is hanging out
with so-and-so, or he might be involved with gang activities.
And with my counseling background, I would talk to individuals
and see where their head was, and I would sit down; and for the
most part, we would do free counseling sessions with the
individuals, and if it meant bringing in the family, we would
do that too.
Mr. Hastert. It was pretty successful?
Derrick. Very successful.
Mr. Hastert. Jerome was talking to us a little bit and he
came to DeKalb under the same circumstances you did, his career
was over and he had a void in his life and some involvement
with drugs--not with drugs, but with gangs, and you were kind
of on a parallel track, right? Were you involved, when you were
in Chicago, in a gang?
Derrick. Right.
Mr. Hastert. Then you came out here and did you recruit a
gang here?
Derrick. When I first came out here, I didn't really
recruit. I was recruiting guys to sell drugs for me, but for
the most part, guys who were in the gang I was in, they would
come up on the weekends really.
Mr. Hastert. They recruited people to sell drugs?
Derrick. Right.
Mr. Hastert. Was that part of the gang?
Derrick. They didn't necessarily have to be in a gang.
Basically, at that time, I just wanted to make some money.
Mr. Hastert. When you sold drugs on the streets, wherever,
in DeKalb and DeKalb County, was it any different than selling
drugs in Chicago?
Derrick. It was basically different because I don't think
the police were aware, as aware as the police in Chicago if you
were selling drugs or doing anything like that, because we
would almost say, you go to DeKalb, you don't have to worry
about getting busted because the police there don't really know
what is going on.
Mr. Hastert. Has that changed?
Derrick. Yes.
Mr. Hastert. I just want to set the record straight.
Derrick. That was 1972, and now we are looking at 1997, so,
you know, it has been a big change.
Mr. Hastert. From your experience being involved in a gang
and selling it, now trying to be on the other end of this, what
has happened? Are the prices of drugs on the streets in DeKalb
County different from the prices of drugs on the street in
Chicago?
Derrick. Yes.
Mr. Hastert. Much? Higher or cheaper?
Derrick. For the most part, cheaper.
Mr. Hastert. Why?
Derrick. Because you have a college town and most of the
time, you have a college town, you get a better discount than
you would get if you were selling drugs in Chicago.
Mr. Hastert. That is informational and interesting.
Let me ask you also, have the drugs changed? Has the purity
level, prices in the last 10 years, have they gone up? Have
they gone down? What have you seen? The reason I ask this is,
our information tells us, cocaine--especially where cocaine,
sometimes cut down; if it was 30 to 40 percent pure, today it
is 90 percent pure and prices used to be higher--it is cheaper.
Is that true, not true, in your experience?
Derrick. I would think it is more potent now. I think about
the last 3 or 4 years, you see more potent drugs on the street,
because there was a time, especially during the 1980's, where
the quality was really slipping and you had less drug usage,
but from the time of about, say, 1991 or since the 1990's, it
seems like drugs, somehow they are more potent.
Mr. Hastert. Jerome, do you want to put your insight into
the same question?
Jerome. I think what makes it more potent is by there being
so many drug users now and drug dealers, they chop it up and
put so many different drugs on it to make it stronger. I think
the purity of it is lower now, but when people cut it and put
the drugs on it to expand it, that is what makes the drug even
more dangerous than it already is.
For instance, blunt, when they take the blunt, empty the
blunt out of the cigar and put the marijuana in it, you have
people who sprinkle crack cocaine on top of it to make the
blunt even stronger. So the mixture of all the drugs is what is
making the drugs stronger.
I don't think it is the purity of it. I'm positive.
Mr. Hastert. At least what the DEA tells us, I think the
purity is higher.
Jerome. I think they chop it up so much now because there
are so many drug dealers and users, everybody wants to be known
to have the best drugs, so they put anything on it to make it
stronger, rat poisoning, PCP, anything.
Mr. Hastert. So there is heroin on the blunt, marijuana
stuff as well.
Jerome. Heroin, cocaine, whatever, just to make it
stronger.
Mr. Hastert. Mike, in your experience as States Attorney
here, what are the most effective things, in your view, that
were done to try to turn things around?
Mr. Coghlan. I think a police officer, for example,
speaking directly to a drug-using individual in a respectful
manner would help that person free themselves from drug use. I
encounter a lot of individuals as witnesses on cases, and it
was actually a pleasure to deal with the individuals. They were
doing good community service, even though they had been
criminally involved in the past and even though they had been
involved with drugs or drug dealing in the past.
To answer your question briefly, to get in to know
personally the individuals who are referred to as the drug
dealers, I call them human beings temporarily involved in the
habit of selling drugs, soon to be extricated by our helping
hand. It's a different perspective, but that is what I see
actually works, because it is our children that are selling
drugs.
These are human beings like these very helpful individuals
here with me at the table today; and the ``us versus them''
mentality can be overcome on the local level, when, like a lot
of very fine DeKalb police officers do--and these individuals
at the table will tell you, when they stop them, even though
they are going to arrest them for a small quantity, for
possession of a drug, they will say, did you see the Bulls game
last night, how are things at home, and they will engage them
in a conversation.
Community policing, I suppose, would be the general term
for it. And that is what I have seen, and that is why these
individuals have been kind enough to come and share some
extremely important firsthand information on the local level,
the front lines, people getting to know the individuals who are
selling the drugs. That is what I have seen as the most
beneficial in helping people move away from drug activity.
Mr. Hastert. Let me go back and ask you two individuals a
followup question.
If you go into a community and you know that community is
going to be tough on gangs and drug dealers, can you overcome
that as a gang leader, a recruiter, or would you stay out of
that territory?
Derrick. That depends. You probably would try it and see
what happens, and if you had a negative reaction, you would
probably take what you had and move to the next town.
Mr. Hastert. Jerome.
Jerome. I agree with the same thing. It is tough to crack.
Mr. Hastert. Both of you gentlemen are still in this
community. Now you are working with the youth, certainly in
different ways--you in a faith-based organization and you talk
about talking with kids and working with kids. Both of you are
former athletes, and I am sure you both have keys into certain
groups of people.
I coached for 16 years, so I understand the ability to do
that.
What is the best message that you have for kids today,
either to turn their life around or stay away from it?
Derrick.
Derrick. You said the best message?
Mr. Hastert. Yes. How are you going to persuade a kid not
to get into drugs?
Derrick. First, I think you tell them, you know, you don't
need to be involved with drugs. I think you have to develop a
relationship where they believe in you, where they have faith
in you, and you have done something that they see that they can
really trust you. And I think that comes from the love that you
have for those individuals, and they feel the love you have for
them; and then they are more apt to listen and do the things
you say.
Because you can talk all day, but if they feel like you are
not in their corner, it doesn't matter what you say. If they
feel you are in their corner, if this person is saying
something that helps me, that makes a difference, because I've
picked up young guys at 3 or 4 a.m., and taken them home, you
know, 14- and 15-year-olds and waited until they went into
their home. And when they see me, like a lot of them might have
their hat banging from one side or the other, you know,
representing a gang; and if they see me, they turn their hats
straight and say, how are you doing, Mr. Smith, how are you
doing, Coach Smith, and that shows me the respect they have for
me as an individual.
And what I have been saying to them is hitting home because
they know what they are doing wrong and they know, in my sight,
they can't do what they want to do. This way, it tends to make
them say--you know, if you see a drug dealer, and you say, he
has a car, he has all this, he has it made; but here is Mr.
Smith doing all this in the community, and he seems to have it
made, too, and this is somebody I would rather be than a drug
dealer.
Mr. Hastert. Jerome, can you enlighten us a little bit in
that area?
Jerome. The best thing I can see is each individual to take
light of himself. The best thing I can do to help a kid is to
change myself; if I get myself together, and a kid sees I was
doing this and now I am making an attempt to change or
straighten my life out, because you can't look back.
So the best thing I can do is, get myself together, and the
kids see that I am going in the right direction, obviously the
ones that will look up to me, that still do look up to me, when
I was in those activities, look at me in a different light, and
they like to take the same road that I am taking. So my thing
is that each individual makes a change within themself, makes a
positive change within themself, and the people that are around
you all the time will feed off of that.
I think the young kids that look up to me or like to hang
around me, because of what position I had when I was banging,
will see now I am doing something positive, that now they can
do the same thing, and that is to lead by example.
Mr. Hastert. Congressman Manzullo.
Mr. Manzullo. What turned your life around?
Derrick. It was a spiritual enlightenment. A lot of guys
ask, did you go to rehab and do this and do that; and I say,
no, I didn't, because I had both parents at home, and I was
raised, and it was church every Sunday and, you know, different
things like that, of which I kind of fell off.
But I was at a drug house, and they called it a shooting
gallery because at that time I was shooting heroin; and when I
was--I was high on drugs at the time, and I had this, it was
like a dream where I was high, and it was like I saw this lady,
it was something by a bed, and I was walking through a cloud
and when I got through the cloud, I looked down and the person
looked up and it was a woman, like she was praying by a bed, or
kneeling by a bed. And when she looked up, she smiled, and it
was my mother, and through that, it seemed like everything
started coming to me. I saw my grandmother and I saw everybody
who really cared about me at that time, and when I came out and
opened my eyes, I wasn't even high anymore; and when I got up,
I was with three or four other guys, and I told them I had to
go.
So I ran all the way home, like 12 blocks back home, and I
told my mom, I feel I have to go back to DeKalb, because I had
a partner in DeKalb. I said that is the only way I can save
myself. So she gave me money, put me on the bus, sent me to
DeKalb.
My partner picked me up, and for 3 days I was cold turkey,
and he would sit there and read the Bible to me, because I was
telling him I have to go back, I was sick, and he kept saying,
just stay down, just lie down. And for 3 days he read the Bible
to me, and when I woke up, I wasn't high any more, my stomach
wasn't hurting any more and from that time on, I made a pledge
to God. I said, if you can keep me straight like this, I
guarantee I will never put another needle in my arm, and I
haven't. So for him to spare my life like that, I give my life
to the young people, especially this community.
Mr. Manzullo. Three days of pretty effective treatment, I
would say.
Mr. Manzullo. Connie, what gives young people hope today?
Connie. I like seeing other people that have gone through
the drugs, how they changed their life around and stuff. But
like there are not that many out there. I mean, there are
people out there like these guys that are trying to help the
kids, but then there are a lot of people that don't. So there
is not much out there that does give the kids hope.
