[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
H.R. 2086, THE OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY REAUTHORIZATION
ACT OF 2003
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
ON
H.R. 2086
TO REAUTHORIZE THE OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY
__________
MAY 22, 2003
__________
Serial No. 108-27
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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WASHINGTON : 2003
88-015 PDF
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia Maryland
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Columbia
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas CHRIS BELL, Texas
WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota ------
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Peter Sirh, Staff Director
Melissa Wojciak, Deputy Staff Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Philip M. Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on May 22, 2003..................................... 1
Text of H.R. 2086................................................ 5
Statement of:
Walters, John P., Director, Office of National Drug Control
Policy..................................................... 47
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Missouri, prepared statement of................... 103
Davis, Chairman Tom, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Virginia, prepared statement of................... 3
Ose, Hon. Doug, a Representative in Congress from the State
of California, prepared statement of....................... 72
Towns, Hon. Edolphus, a Representative in Congress from the
State of New York, prepared statement of................... 68
Walters, John P., Director, Office of National Drug Control
Policy:
Information concerning Federal seizures.................. 65
Information concerning minority subcontractors........... 98
Prepared statement of.................................... 53
H.R. 2086, THE OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY REAUTHORIZATION
ACT OF 2003
----------
THURSDAY, MAY 22, 2003
House of Representatives,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:28 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis of
Virginia (chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Tom Davis of Virginia, Mica,
Souder, Ose, Lewis of Kentucky, Mrs. Davis of Virginia, Platts,
Putnam, Schrock, Deal, Miller, Murphy, Turner, Carter,
Blackburn, Waxman, Owens, Towns, Sanders, Maloney, Cummings,
Kucinich, Davis of Illinois, Tierney, Clay, Watson, Van Hollen,
Sanchez, Ruppersberger, Norton, and Bell.
Staff present: Scott Kopple, deputy director of
communications; Edward Kidd, professional staff member; Teresa
Austin, chief clerk; Joshua E. Gillespie, deputy clerk; Susie
Schulte, legislative assistant; Corinne Zaccagnini, chief
information officer; Brien, Beattie, staff assistant; Phil
Barnett, minority chief counsel; Michelle Ash and Tony Haywood,
minority counsels; Denise Wilson, minority professional staff
member; Earley Green, minority chief clerk; and Jean Gosa and
Teresa Coufal, minority assistant clerks.
Chairman Tom Davis. The committee will come to order. I
apologize for the delay, this is the latest I've ever started a
meeting.
Mr. Waxman and subcommittee Chairman Souder are in the
back, will be reviewing this, trying to negotiate some items
for markup we hope we can hold today. But we're just a little
bit apart on some issues and we're trying to work it out.
So I will ask unanimous consent that my entire statement be
in the record to move this along.
Let me just say that Chairman Souder has held a series of
hearings at the subcommittee level evaluating every component
and program carried out by ONDCP to ensure that when we
authorize this, we get it right. I want to thank him for his
leadership on these issues, also his ranking member, Elijah
Cummings. My state-
ment is much lengthier, it will go in the record. But because
we've kept Director Walters waiting here, I will conclude my
formal remarks at this point and see if there are other Members
who wish to make opening statements.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis and the text
of H.R. 2086 follow:]
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Mr. Towns. What's the rush, Mr. Chairman?
Chairman Tom Davis. We'll hear testimony that they are
eager to get this reauthorized. We've had a time line people
have agreed to. And unlike maybe some legislation we worked
before, this was the original time line with hearings and
everything to move this through. But you know, if we can't work
issues out, we don't have to do it, if that's the issue. But I
don't think we're rushing this. I think we started hearings on
this, this committee has had two trips to Colombia we've
invited members to go through. So I don't think it's a rush.
But I think we're on schedule.
Mr. Towns. But reclaiming my time, if it's not due to be
reauthorized until September, I don't understand why we have to
have a hearing and a markup today.
Chairman Tom Davis. Well, we've had hearings at the
subcommittee level and the subcommittee has marked it up. And
again, we don't have to, but our original line was to try to
get this marked up in committee to go to the floor after
Memorial Day recess. One of the difficulties comes in the
conference. Once we mark it up here, to get September, June and
July we'll have June and July to move it through to the floor
and move it through a Senate conference and bring it back to
the floor. If we miss that, then the law doesn't get extended
in September.
So to meet those goals, that's our intention. That's not to
say if we had to, we couldn't do it later. But this was the
time line. The subcommittees have spent some extensive time on
this, and they are again negotiating out some final wording
with Mr. Waxman and Mr. Cummings right now, with Chairman
Souder. But that's why the delay. If we wait and mark this up
in June, which would be the alternative, by then we have to
move it to the floor a week later, it's that much altered
before we can sit down with the Senate, whenever their time
schedule is a similar schedule, and then bring it back.
Hopefully the conference can conclude by the end of July. If it
doesn't, then we go past the authorization period.
That's it. I mean, again, if we don't work this language
out toady, we'll kick it over. Our schedule tried, at least the
House to do its part, so we can have this thing ready for
conference at the earliest possible date.
Mr. Towns. I yield back.
Chairman Tom Davis. OK. Any other Members wish to make a
statement? Mr. Mica, you've been very active on this.
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I look forward to
hearing Mr. Walters' comments today and also to the markup. It
is important that we move forward on this legislation that will
reauthorize our national drug control policy through 2008. I do
have some concerns and I know that they're being addressed,
hopefully at this moment, about providing flexibility to the
drug czar.
The program started off as far as media campaign with some
bumps in the road, and there were some missteps. I think if
each of us wanted to design a program, we might design it a
little bit differently. I think Mr. Walters has done an
incredible job in right-sizing this program which is so
important to our youth and parents and others. So I would like