Mr. Manzullo. There was an interesting article that
appeared in the Washington Post, April 19, 1993, by Sarah
Blumenthal, writing about the death of Kurt Cobain, the rock
star, who at first tried to overdose and then he killed himself
with a shotgun a week later; and she was interviewing two young
people, and one of the people she interviewed was a young man
working two jobs who said, every day I wake up angry, life has
no core. As I read that article--and I have talked to a lot of
young people who come by my office, and I ask them the same
question, what gives them hope; because if you have no hope,
there is no vision and there is no reason for living.
Let me go back to the movies. Let me give some names here;
we have a little congressional immunity: ``Trainspotting''
glamorized heroin; ``Big City, Bright Lights,'' glamorized
cocaine. Many of the John Belushi movies, until he died by a
cocaine overdose himself, and a lot of the Richard Pryor
movies, until he was nearly killed when he was freebasing
cocaine--when the movies come out, do you do anything about it?
Do you put out a press release?
I know the risk is that more kids will go and see them, so
you really don't know what to do in that circumstance, do you?
Mr. Povlsen. I think we, as a community, have to be more
active; and there are groups out there that do do that, that do
write letters, that do try to have TV ratings, et cetera. But I
think what we need to do from a personal use is look at those,
not support those, not let our children go to those, do what we
can at a local level to make sure we in a capitalistic society
don't support those kind of things. It is back to the
individual responsibility.
Mr. Manzullo. It is--but it is not working, is it?
Mr. Povlsen. That is because--I mean, if we were to go
around this room and look at our own individual commitments,
and really get down to the bottom line, we may not see what we
want to see or need to see for this community and this Nation
to turn around. I think what we are hearing here are things
that are very important. I think the individual work with the
individual youth to turn around individual people is vital, and
I do that in some of the work I do in the student-to-student
program through the high school here. And I have to say that if
I had a choice between the work I do with the individuals or
the work I do with the community, the work I do with the
individuals is more rewarding because I can see a kid who was
an eighth grader, who was drunk on his front porch while he was
baby-sitting, turn around with a college degree now and come
back and say, Kris, if it wasn't for your program, I wouldn't
be where I am.
But at the same time, we need to also look at the bigger
community issues and that is writing our Congressmen, that is
doing what we can to get people to not go to the movies,
mentoring our neighborhood youth, whatever it is in our own
local communities.
Mr. Hastert. Thanks, Don.
One issue, Derrick, that you brought out, in your view,
that drugs were less potent in the 1980's and got more potent
in the 1990's--and I want to kind of make a general statement
on this thing. In our work, we found--to lead into the next
panel--this is a balanced effort and I think there are six
things this country has to do, six energies that we have to
expend ourselves in.
In the 1990's, or 1980's, we did a little tougher job on
stopping drugs coming in. We gave the Coast Guard access and
interdiction access to stop drugs; and during that period of
time, drugs weren't as potent, that is what the statistics tell
us, and we cut a lot of that. The Drug Czar's office was cut
back in 1992, almost 500 people to 25 people, and we lost a lot
of the effort, and drugs became a little bit of a more
emphasized problem.
But I think there are six things, and we need to do this.
It starts at the White House and in Congress and right down the
line, and we need to work together; and I think we are trying
to do that--the Drug Czar or whoever you might be.
I think, first of all, you need to be in the communities,
and that is why the Drug Free Community Act was an important
piece. People have to start at home, working together.
The other area is, you have to treat the people who fell
into the water and they are drowning. The treatment programs
have to be there, and we need to find out what the treatment
programs, No. 2, work best, and then try to emulate those. We
find out a lot of the treatment programs have 80 percent
recidivism; that is not good, and I am not sure that is money
wisely spent. How do you best focus those funds?
The third area--and the next panel we are going to have,
they put people in a different line, fighting this war, and
that is law enforcement. A lot of people spend days in and days
out working on this and they are dedicated to doing that. We
need to make sure the right resources are there to stop the
stuff in our communities and to stop it from getting into our
communities. And it is not just the local police or county
police or the State police; it is also the DEA and the other
people. We find that sometimes intelligence, finding out where
the stuff comes from, who is doing it, and 90 percent of the
success in being able to stop in the next two areas I am
talking about, comes from intelligence, being able to find out
where this stuff is.
The other area is interdiction. We can do a better job on
the Federal side. We have--on the borders of Texas, we have the
DEA, the INS, we have Immigration, we have Customs, we have the
Border Patrol, all these independent agencies out there, but
not very much coordination. If you are a Customs agent, you can
bid for a job and be on the border for 20 years of your career,
have your brother-in-law come across the border, and it just
opens the way for corruption; and we need to do a better job in
our own government in making sure we stop the stuff from coming
into our country.
And the same with the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard can't do
everything on a low budget. We need to make sure they have the
ability. There are 10,000 boats, as we speak, moving through
the eastern and western Caribbean and coming up the Pacific,
many of them with significant cargoes of drugs. They need to do
a better job, and we need to make sure that we coordinate.
So the other, fifth area is the countries themselves. We
found that the guy who was so remote and so far away from us
that we would probably never read about him, the guy who was
the President of Peru, a guy named Fujimori, happened to be in
the headlines because of the embassy being taken over in Lima,
but he has a policy in Peru that is working, a shoot-down
policy. And people that loaded up planes, about 70 planes 2
years ago, a month, they are loaded up with 100 or 200 kilos of
cocaine--and it is what people could afford to buy--to load the
planes up and at that time you could buy a kilo of cocaine in
the Upper Huallaga Valley in Peru for about $400 a kilo. You
move it to Colombia, you remanufacture it into crack or
cocaine, and there it is worth about $2,000 a kilo, and then
you move that up to Mexico, and Mexico, across the border into
this country and it can be worth $20- to $30,000 a kilo, so
there is added value all the way you go through it.
But what they did in the shoot-down policy, they started
tracking the planes, doing the radar and finding out what
planes, through intelligence, were carrying cocaine up, and the
coca paste. When they started to shoot those planes down, they
give them a warning, they ask them to land and if they didn't
land, they tried evasive tactics.
It was a good feeling. They were doing something wrong, and
they shot them down; they shot down 43 planes. Today there are
7 planes a month going up instead of 70 planes.
The cost of a pilot was $25,000, now it is $250,000; people
won't do it unless they get a lot of money, and instead of
flying up, they are flying through Brazil and all over. So what
has happened is the supply of raw coca paste in Peru has gone
up because they can't get it out of the place. The price of
coca paste has gone from $400 a kilo to less than $100 a kilo.
The farmers who grow this stuff, they strip the leaves and
put it through a process and get a paste; it is a messy
business. They cut the stuff and they separate it and it is the
messiest stuff you ever saw; and to think people actually use
it. Beyond that, they have the stuff sitting there, they can't
sell it, so farmers are walking away from growing it.
Last year they cut the ability to grow it 19 percent, this
year they think they are going to cut it down 25 percent, and
that is where 70 percent of where all our drugs come from.
So, there are a lot of coordinating things we have to be
able to do to stop drugs in this country but I think one of the
most important things is something we never talked about; it is
the way we launder the money. Some drugs come up from Colombia
actually in cargo containers. You can't stuff the money that
you get on the street corners--the $5, $10, $20, $50 bills,
$100 bills--back in the containers the drugs come in, the
volume of the money is for more than the buying of the drugs,
and that is how they get the money back to Colombia. If you
can't get the money back to Colombia, if you can't do it
through wires or the money laundering or the bank systems,
there is no impetus for the guys to grow it, to smuggle it, to
sell it, refine it.
So all those things work together, and it is a commitment
from some of us in Congress, most of us in Congress, to stop it
and make sure all six things are working together. But the most
important is back at home, the demand site; and we have a big,
big job.
And Mr. Povlsen, you talked about the community
responsibility. It is huge, and it is a responsibility that a
lot of us like to look the other way and not think about and
not take that on; and I appreciate everybody being here today,
and some of you have been through very personal tragedies and
some have been in situations where you turned your life around
and some have been working at this thing for a long time. We
appreciate all of you being here today and your contribution to
this, and we look forward to the next panel.
Mr. Hastert. At this time, I would like to introduce our
second panel. First of all, John Nakonechny--I think that is
pretty close to how you pronounce your name--is a prevention
and wellness coordinator for the DeKalb School District;
Michael Haines is coordinator of health enhancement services
here at Northern Illinois University; Tim Johnson is the
current DeKalb States attorney; Dick Randall is the sheriff for
Kendall County, and has been involved very much in Operation
North Star; and Bob Miller is the founder of the Just Say No to
Drugs parade in Dixon, IL.
Here is a situation where there is a community--Dixon is
west of here, about 40 miles or so--where a community and a
fellow in that community just said, it is time to do something,
and they have a Just Say No parade. We need to get the idea on
how that works and what effect that has.
I think everybody is here, except Mr. Miller, at the table.
Again, I am going to ask that you stand and raise your right
hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Let the record show the witnesses answered in the
affirmative.
Mr. Nakonechny. Is that right?
Mr. Nakonechny. Just say Nak.
Mr. Hastert. Nak, OK.
Mr. Nakonechny. I am not going to read anything.
Mr. Hastert. Let me say, if you have a written statement,
we will just provide it in the record and we look forward to
your testimony.
STATEMENTS OF JOHN NAKONECHNY, PREVENTION AND WELLNESS
COORDINATOR, DeKALB COMMUNITY UNIT SCHOOL DISTRICT 428; MICHAEL
HAINES, COORDINATOR OF HEALTH ENHANCEMENT SERVICES, NORTHERN
ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY; TIM JOHNSON, DeKALB STATES ATTORNEY;
RICHARD A. RANDALL, SHERIFF, KENDALL COUNTY, IL; AND BOB
MILLER, JUST SAY NO TO DRUGS PARADE, LEE COUNTY, IL
Mr. Nakonechny. I will just summarize ways as a crossover
from what has been said previously by Mr. Povlsen and others,
and Mike Coghlan, but essentially where we stand in DeKalb
schools is the old, hackneyed cliche of an ounce of prevention
is worth a pound of cure, which we have been saying here for
the most part.
Let me get into the substance of what we are doing in the
DeKalb schools trying to combat the violence, drugs and
alcohol. We do it on four fronts: schools of students, staff
development, parents, and community. Within the schools of
students, we have, since about 1986, when we started a drug and
alcohol prevention program, we have adopted a curriculum, K
through 12, which is very, very important.
Recently, you heard some attacks on D.A.R.E., for instance,
that the long-term effects and longevity of D.A.R.E. is not
there. That is no indictment of the D.A.R.E. program because it
is probably--it is a very good program; I know what it entails,
but that is why you have a K-12 program, to followup and
support D.A.R.E. and support all the other programs.
One of the messages I hear over and over and over again is,
we heard about the advertising industry and everything else,
one thing we try to emphasize very heavily is this war, if you
can call it that, against substance abuse is something that has
to be repeated over and over and over. I don't think there is a
person in this room, perhaps, unless you have an IQ of 200,
gets something the first time. It is a war that goes on and on
and has to be repeated over; and in essence that is what our
curriculum is doing, year in and year out.
Hopefully, each teacher is teaching the curriculum, K
through 12. Our curriculum puts emphasis on self-esteem, on
knowledge and refusal skills. One of the things we know now is
Just Say No doesn't work; you have to teach kids how to say no
with refusal skills.
We also publish a newsletter as often as we can with the
financial resources that we have, and that continuously
inflicts knowledge on students, K through 12, as well as their
parents.
We provide activities for kids, such as the National Red
Ribbon Week. We provide DUI Day to talk about the effects of
drinking and driving, for instance, as well as we perform
skits; we actually have kids in our theater group go to fourth
graders. And again, as we talked about before, we actually
attack tobacco at that level because we know it is down in the
fourth grade when kids are experimenting, especially with
tobacco.
We run the I-Say survey. I have a copy here if somebody
would like it; I brought one or two copies with me. You are
more than welcome to look at it. We only use that survey as a
barometer, as a gauge, to tell us where we are going and what
is happening. We don't use it in each statistic. It seems to
match with the previous person who said that perhaps she knew
300 kids using marijuana; that is just about right, if it is 40
percent, 40 percent of 700 kids in the survey is 280 kids, so
that reflects fairly well of what is happening.
As far as the schools go, with the limited time we have, we
have a Discipline Committee. In the last 5 or 6 years we have
really tightened up procedures and policies against drugs and
alcohol, as well as touching on dress code a little bit, in
terms of gang activities; and I would say, in essence, it is a
``tough love'' approach to the entire process, as well as a
zero tolerance.
Finally, we have also--within our schools, we have
tightened up our security. Some schools even have cameras; we
do not have cameras. We do have a liaison police officer now in
conjunction with the DeKalb Police Department, who spends time
at our middle schools and our high school--and it is a sad day,
but it is here--and we do have a police officer at the school,
as well as security aids and a person who takes care of--well,
just in essence, security matters; and we try to keep a good
tab of what goes on in the parking lot.
In terms of staff development, we, I, my office offers a
lot of workshops for teachers, and we send people out and
wherever we can find something on peer mediation, conflict
resolution, drugs and alcohol, gang activity seminars, we try
to encourage people to go.
One of the things we try very hard to do is to have
teachers understand this problem is never going to be solved
unless we teach it across the curriculum. The P.E. teacher
can't do it alone, the health teacher can't do it alone; it has
to be the English teacher, the math teacher, the history
teacher, the wrestling coach, right across the whole spectrum
of the school building, K through 12.
As far as parents are concerned, we work very hard to
provide information, as well as a monthly newsletter to
parents. Principals are more than willing to put it as part of
their newsletter to parents. We also try to invite parents into
our school system. That is another very difficult thing to do,
getting parents into schools is a very tough situation; but
they do serve on such things as our district-wide Discipline
Committee, which I serve on, they serve on what we call a CAC,
Citizens Action Committee, the advisory committee that deals
with the schools, and they look at a broad spectrum of things
from gifted programs, to drugs and alcohol, to violence and
gang activity, and we openly encourage parents with Drug Free
money and things like that; if they so wish to participate in
workshops that we hold, they are more than welcome to do that.
Finally, within the community, I have worked very closely
with Kris Povlsen, the other 10 schools in this county, and
Mike Coghlan, when he was States Attorney, with DCP/SAFE,
DeKalb County Partnership for a Substance Abuse Free
Environment--it is the coalition you were talking about
earlier--and we have even gone to the extent we now have
student representation on DCP/SAFE. It has been very
productive.
We have a long way to go probably.
Yes, you can read about somebody rolling a joint, in the
Chronicle, in the classroom but you can also roll a joint
during a church service, too, or a court of law; those things
do happen. My only problem with that is, it gets highlighted as
if to seem we are not doing anything, and that is just not
true.
One thing we try to do over and over, whether you read the
survey--and I know you don't have the entire survey--whether
you read about it or hear about our activities, we emphasized,
just recently, in the last 2 or 3 years, that not all kids are
doing that. When you say 40 percent of the kids are involved in
marijuana, if you break that down, you find out that out of
that 40 percent, that is 100 kids, 12 are experimenting with it
for the first or second time; and it is probably about 26
percent of high school kids using it on a weekend basis,
perhaps on a monthly basis. You go to our full 6-12 survey on
that, you will find out it breaks down to about 15 percent.
We can always improve, and so I will leave it at that.
I would just like to say one other thing. I have been in
the game for 29 years now, being a teacher, and I have been at
this job for about 6 years. I still teach in the mornings--
American history, advanced American history, the history of
Vietnam--and over the years, I have to tell you, you hear this
question, what is wrong with kids today? I don't think there is
anything wrong with kids today. I think 97 percent of the
kids--and that is an arbitrary number--in 1972 were good kids;
and I still think 97 percent, 95 percent of the kids in 1997
are really good kids.
What we have is a problem with about 3 or 4 percent who are
now a criminal element. Back then it was bubble gum, swearing,
cutting class, a few other things; those things still happen,
but we have another element that I am not so sure we are well
equipped to deal with, and that seems to be the problem.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you very much.
Mr. Haines, you are doing the same thing only at a
different age level. So why don't you tell us what we are doing
here.
Mr. Haines. Before I start, if I can get someone to get the
overhead. I have a couple overheads that illustrate the point.
Mr. Hastert. Do you want to go ahead and let them set that
up?
Mr. Haines. I could make some of the remarks while they are
setting that up.
I have been working in the substance abuse field since
1970; and I am a certified supervisor of addiction counselors,
besides my current position at the university coordinating
health enhancement services.
Mr. Hastert. Would you elaborate on that? Health
enhancement services, what is that, exactly?
Mr. Haines. Health enhancement services is that portion of
the university health service who are part of student services
on campus which is charged with the responsibility to reduce
risk for students for injury, disease, accident, problems; and,
of course, then alcohol or other drugs are a part of that
issue, particularly alcohol, because it has--plays a major role
in unintentional injuries for college students.
What you have heard today, and you will probably hear more
of, is a lot of information which is documenting the nature of
the drug problem and how serious it is and how it has caused
tragedies for individuals in our community. Notwithstanding
those, I am here to talk more about the drug solution than the
drug problem, with some of the successes that we have had over
the last 7 years, 8 years here on our campus.
We have tried, and it has been my experience over the 27
years--I have been particularly pleased with the effects we
have gotten because of the trials we have had in trying to have
a measurable impact on the behaviors of populations of young
people when it comes to alcohol or other drugs.
In the last 7 years, we have reduced the amount of alcohol
abuse on campus by 35 percent, reduced harmful alcohol-related
physical injury to self by 31 percent and physical injury to
others by 54 percent. That is at the same time where it hits
the background nationally, where alcohol-related harm to
college students has remained unchanged and very difficult to
reach.
We have done that through a rather unique method that I
think could work in other settings with other populations and
within communities, and it addresses the social norms we heard
about earlier in some of the testimony. I think you asked a
question directly, how do you go about charging norms? That is
exactly what we went about doing.
I will go over to the overhead. See overhead No. 1. I don't
know if you can all see this or not, but this describes the
phenomenon seen on college campuses nationwide. Every campus
that was surveyed for this type of information found that
college students routinely and regularly perceived the use of
alcohol and other drugs to be far greater than the actual use.
The researchers who conducted this work and presented it at
the first National Drug Abuse Conference for the Fund for the
Improvement of Postsecondary Education in Washington, back in
1987, 1988, hypothesized that if you changed this perception,
you could actually change the behavior. Where they were coming
from was the idea that young people, college students, respond
to imaginary peer pressure. If they think everybody is doing
it, then they feel pressure to do it as well to fit in.
Mr. Hastert. It is what is cool.
Mr. Haines. It is what is cool.
The comments and questions were asked: What types of
movies--I think ``Animal House'' did more to set the stage,
expectation and perceived use of alcohol on college campuses
than any other movie could have. I don't know if you are
familiar with ``Animal House,'' but it sets up the idea that
everybody on campus is getting drunk every weekend, and when
they get drunk they do these antics and so on.
What we found on our campus was that the perception of
alcohol use was almost actually double the use of alcohol, and
they found that on campuses relative to other drugs as well.
Researchers at Wake Forest University did similar studies with
eighth graders and high school students and found the same
information.
They went further and tested different prevention methods
and found that prevention methods, which changed the perception
of the norm within the peer group, actually had the greatest
influence in reducing use of marijuana, tobacco or alcohol by
junior high school and high school students. They found that
that perception of the social norm was a more powerful
predictor than even the availability of the drug itself.
So the student could be offered the drug and you can more
accurately predict whether they would use it or not based on
what their perception of the norm was. If they thought
everybody like themselves were doing it, then they chose the
drug. If they didn't think that was the case, they refused it
more so.
Essentially, our challenge was how do we change the
perception that alcohol abuse is the norm on the college campus
of 20,000 students, with one full-time position to do that; and
the sheer economies of scale said we had to do that through
media; and we used media rather extensively.
What you see in much of the media is this type of headline.
See overhead No. 2. That was run in the Wall Street Journal in
December 1994 in response to the research conducted by Dr.
Henry Wechsler at the Harvard School of Public Health. The
research data that Wechsler produced about binge drinking
behavior on college campuses could have produced this headline
just as easily. See overhead No. 3. Same data, same study, but
we have a major difference in the perception of what is the
norm on a college campus from this headline--everybody is doing
it, nearly everybody is binging--to this headline, which says,
moderation is the norm and harm is relatively rare on college
campuses related to alcohol use.
What we did to try to change the norms on our campus. The
Harvard study also pointed out this information. Again, in the
paper, what you saw was the 44 percent who binge drank, you saw
the 4 percent who got into trouble with the police, the 9
percent that got hurt or injured, the 9 percent who damaged
property and so on.
As a society we overfocus on the deviant; and as we
overfocus on the deviant, we unintentionally give the idea to
our young people in the community that deviance is more normal
than it really is. What we are trying to do is correct that
misperception and we did that through, as I said, media; and
that media was mostly through our campus paper because our
campus paper is read by about 75 percent of our students. We
did that by producing very visible ads that addressed the norm
issue straight on. See overhead No. 4.
We didn't deny the fact that DUI is a problem and a serious
one, but we tried to make it clear that DUI is relatively rare.
It is not the norm among college students on this campus or any
other campus in the United States. We support and identify the
healthy protective behaviors that are resident in the community
and then amplify them by feeding them back in order to get more
of them.
It is just like when I pay attention to my dog for coming
back to me with praise, rather than beating it when it doesn't
return, which just teaches it to stay away. I am trying to
attend to the population who are doing the behavior well,
amplify those protective rituals in the population and feeding
it back to them.
These are some more of the ads. See overhead No.'s 5, 6,
and 7. Most college students don't participate in alcohol-
related harm. I like to call it the big lie that everybody is
doing it and everybody is getting hurt. Because on our campus--
and I think it is true from all the national data I have seen--
the majority of students are not binge drinkers, the majority
of students do not use marijuana, the majority by far do not
use LSD or cocaine; and we ignore that majority quite often. We
don't pay attention to what the students who don't use and have
the opportunity to use do in order to get that usage to be
reduced. Ninety-seven percent of our students agreed with the
statement that an occasional drunk which interferes with
academics or other responsibilities is OK. Only 3 percent felt
that was something that they agreed with.
Mr. Hastert. You mean it is not OK.
Mr. Haines. It is not OK, right. Yes, strike that one.
And most of the students don't cause harm to self or
others. As you can see, 9 percent and 20 percent. This is the
result of the efforts we have been conducting.
The very first year of the study, we conducted what would
be called a traditional campaign, where we taught students that
it's OK not to drink, that here are responsible ways to use,
and these are the negative consequences which will occur to you
if you use heavily. At the end of the first year, perceptions
didn't change and use actually went up slightly--heavy use,
binge use. See overhead No. 8.
Once we started the normative campaign, the campaign to
change social norms, we had a steady decline to where today it
is 27 percent. Nationally, it's about 40 percent on college
campuses.
As I said earlier, I think this method holds promise. It
holds promise not only for college students but I think holds
promise for high-school-age populations and, as has been
commented on earlier, for the adults in the community. I think
they also have the misperception that everybody is doing it and
that they, too, need to be reminded that the protective healthy
norms of the community are widespread, that it is normal to be
healthy.
I think I should conclude with just a couple comments that
I made in my written testimony of the implications for this
method.
The powerful influence of perception of social norms on
personal drug-taking behavior is enormous. The success of this
drug abuse prevention effort has many implications: One, mass
media efforts which highlight healthy and protective norms may
be very cost-effective ways to improve drug behavior within
full communities as well as special target populations.
An effort which identifies and promotes healthy norms
already practiced by neighborhoods, communities and social
groups is welcomed by those very groups. It is good news. It is
good politics. It does not bash the community to eliminate the
problem, sort of the burning the house to cook the pig issue.
It is a community-government partnership, instead of an
adversarial nature that we find so often. Instead of the us
against them, we are working together. It is consistent with
community policing theories, self-help efforts and returning
control to people.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
Mr. Hastert. We will come back with questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Haines follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Tim Johnson, States attorney for DeKalb
County.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Congressman Hastert and Congressman
Manzullo. I appreciate the opportunity to speak and for you
being here.
I think it is important for the record to have a little bit
of a reflection as to the makeup of DeKalb County. DeKalb
County is composed primarily of small cities, villages with
populations of less than 12,000, with the only exception being
the city of DeKalb.
The city of DeKalb, of course, has a population of roughly
38,000 people, which represents almost one-half of the county's
population. Of course, DeKalb is also home to Northern Illinois
University. Geographically, the county is large and rectangular
in shape.
Like all communities, DeKalb County continues to see the
presence of drugs. The most typical drugs that we see in DeKalb
County are marijuana and cocaine. Recently, however, we have
seen in DeKalb County arrests of individuals who have been
selling mushrooms, LSD and opium. The presence of these and
other drugs continues to be a threat to the young people of our
community.
Mr. Hastert. Is mushroom the name of the drug?
Mr. Manzullo. It is psilocybin.
Mr. Johnson. That is exactly right. And, of course, we
continue to have the use of alcohol and tobacco products by our
young people.
Although I don't think exact statistics are available,
there are certain trends that are clear in DeKalb County. One-
quarter of felony arrests are directly related to drugs. Others
are indirectly related and are, therefore, hard to quantify;
but they involve burglary, forgery, deceptive practices in
which individuals who have a drug habit are committing those
crimes in an effort to feed that habit. Indeed, other felonies
are committed when these individuals are highly intoxicated.
The net result is, very conservatively, over one-half of
felonies committed in DeKalb County involve drug or alcohol
usage and probably much higher than that.
The fact drugs are available in rural communities cannot be
disputed. The effect on our young people is more difficult to
ascertain. I believe there are many reasons why this is so.
First, teens are not likely to be totally honest with
authority figures when discussing drugs and alcohol. There is a
code of silence that exists with young people. They don't like
to tell on each other. However, I believe any teen can tell
you, if you want to buy drugs, where do you go to buy those
drugs.
Second, some officials have an interest in denying problems
do, in fact, exist. They may choose to handle certain problems
in-house, choosing not to involve the police. Other officials
can underreport the extent of the drug activity in their school
or turn a blind eye to the potential problems.
Another problem that exists, I believe, is the method and
criteria for reporting what types of activities are occurring.
For example, some communities may choose to do station
adjustments. Other communities may, in fact, choose to direct
that individual directly to court.
Finally, I think in any community there are always
variables that include finances, work force available and the
coordination and cooperation of the services that are
available.
I believe that when you consider the above, it seems
relatively clear that to adequately address the drug and
alcohol problem facing our youth we must include several
things. First, the approach must have a prevention aspect. We
must continue to be proactive, and I believe this requires the
support of the entire community. I believe some of the
essential players in this effort must come from the school
systems, police agencies, prosecutor's office and social
service agencies as well as the teenagers themselves.
I think, too often, we leave the teens out when discussing
these problems. For example, as you have heard and as you have
heard the prior speaker, we have groups such as DCP/SAFE, which
is, again, an active group coordinating prevention services on
a community basis.
I think cooperation and communication is essential to
handle this problem. Standards must be used for schools and
police agencies to report drug and alcohol-related incidents
and arrests so we can accurately analyze this problem.
Second, from the States attorneys' perspective, we must
continue to aggressively prosecute those who choose to violate
the law and provide drugs to our young people. Every effort
must be made to provide the law enforcement officials the funds
they need to protect society and especially our young children.
Individuals who sell drugs and individuals who sell drugs to
teenagers or at school need to understand their conduct will
not be tolerated and they will be punished accordingly.
In conclusion, teens need to be educated about the negative
effects of drug and alcohol usage; and I think the testimony
you heard today--they need to understand it is not necessarily
the norm. Their perception may be different than reality. Those
teens that are using drugs need to be referred to the
appropriate agency to deal with their problems. The individuals
that prey on our youth or refuse the offers of help must
understand, if they violate the law, they will be aggressively
prosecuted.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Hastert. Also with us from a neighboring county, just
to the south--it used to be known as a rural county. I am not
sure it is still. It is half rural, I guess, Kendall County.
Sheriff Randall is not only the sheriff, but he is involved
with Operation North Star, and you might comment a little on
your local issue and the bigger picture.
Mr. Randall. Thank you, Congressman Hastert and Congressman
Manzullo. I appreciate all of the efforts that all of the
people are making today and that you would come out to our
rural area.
As sheriff for the past 11 years in Kendall County and a
law enforcement officer for over 29 years in Illinois, I have
many concerns about illegal drugs, gangs and violence in our
area.
Being the sheriff, these concerns take on multi-levels of
approaches, not only enforcement but incarceration,
investigation and officer of the courts, along with prevention/
education and developing multi-jurisdictional task forces in
utilizing as many resources as possible to curb that activity
in our area. Even though we are involved and proactive in many
of these areas, I have concerns of many other agencies doing or
attempting duplication of many of these same efforts and lack
of coordination in the more local areas, which you have alluded
to.
In the past several years, cooperation of all agencies
across the board in providing services has improved greatly,
but the coordination of these services needs additional help, I
believe.
With the broad brush I have painted, I would like to focus
on a few areas to be explored for future planning and actions
that could be taken.
Education/prevention: On a county-wide or possibly a
region-wide effort, developing resource information packets of
services available and ongoing projects and programs of the
region. This information needs updating minimally every 6
months. There are many positive, localized programs that can
provide some very important information or direction to others
attempting to resolve or solve an issue of need.
This is not to say that each area or program used uses a
cookie-cutter approach, but it can afford individuals or agency
ideas and knowledge on a broader base, hopefully for better
results. The wheel has been invented. Each group or individual
can design their own hubcap for their particular local need.
Many efforts are available, but it takes people to put them
in motion by providing as much information and direction that
could be an asset in dealing successfully in protecting and
leading our communities to a safer environment. The Kendall
County Sheriff's Office of COPS, the Community Oriented Police
Section, are indeed starting that process but only in localized
neighborhoods and townships, not in total concert with the
coordination of other jurisdictions or resources.
No. 2, investigation/enforcement. Working with multi-agency
jurisdictions has been a very positive and successful effort;
but, again, broader intelligence and dissemination networking
needs to be developed, specifically in the more rural areas, a
faster, more direct process of information to gain a better
understanding of the broad scope of people, places, migrations,
trends, routes, et cetera, of gang and illegal drug activity,
brought down to the smaller agencies.
Again, I believe there is a tremendous amount of
intelligence information, and we need to capture it from
smaller jurisdictions. A method or process needs to be
developed to gain this information and, at the same time,
recognize the smaller agencies for providing positive results
without jeopardizing long-term cases. These cases are without a
doubt more difficult. In some instances, where there are fewer
people, anonymity is next to impossible, along with the small
numbers of incidences.
Again, education and knowledge of the bigger picture, along
with total community involvement, will support positive
resolutions to reduce and treat unacceptable behavior firmly.
We law enforcement providers need to foster remedies,
disseminate accurate information, work with other community
service providers and listen to the community.
No. 3, domestic violence. I know this is stepping outside
the circle of your immediate concerns, but I think we need to
focus on this area as a major contributor to drug abuse, gang
involvement and violence. In my 29 years of experience, I
believe this is a catalyst of the dilemma, in escaping reality,
needing alternative recognition or striking out in frustration
and anger. This is totally unacceptable behavior, and it is
totally out of control, which is skyrocketing the antisocial
behavior of drugs, gangs and violence.
If resources can be coordinated at all levels, not only the
criminal justice and social services, but all levels of our
communities, we will begin to resolve this dilemma. This may be
an awesome task, but in order to look to the future, you have
to look to the past and identify the major factors and what are
the contributors of this dilemma and attack it on many fronts.
Education, prevention, sincere alternatives, in my opinion,
will add to the stabilization of our communities and our
country.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you, Sheriff.
Mr. Hastert. Do you want to take just a minute and talk
about Operation North Star? Because it is an interagency issue.
Just in your own words.
Mr. Randall. It is between Canada and the United States,
about criminal activity on the border in both countries. It
really focuses on the coordination. In fact, it has three Cs
and an I--communication, coordination, cooperation and
information--and that is exactly what we are doing today. We
are fostering and trying to build that between both countries,
our own government, Federal, State, local and county, to try to
put this big picture together and work together and network
positively.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Randall follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Miller, you represent Lee County, which is
just to the west of here. What, Mr. Miller, you have done in
Dixon, IL, is just kind of pull yourself up by your own
bootstraps and get public awareness out of the parade. So why
don't you enlighten us on your activities, please?
Mr. Miller. I would thank you, Congressman Hastert and
Congressman Manzullo, for having me here; and I am just a
country boy.
Mr. Hastert. We know all about country boys.
Mr. Miller. I apologize. I do not have a written statement.
Your office was on me a lot to try and get it, and I just never
got it accomplished. But I do think I have a lot to tell you,
and I will go through that.
About 10 years ago--in fact, 10 years ago in January--I was
watching the Bears-Miami football game; and at half time, they
had a small parade where they had a dignitary and a few
students marching, saying no to drugs; and I thought that is a
real positive thing to be doing in a community. So I went to
our City Council and our mayor. I asked them if Dixon would
support me in this, if I could do this.
They gave me permission to start, told me I should start
with Police Chief Short and see what we could come up with. I
went to Bob Short, and he was in favor of it. We put together a
committee of Bob Short, the police chief, Kathy White, who was
in the city counseling center, and Kirby Rogers, who was the
dean of students at the Dixon High School and myself. The four
of us put together a program for not just a parade but for a
whole year program.
In October--and we have mentioned before about the red
ribbons--which is a red ribbon month, we pass out 5,000 red
ribbons to our students in Lee County. We have somewhere around
5,200 students in Lee County. We pass out a ribbon to each
student so that they might be aware of the sacrifice this
Federal agent had who died and then he is honored when we pass
out these ribbons. So we do that, and we pay for that each
October.
During the year, we try to work with the schools with
different say no to drugs programs. Someone like maybe the two
athletes that were here, we would have them come to the schools
and tell the story to the students, so the students would know
that here are a couple young men who were messed up and found a
new way of life. So this is another positive thing we try to
bring to the students throughout the year.
We have also attempted to educate the parents by having law
enforcement agencies come in. We had one lieutenant, I
remember, from North Carolina that came in and gave a program
at our theater. I think we had 30 parents show up, and it was a
cost for us, and it didn't work too well. But we feel this
whole program we set up is an education for the parents and the
students, and that is the only way it is going to work.
Right after the first of the year, we send out to each
school letters. They take the forms in these letters and give
them to each student, and the students sign up for a free T-
shirt. We have the T-shirts for our parades.
The first year of our parade, we had the just say no to
drugs logo on the T-shirt and furnished these to every student
that would march. This is our 10th year, and we had students
design their own T-shirts. We had a first-place winner. She
designed this shirt, and it was different this year than the
other 9 years, so we wore her design.
We try to keep young people realizing the community, the
law enforcement part of the community, the clubs, the schools
are all behind them in their decision to say no to drugs. We
want to keep it positive. We wanted them, we felt from the
beginning, to bond together as a group so when they went from
third grade and fourth grade they could see other students who
had marched in the parade with them and know here is somebody
else who stood up to say no to drugs and has marched in this
parade.
In the spring--later in the spring, after we have put out
the bids for the T-shirts, we get buttons, say no to drug
buttons; and we have had them for all of 10 years. We pass them
out early spring, so young people know we are still working
with the program.
This year the second-place winner in our contest designed
this button. I think he was a fourth grader.
The schools have all kinds of different programs, as I
mentioned before, during the year. We culminate at the end of
the year with a week-long program.
We start out in the churches. We try to encourage our
churches of Lee County to have a program within the church,
whether it be a prayer time or a sermon or whatever, to
encourage the church people and students that are a part of the
church to take a stand and say no to drugs. That is the
beginning of our week.
During the week, we have programs in the schools. We will
have coloring book contests with the little kids, which is the
say no to drug theme. They will color that, and we give the
first-place winner a certain prize.
Students make poster boards which they wear in the parade,
which are different things, saying say no to drugs. We have
them make banners which they carry in the parade. Also, at some
of the schools I called on, they are still hanging around the
schools, where they are very proud of what their children are
doing. They honored them by keeping them there.
We also had them decorate the bicycles that they ride in
the parade and their wagons. Some are now taking last year's T-
shirts and putting them on the dogs and bringing their dogs
with their say no to drug T-shirts on, which is fine as long as
they are not the new ones. I have a hard enough time getting
money to buy the shirts.
We operate with about a $10,000 budget. I spend between
$7,000 and $8,000 for T-shirts, so we don't have a lot of other
money.
The police department and the county sheriff will buy the
ribbons for us out of their drug-bust money. They figure this
is an educational thing. So 1 year, the police chief buys the
ribbons. It will be about $300. Then that year, the sheriff
buys the buttons; and they cost about $800. So we flip-flop
them back and forth each year. That is how we cover the
expense.
After we have had this put together of the school program,
we put together the parade. To this date, which is the 10th
year, we had 24,471 students sign up and march in our parades.
The first year I was a little iffy as to what was going to
happen because this had never happened before, and I had 1,878
students sign up and march in the parade. So it is a thrilling
thing to see that these students are doing this.
In the past years, the thrilling thing for me is to see
more and more parents marching with their students. So I am
sure they are feeling more and more support from their
families.
The picture I sent to you might not have been a very good
picture, but the police chief is there. Our sheriff is there.
The lieutenant at the head of the parade was an Olympic
athlete. We tried to have a quality thing for the kids--the
athlete, we had the Bears, we had the Green Bay Packers.
We ended at the school in the band shell and they signed
autographs on the back of the T-shirts. The first year, they
signed in nonwaterproof ink; and my wife washed mine off.
We have a lot of race car drivers. They pull the cars down
there and set up in the same area that they sign autographs,
and they let the kids look at the cars.
We have had track meets for the kids to participate in
afterwards at the high school track.
We had different drug programs from our Sinasippi Center.
They bring in a program or a hospital brings in a booth where
they hand out literature and try to help our kids.
We are just a very active and excited group. Yet I am also
on the task force at Dixon High School, and we just went
through a survey profile of student life attitudes and
behavior. It was performed by the Research Institute of
Minneapolis, MN. We find that 23 percent of our 12th graders
report binge drinking three or more times in the last 2 weeks,
and that was from 1996.
We also had, which is a disturbing thing for me, 44 percent
of our seniors in the last 12 months had driven a car after
drinking once or twice. We had several statistics on drugs,
marijuana; 52 percent of the seniors had tried marijuana in
their lifetime; 6 percent had tried cocaine; 22 percent tried
amphetamines; LSD, 10 percent; 6 percent have tried heroin.
So with all of our programs, with all of our efforts to try
to bring a positive attitude, this is sort of a downer, but it
is not enough to stop us from continuing on. We don't have much
participation from the students when they get to high school,
and I think that is because of a lot of peer pressure. It looks
maybe sort of silly for them, they feel, walking down the
street in a parade. We have had some, but very few.
Thank you.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you very much.
I was interested, especially, in high school kids. One
statistic is, if you get a kid through age 15 without using
drugs and not smoking, there is a good chance he is going to
make it to 21 and then through the rest of his life. I think it
is a very important issue.
We come back to dealing specifically with a couple of
questions, but I would like to start with Mr. Haines.
I, too, sometimes would like to be able to change the
headlines. Just people read the story and not the headlines. It
works out better. I haven't found a way to do that.
But, anyway, in your essence of actually being able to give
a different perspective, psychologically, if you will, have
you--you know, you use statistics, but you are around campus
day in and day out. Is the attitude changing?
Mr. Haines. I think definitely we have seen an attitude
change over the years.
There was just a current front page story in our summer
edition of the campus paper which talked about marijuana use on
the college campus. I believe Chief Pickens said what we may
have is more enforcement with the same level of use. So that
people perceive that there is more use going on, and that is
another one of those perception things.
I think some of that enforcement, at least from some
anecdotal comment that I have heard from some of the residence
hall staff, is that the student attitudes about marijuana are
less accepting of marijuana use today, even among the student
staff who may be resident assistants and so on. So things or
behaviors relative to marijuana use that might have been
overlooked or where somebody turned the other way or just
slapped a wrist 10 years ago are now being written up and
sanctioned.
I don't think that should be bad news. It gives the
community the perception there is more marijuana use when
actually there isn't, and I think it is more accurately a
reflection of less tolerance, and it could be good news. It is
unfortunate that it often gets spun as bad news, as more
evidence we have trouble. It actually should be seen for what
it is, that there is more evidence that things are healthier
than ever before on the college campuses.
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Johnson, you talk about the unintended
consequences and the unintended crime that happens. When you
talk about the crime that kids when, because they are on
drugs--part of that is burglary, purse snatching, taking money
from their parents to get money to buy drugs.
What we don't see, when we see that that incidence is up,
is a pharmacological crime out there, that the crimes that kids
do--and the adults as well, because they are under the
influence, much like what you are talking about, the injury
from alcohol, that they do--and one of the studies that just
came out, that 80 percent of the domestic abuse cases are
involved in some way with alcohol and drugs--I mean, it is a
huge number that we spend a lot of money on.
It is estimated we spend about $90 billion in this country
every year--not just in buying drugs. That type of money, that
goes through the system--but in apprehension and the cost of
victims, the cost of crime, incarceration, those types of
options are just huge. You just start to look at what a high
school spends and universities spend and how we do that all
across our society, it is a huge amount.
So you said another thing that I want to see you repeat
that and get your opinion on and then test it on some of the
other folks here, that prosecution is important. You need to
prosecute kids so they know where the line is. Tell us a little
bit about that.
Mr. Johnson. I think you heard from the first panel--I
can't remember. One of the gentlemen speaking in the first
panel said they come and test an area and find out their
policies and procedures in an area. If they find out you get
caught and if you get a slap on the wrist, you go on and do
your business more, that is a good area to settle in. So you
want to send a message out.
I think one thing that is repeatedly clear is people who
commit crimes have networks, and they understand more than
people give them credit for as to where the markets are that
they want to locate in. They are a business, and they look for
markets that are more friendly to them, as with any business.
So I think that the message that we want to send out as
communities is your type of conduct is not tolerated.
I think the other thing is, from a juvenile perspective,
these individuals do want to know where the lines are drawn.
They want consistency. They want--I think if they are honest
and they tell you what they believe, they want to know what is
acceptable behavior and what is not; and they want to know
that, no matter who it is, if they violate these laws, it will
be applied evenly to them.
So I think we have to send the message out, especially from
the prosecutor's office. Everybody wears a different hat, but I
think from the prosecutor's office, they have to understand
when they make it to our office they are going to treat it
seriously. The punishment will be consistent, and it will be--
--
I don't want to ignore the whole aspect of referring people
to treatment as well. I think, too often, in the prosecutor's
office, you get locked into this idea you are going to get a
conviction and think you accomplished something. It is
certainly a major part of what the prosecutor's role is; but I
think we have to get the people to the help they need,
especially the users, to get them to the help they need so they
don't repeatedly come back into our system.
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Nakonechny--I am going to get that name
right. I mean, I don't want to put you on the spot, but as a
teacher and a coach, sometimes you think, gee, I can help this
kid, rather than send them into the system. What do you see
works? Does tough prosecution work? If kids know they are going
to get caught, they are going to go through the court system,
does that help? Or how do you see that? You are dealing with
the kids every day.
Mr. Nakonechny. Well, I think it does help. I really do.
The tidying up of our own school procedures in terms of
discipline certainly has sent out a message, but it is in
combination with everything said here. It is in combination
with the entire community.
I don't think Mr. Johnson can do it by himself or Mike can
do it by himself. It is still the phrase about a village and
raising a kid. I think we are at that point in time. It
definitely has to be there.
Just reflect on the DUI laws and what has happened
statistically. We have a long way to go there, too; but I hear
more and more people, especially in my age bracket, saying,
wow, this is more serious business. You know, I am not doing
this and I am not doing that. So there is a positive to it all.
As long as we keep a positive to it in terms of rehabilitation.
Mr. Hastert. Sheriff, as an officer of the court, do you
see that as a policy?
Mr. Randall. That is correct; and using the multifaceted
programs of what is going on, how we deal with everybody's
situation cannot be the same. You can be firm, but every
situation is different, and you have to look at each one.
Mr. Hastert. Let me go into a different aspect you brought
out before. DeKalb County, Kane County and Kendall County are
all in the same judicial circuit, so there should be some
cooperation there.
You know, a couple years ago, we had a meeting that brought
together the sheriffs and the States attorneys and police
chiefs and others; and out of that circumstance some of the
folks, it was the first time they sat down and talked and found
out they had common problems in cooperation. What is happening
is there is more cooperation between different levels and the
courts, the judges themselves, in this whole issue. You
mentioned coordination.
Mr. Randall. Absolutely, and that helped. I think those
have to be on a continual basis. You just can't do it one time.
Because people change, positions change, whatever; and all of
that has to be on a continual basis to continue that positive
networking of what is going on.
You know, if someone has a good program up here and we are
not aware of it in Kendall County, maybe we could steal that
program, enhance it, and say, yes, we have the same issue.
Mr. Hastert. Is that coordination happening?
Mr. Randall. Probably not as good as it should, but it is
happening. It just needs to be improved.
I know--between all the meetings that we all attend and try
to get information and all of the periodicals that come out,
attempting to gain as much information as possible, when you
think you have everything, somebody else will come up and--just
like this. Oh, he really does have a good program. Why does it
work there? You know, he is a very enlightened person; and they
get it to go. You have to get a sparkplug in your area to do
some of the things.
Mr. Hastert. One of the things we didn't do, we didn't
include the school community when we had the meeting, partly
because there are some reasons--you want to keep some of the
records tight and not expose your students to the stuff.
Do you feel there should be more coordination between the
courts and the schools and the judges and the police? Or is
that happening?
Mr. Nakonechny. I believe it is happening in DeKalb. Again,
we could probably improve on some areas.
But, when Mike Lauden was States attorney, we worked very,
very closely through the DCP/SAFE. I just don't know Tim very
well at this point in time; but the schools and DeKalb Police
Department have worked very, very closely. A few years back, if
I remember correctly, there used to be almost monthly meetings,
for instance, with the police department and the school
officials.
Mr. Hastert. One of the things, you have talked about some
obstacles and your discipline committees, and you have
tightened down. Have you had any liability obstacles, people
threatening to take you to court?
Mr. Nakonechny. I really can't answer that question because
I am not an administrator. I don't deal with discipline per se.
But I would say, yes, there have been some problems; but I
couldn't verify that in terms of specifics for you.
Mr. Hastert. Finally, to finish off my question and go to
the second round here--Mr. Miller, I was in Dixie yesterday at
another parade, a nice affair you had there. But I visited a
couple weeks ago, maybe a month ago now, while school was still
in session, Reagan Junior High School; and I talked to all your
eighth graders.
There are about 250 eighth graders in the school, and we
were talking about some of the things I do in Washington. We
were talking about the drug issue and what we need to do and
how we are trying to look at it from the Federal perspective.
The kids were good, but one question I asked them is how
many of their parents--have ever had their parents talk to them
seriously about drugs. There were 250 kids; and if I remember,
off the top of my head, there were about 43 kids that raised
their hands. That is about 20 percent, 2 out of every 10 kids.
You talk about getting parents involved. This is mainstream
U.S.A., Ronald Reagan's hometown. How could we do a better job?
Are we doing a better job getting parents involved, sitting
down and talking to the kids?
We talk about norms and expectations. If parents can't sit
and talk to their kids and explain what they feel--we are
getting into a pretty personal area here--we are not getting
the job done. What is your view on that?
Mr. Miller. As I mentioned before, we tried to have some
parent programs; and they just were not interested. They would
not come to be educated.
As the young woman earlier indicated, if she had some ideas
of the signs of drugs that she could have looked for in her
children, maybe she would have spotted that earlier.
We tried to come up with those type of programs for
parents, but they just don't seem to want to get involved, to
take that step of commitment that they have to take. We are
going to continue to try to come up with programs to help them
realize the need.
I think the first program is probably that parade. Because,
like I say, I have seen a lot more participation by the
parents; and that is probably the first step. They are showing
their kids that, hey, we are going to walk with you. We don't
care if somebody on the stands sees we are walking with you,
even though they might have been, you know, using drugs
themselves or drinking excessively themselves.
Maybe this is the first step they need to take there and
then maybe they will be educable a little later. I don't know.
I think that is a very important step we need to work with, but
I don't have the real answers on how to do it.
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Haines.
Mr. Haines. I think that following along with the same sort
of idea of positive or protective norms, where we can use our
educational facilities, K through 12, as well as the university
to connect those young people, even through home work
assignments, with examples from their own family, from their
own communities, of people who have been successful in their
relationship with alcohol or other drugs.
One of the homework assignments I had for my class was that
during spring break or Thanksgiving break, which semester it
happened to be in, is they had to go home and find examples of
three responsible drinkers and they had to interview the
drinkers and find out what were their techniques for
maintaining a healthy relationship with alcohol.
One of those people had to be related to them. One person
had to be a friend of the family from the community. It was the
intentional exercise to link them directly with healthy models
from their own community and their own family of how to do the
right behavior.
I think we need to parade a lot more healthy, successful
models in front of young people, notwithstanding the tragedies
young people see when we have the recovering person come to
class. The recovering person has a message which says, if you
get messed up, you, too, can be cured. It isn't a message of
how not to get messed up in the first place. We need a greater
parade of people who come to show young people they can be
successful, because there are a lot of others who are.
Mr. Hastert. Sheriff, were you going to say something?
Mr. Randall. Yes. You had a question between the liaisons
of school and law enforcement; and the chief of police who was
here was chairman of the committee working with the Illinois
Chiefs of Police Association that developed a very good program
that has been adopted Statewide for all law enforcement
agencies working with the schools, not just on communication
but cooperation.
Mr. Hastert. Mr. Nakonechny, what about parent involvement?
You are dealing with kids and parents; and you still send out
report cards, get some reaction back. Parents basically don't
want to get involved or are they getting more involved or they
only get involved when there is a problem?
Mr. Nakonechny. I think the latter is right, when it
becomes a problem. The tendency you see in our schools--but it
is across the State.
Every winter we go to Springfield for the Statewide drug
and alcohol seminar with the State officials. Everybody I
talked with, Charleston to Macomb to Carbondale, when you ask
the question how difficult is it to get parents into schools,
they say that is the $64,000 gem; and if we can solve that
here, you are going to the White House. I mean, it is a tough
one. It's a very, very difficult one.
From kindergarten, beginning--their early primary years,
parents do get involved; but as you go up the grade scale it
drops off, to the point, in high school, it gets very, very
difficult to get people in there, very difficult.
Mr. Manzullo. You know, nobody wants to say it, but I will.
The reason a lot of parents don't get involved with regard to
drugs is that they lived through drugs in the schools, and they
survived it. They figure if they lived through and survived it,
their kids will do the same thing.
It's true. If you ask parents about it, they say, well, we
lived through it. Many experimented with it. They will tell you
to your face, I smoked a little marijuana; and it did nothing
harmful for me. If my kid does it, there will be nothing
harmful for him.
So there has to be two generations that need to be
reached--not only the generation at risk but the parents.
If you have the town meeting on the increase in cable
rates, believe me, that place would be packed out. It is really
an indication of the fact that so many parents are just
saying--and I am not saying this in a critical manner--is that
as they went through high school--you know, as their parents
went through high school with the presence of alcohol and
survived that, so they went through high school with the
presence of drugs and survived that, and it is just something
else that has to be a challenge to their children, something
else they have to live with.
But that is why I wrote down the first thing Mr. Nakonechny
said, that it is hard to get parents involved and I would
submit this: If one thing comes out of this subcommittee
hearing today, if parents don't get involved, we might as well
all go home.
We are U.S. Congressmen. You are involved with prevention,
enforcement, education, all types of fields, volunteer work.
You might as well go home too. Because it is simply a matter of
pointing out to the parents the absolute necessity----
What amazes me about what you have done is you saw a corner
that wasn't filled and that is people take the public stand
against something that stinks in society, to go out there and
to wear the T-shirts and get the parents involved in doing the
same thing.
Let me just make a couple of observations and suggestions.
Schools send literature home on a periodic basis. Public
libraries send out literature on a periodic basis. There
probably isn't an organization, not a proper organization, that
doesn't do that.
If there is a list of 10 things for which parents should
look to see as to whether or not their kids are on drugs, if
you put one of those--just one sign--dilated eyes, for example,
nervousness, jitteriness, sleeping too long, inability to
concentrate, any of those things are a sign that you may have a
child that is at risk.
In working with so many parents--when I was in the private
sector, I worked with hundreds of parents of high school kids
who were caught up in the juvenile system. The same thing came
back over and over and over again.
If we had only known, if somebody just told us--but I think
if you put on a program at your school and say we are going to
run a program on how parents can recognize whether or not their
kids are involved in drugs, you might get 20 parents to show
up, whereas 10 or 15 years ago, you would have 700 that would
fill the assembly up.
So I think the education process--the net has to be cast in
much larger terms. At least I say this not only as a
Congressman--from a person who worked in law enforcement for
over 22 years and now from a unique and very distinct and
personal responsibility, being a parent to three children,
knowing all three will be teenagers at one time--and personally
that absolutely terrifies me. But recognizing the fact that
when my kids are past their teens, I think that is probably 50
percent of the battle.
You wanted to say something, John?
Mr. Nakonechny. I agree with you. I have a son who is 25,
and he teaches in the Glen Park schools, but at one point in
time, we were going through 15 gallons of milk a week, my wife
and I--not my wife and I, but our four children. Even on a
personal level, my wife smoked two and a half packs a day for
years, and she was industrial strength and we had to take her
to a shrink twice and finally it caught on and she no longer
smokes.
Our third son, I coached him in baseball--I coached
baseball for 17 years. I come to find out--he is going to turn
21 in September--he is smoking Marlboros. I mean, figure it
out, it is difficult; and I think we are pretty responsible
parents. But the kid who I least expected to smoke is smoking
cigarettes now.
Mr. Manzullo. Mr. Haines, this is pretty unique stuff. Not
everybody agrees with you, especially when you say if you are
trying traditional drug prevention efforts--for example, policy
changes, scare tactics, refusal skills, et cetera. In the face
of your detractors, you have something that is working here. We
have a 16th Congressional District antidrug coalition where we
bring in people from throughout the entire community. In fact,
we have media people come in that are part of our group, and
they are in the process of planning PSAs, and I would like to
call upon your services, if you would be so kind, to help us in
our PSAs, in order to gear the message.
But let me ask you a question. Do you remember the ad with
the fried egg.
Mr. Haines. This is your brain, this is your brain on
drugs.
Mr. Manzullo. Right. That does some good. You are not
saying those totally don't do good.
Mr. Haines. They sell T-shirts in almost every university
bookstore around the country I have been in, and it says ``This
is your brain,'' ``This is your brain on beer,'' that has the
hard boiled egg in the bottom of a mug; it becomes the national
collegiate joke.
The scare tactics have the impact of attracting attention,
all the communications media say scare tactics attract
attention, even negative media campaigns attract attention; but
one thing they do is fewer people vote who are exposed to
negative media. Fewer people who are exposed to negative
substance media are affected by it, rather than being thrilled
by it, it is what I call the ``Jaws factor.'' If negative media
worked for young people, people who saw ``Jaws'' would not go
swim in the water where it was filmed. Just the opposite
happened, they had to close beaches where ``Jaws'' was filmed
because all the young people flocked to the beaches to be able
to say I swam where ``Jaws'' was filmed. So scare tactics
sometimes have the unintentional impact of exciting the
population to the very behavior.
Some years ago there was the documentary called ``Scared
Straight,'' which had death row inmates talking to the camera;
it was hailed as a prevention film to deter juvenile
delinquency, but when it was actually studied, it found the
straight kids were scared straighter by it, the majority of
kids in the mainstream saw it as entertainment, and the few
kids who were bent or twisted saw the people as role models.
Part of what I am talking about here is, much in the field
of substance abuse prevention goes untested, is not accountable
for whether or not it actually makes any difference, and I am
heartened by that one facet of the tobacco agreement, as I
understand it, which requires a cigarette manufacturer to show
actual percentages of decrease in the number of young people
who smoke tobacco in the future or they face increasing
penalties.
In our field, substance abuse prevention, most of the
people who receive State or Federal money don't have to show
any effect whatsoever on the change of substance-taking
behavior, and the grant moneys come again the next year.
Mr. Manzullo. There are a series of ads on television now
showing videotapes of children who have been killed by drunk
drivers. Your observation?
Mr. Haines. I think it will once again reinforce the
message to those who don't drive drunk about how serious and
dangerous it is. I think we have another phenomenon with drunk
drivers, which is a tough nut to crack, is that a large
majority of the people are addicted, or are people who may not
intend to drive drunk and do anyhow because of their impairment
in judgment. They can sit stone sober, see that and say, drunk
driving is a horrible thing.
Mr. Manzullo. They don't realize they are a threat.
Mr. Haines. Right, and get entirely intoxicated. So to some
extent we need to be working harder to empower community
members at intervening. The sober people around drunk drivers
who feel intimidated or impotent about being able to intervene,
to intervene before a person gets in the car, because I don't
even think enforcement efforts reach addicted populations for
drunk driving prevention because they know they don't want to
get a ticket or pay $7,000 in legal fees, but they do it
anyhow, and they do it over and over again because the
recidivism rate for DUI is high.
Mr. Manzullo. Your friend Noel Mesler, who works in the
county, you get out there in the squad cars and continue to
arrest them, and the incidence of drunk driving has gone down
nationwide. That is the good news. The bad news is, it is
increasing among the young people.
But, Bob, you take programs like yours, there is no way to
measure the impact or effectiveness of such a program.
Mr. Miller. No, and that is the question I get, in 10 years
what have you accomplished? I don't have an answer; we don't
have any statistics.
Mr. Manzullo. You don't have to, because all you can say--
there have been a lot of congressional hearings, you say you
spend all this money on beer, but things are getting worse.
Well, just a second, it could be more now if you didn't have a
D.A.R.E., and you can never evaluate the cost of prevention.
Mr. Miller. Right, but I feel--and I said there were over
24,000 students. There has been one that I know of that has
come to my house and was almost an alcoholic and was on
cocaine. And he said, I need help; he knew I was involved with
Say No to Drugs. I counseled him through my church program, and
he is now a straight young man. So I have said and I continue
to say, if only 1 out of the 24,000 was saved, it was worth it
for my time for the 10 years.
Mr. Manzullo. I just want to commend all of you who have
bits and pieces to work with on this overall problem. Nobody
here has the total answer. You struggle within the depth of
your own soul to come up with the best method possible to
combat this, and you have an area there and it works.
And, Sheriff, with all deference, I share with you the
tremendous frustration of the agencies and organizations and
task forces and meetings and groups and so many people with
different problems, and people are ``meeting-ed out'' because
they are just so desperately trying to figure out which way to
do this.
We don't have an answer in Congress, because we know
something about bureaucrats in Washington, but I want to thank
you and commend you and give you our best wishes for the
tremendous work you have done.
Mr. Haines. I was just going to comment on measuring
prevention. I think we could borrow from some of our
neighboring fields. Certainly we have some information to show
how the incidence of smallpox has been reduced within a
population after an intervention. We know that seat belt usage
has gone up 400 percent with a legislative prevention
requirement to wear seat belts and enforcement of that.
We also know with underage drinking among college students,
their behavior hasn't changed at all with legislation; the same
number drink today, who are 19 and in college, who drank 10 or
15 years ago before that legislation was passed.
So we do know there are outcome measures that can in fact
determine whether or not there are more or fewer people in
emergency rooms with drug overdoses or fewer people who are
sanctioned within the school district or wherever the markers
might be. There would be no farmer in this community who would
buy a pesticide if it didn't show it was effective in killing
insects, for reducing the populations in the fields, and I
think we can apply that to our prevention efforts as well.
Mr. Hastert. Thanks, Don. I want to make a statement and
then a question.
You mentioned conflicted parents, parents who were parents
of the 1960's or 1970's, that invited in one thing or another
when they were students; let me say that things have changed.
Drugs are different today, and most parents, I know one time
heroin was 4 to 10 percent pure in the 1970's, and today it is
90 percent pure; and certainly we have a lot more kids in the
hospital rooms who OD because of it.
And we have this Smashing Pumpkins band, I think is what
they call it, and their people OD, and I don't know how that
affects kids because they have seen the results of that type of
thing. Twenty years ago, crack didn't exist. Methamphetamines
were rare and certainly less potent, and marijuana today is
sometimes 25 times more potent than it was in the 1960's. And
then, if you do what the gentlemen talked about before, if you
sprinkle it with stuff, you don't know what you have; it's a
time bomb.
So times are different, too, and I hope parents get
educated with what they thought was drug use, certainly can be
much more magnified today.
A couple of other things. One of the things that the
President has asked us to do is appropriate $175 million to aid
through the Drug Czar's office to do PR, because they said we
can't get free advertising anymore and we need to get
information out in front of kids; and I don't know if that is
going to be on MTV or where they want to put that. But if you
were advising a type of PR, if that $175 million does get
appropriated through the process, what kind of PR ought to be
out there? How do you reach kids? How do you get their
attention?
Mr. Haines. One point would be, not to deny the problems
exist, but once the problem has been recognized, to move away
from inflating the problem and, instead, tend to the solution.
So solution-based public service announcements, public service
announcements that don't tell us what not to do but that tell
us what to do, that provide us with the skills, the power,
demonstrated abilities that could be modeled in PSAs or
whatever, the attitudes and norms that would protect us from
harm. These are the things that people who have been offered
alcohol or drugs or what have you have been able to do more
successfully, and have the models to describe how they have
succeeded. We don't need any more parades of people, who had
difficulties, tell how they have been harmed because that
doesn't empower anybody to do anything, other than first become
harmed in order to become healed; and we don't want to give
that person that message.
I call that the Dwight Gooden message of recovery. First
you have to be an athlete that pitches high on coke, and then
you become treated and give the wrong message because it says,
one, we can use drugs with impunity because there is treatment.
That is the message you hear often from young people who
smoke, well, everybody gives it up after they are 26 or 30
years old, so I can smoke now because it isn't going to be a
problem. We want to avoid that message and give people the
message that models the behavior we are trying to reduce over
and over again.
Mr. Nakonechny. I couldn't say it better than Mike. I agree
with that. I don't have my own thoughts on that per se. I am
not so sure what the intent of this PR blitz--what does he have
in mind?
Mr. Hastert. I'm not sure, it is the Drug Czar, ONDCP.
Mr. Nakonechny. If it is going to be more automobile
crashes, saying, Don't drink and drive, and there are bodies
all over, I don't go along with that at all. My opinion is, you
take a role model athlete not on anything and promote the
positive. That is coming from professional sports, and I think
they are pretty good when I see them.
Mr. Hastert. If we get nothing more out of this hearing
today, maybe the warning could be worth something.
I think we have gotten a lot out of this hearing. If
anybody else has anything else to say--I think we will go ahead
and dismiss the panel, and I want to say thank you very much
for your time and, more than that, for what you do; it makes a
difference.
I think if you try to be quantitative in this and say,
everybody does this work and we still have problems, I think
the problems that would face us today if we didn't have people
out there trying to help them solve them would be
inapproachable. And we thank you for what you do, Mr. Miller,
especially you, for your volunteer work. You can't see them and
you can't measure them, but there are great effects.
Mr. Miller. I have this pumpkin your organization brought a
few weeks ago when they brought the float with the donkey on
it. Was it a donkey or an elephant.
Mr. Hastert. It was an elephant, but we are not talking
about that today.
I just want to finish with one thing. I had a long talk
recently with a young man who grew up in Sycamore, IL, and who
today is a coach at one of the major universities in this
country that happens to be in Illinois. He is a head coach, and
he talked about his life in Sycamore as opposed to what the
life is today. He is younger than I am; he is not very old--and
you appreciate that, right--and he said, you know, he grew up
on a farm and he was so tickled to have organized athletics
when he got in junior high and high school because they got up
at 6 a.m., and at 6 p.m. they milked cows, and that is what
they did; and they bailed hay and did all these things. But if
he was out for a sport, he had to practice a little early, but
didn't have to be home right at 3:30 and he could do these
things.
This was an incentive, and he achieved and has done great
things. But sometimes--you know, most kids don't have that
incentive; and as you change from a really rural community to a
community more suburban and more sophisticated, I know my kid's
life has changed a lot different from what my life was. I grew
up in a little town called Oswego, IL, which was all farms.
Today you can't find a farm.
So we have to adjust and find those new challenges, and the
gentlemen who were here before talked about athletics and
keeping kids busy, and basically busy kids don't get in
trouble. Kids that don't have things to do, or a life
unstructured--parents aren't there and they have to kill time.
So I think we have learned a lot. I am not sure that there
is a fix for every problem we talk about. Ironically, I think
most fixes come in our own backyard, at home, what we do in our
communities, what we do together to solve the problems are
probably the most important thing. So I appreciate your
efforts; I appreciate everybody who is here today.
What are we going to do with this information? We are not
here just to sit and listen today; I hope we can take the ideas
back. I hope that the ideas that we try to fashion into
legislation take into account what we hear today and try to
emphasize in that way. So we appreciate very much your input
into this, and we have also had a request to have a public
statement, so I am going to dismiss this panel and if the
gentleman would like to make a public statement, I will give
you 5 minutes, give your name and residence, and we will be
happy to listen to what you have to say.
Mr. Bennett. My name is Jack Bennett. I live in DeKalb. For
purposes of identification only, I am a retired professor of
biology at Northern and was also, for 20 years, a Republican
precinct committeeman in the community.
I am very pleased that you are having this hearing, and I
have been very pleased to hear almost all of the presentations.
I feel better about the community right now than I did before I
heard them. I think that is good.
I appreciate the opportunity to present my views on the war
on drugs, as it has been, and is being conducted. I believe I
share many of the goals of those who have been involved in the
war in the past, especially such goals as educating our
children on the consequences of the use of many of the so-
called ``recreational drugs,'' and I would include alcohol and
tobacco, both substances that I have used in the past, of
course. I have been able to cure myself of tobacco for 30 years
or so.
However, I wish to be clear that the shared goals does not
imply that I or many in our community support any aspect of the
war as now conducted, other than the educational efforts. I am
reasonably certain that a large number of consumers and sellers
of the so-called ``recreational drugs'' in the community don't
share in the desire to see the drug war continue. In addition,
many nonusers in the community do not share in the war in the
sense, as used by the media.
For example, I have repeatedly argued that the battle is
futile, is destructive to the community, it cannot be won by
any of the current efforts, other than, as I mentioned,
education. The war has had the effect of corrupting the
officials, police and the military of almost all of the
countries from Mexico through Peru, and of Southeast Asia. And
our own police and other agencies have not been completely
immune, as the media has so eloquently shown.
The war has led our own government to massive interference
in the internal affairs of all the nations involved in illegal
production, trade and transport. We have been very bad
neighbors from that point of view in the way we have intervened
in other countries. If other countries tried to intervene in
the United States in the same way, we would be fighting wars.
The war has resulted in Federal laws that have damaged many
of our individual liberties, including freedom from
unreasonable search and seizures. Many judged innocent have
been unable to reclaim their property. The DEA officials have
requested the right to shoot down private aircraft if unable to
establish contact. Fortunately, somebody had sense enough to
stop that.
Repeatedly, innocent people have been damaged, and when
found completely uninvolved, usually cannot even get an
apology, especially from the DEA or FBI.
The war has filled our prisons with otherwise productive
citizens who were guilty of the same stupidity as tobacco and
alcohol users, but with a different drug. The war regularly
converts foolish youngsters into criminals, rather than
productive citizens. The war has failed consistently for at
least 40 years, yet we show no sign of having learned any
lessons from this continuous failure.
As quoted in the media, even the most successful drug war
agents admit that their arrests barely dimmed the street
supply. New suppliers show up immediately. The only effect is
to overfill the overcrowded prisons and cost the taxpayers even
more money.
As these speakers have told you earlier today, nobody has a
problem getting drugs if they want it. After World War I, we
tried a great experiment of making alcohol a drug, illegal. In
about 10 years, it became apparent that prohibition had many
deleterious effects, in addition to the fact that it didn't
work.
The bootleggers, the 1920's name for drug pushers, made
sure that no one who could afford their alcohol would go
without. The profits they made built the organized crime system
in this country and corrupted many of the enforcement agencies,
the same kind of corruption that we see today all over the
world in the drug war.
When our citizens came to their senses in the early 1930's
and repealed prohibition, several good things happened. One,
deaths from contaminated alcohol stopped, because you could buy
good stuff in the liquor store, and it was properly labeled.
Two, businessmen, often ex-bootleggers, made legal profits and
paid taxes on them, instead of being in prison. No more
otherwise productive citizens were imprisoned at taxpayers'
expense for selling or consuming alcohol.
The sad fact is that, today, we have not profited from this
experiment in government control of behavior and morality.
Taxes are not collected on drug sales, organized crime, gangs,
are enriched, and many die from overdoses because they have no
way of knowing the concentrations or if the drugs are
contaminated. Our citizens are mugged, robbed and murdered to
pay the bill.
When we have the sense to legalize the production and sale
of all drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, tax them, and
require suitable purity and labeling, we can treat them like
alcohol and tobacco. We can then work on educating our children
about the futility of destroying their nervous systems. No more
prisons filled with drug users and pushers; children will find
reasons to try them, if they can find them, but will lack the
lure of illegality. The money currently wasted on the DEA and
similar agencies, who have not stopped or reduced the street
supply, can be used for education and treatment.
I am sure there are other benefits, including safer
streets, that will follow.
Clearly, the battle of drugs is not shared in its present
form by the entire community. It is quite probable that most
who share my view are too intimidated by the mindless
propaganda to publicly speak out. I am sad that the Congress
perpetuates the head-in-the-sand syndrome that has kept us from
effectively dealing with this problem.
Thank you.
Mr. Hastert. I appreciate the gentleman and his comments,
and let me give you very briefly--and I don't think we need to
set a debate up here. I think you and I disagree in some of the
aspects.
Let me just give you, very briefly, an experience I had. I
went to Switzerland to give a speech. I was asked by the ONDCP
to participate. And Zurich and all the different provinces of
Switzerland, which is a very small country--I visited there
about 30 years ago; it was a beautiful, pristine country, a
pretty conservative country--that country today has basically
legalized heroin, and they have free heroin houses, people can
get up to 9 hits a day.
They also--for those people who go on heroin, have a
pension system. If you declare yourself as a heroin addict,
they give you a pension of 2,500 Swiss francs a year, that is
about $1,300. If you are married, she will get another 2,500
francs; and if you have a child, you can claim another 350
francs, if you have a dog, you can get 500 francs. So this is
how the Swiss approach this problem.
What has happened is, heroin addicts have not decreased;
there is still an illegal supply because they can't get heroin
that is pure enough. People who had used heroin at one age--now
has crept down to lower ages of use, and they are still giving
away 15,000 needles a day in Needle Park in Zurich, which was
once a beautiful place, and today it has turned that town into
something that you might see in some not very desirable areas
in Chicago, Boston, New York or other places.
So, firsthand, my experience is different from yours, but I
have seen the legalization side, and not very good results, and
I think that is where maybe you and I have a difference of
opinion.
I appreciate your being here, and I think certainly the
statistics and ideas that you have are sound. They come from
reason and thought. I think we disagree, and I thank you for
being here.
Ms. Meyer. Representative Hastert, will others in the
community have a chance to make a comment and ask questions? I
called your office and asked about that, and they said there
would be an opportunity.
Mr. Hastert. There will be an opportunity. You can submit
written questions.
Ms. Meyer. I was told you would stay as long as we had
questions and comments.
Mr. Hastert. I am sorry, if you have a question, I will try
and answer it. Is it on the issue of drugs.
Ms. Meyer. Yes.
Mr. Hastert. Yes.
Ms. Meyer. There are several things that I believe very
strongly that you as a Congressman can do to help us in our
community.
You talked a lot today about the positive approach to
youngsters, and prevention and rehabilitation are more
important than prisons; and I understand there was a bill
recently passed in Congress, which you supported, which would
allow--would call for the imprisonment of children down to age
14. And I understand that our law enforcement officials all
realize that this is a disaster, and that adult prisons become
crime schools, if not death sentences, for our youngsters, so I
would hope you would rethink that.
Also, there is a bill circulating in Congress, which I hope
you will not join in with, which is denying--prohibiting
affirmative action at any level, where there are any Federal
funds involved. This would involve our university, and we have
all indicated that youngsters need to have a goal in life, and
the light at the end of the tunnel needs to be open for
children of minority races, so I hope you will not join in with
that bill.
Mr. Hastert. Your name?
Ms. Meyer. I am Cecilia Meyer, and I am a coordinator for
DeKalb Interface Network for Peace and Justice, and for 21
years I was a social worker in the DeKalb school system so I
have been concerned about youngsters for a long time.
Mr. Hastert. Thank you very much.
[Whereupon, at 11:47 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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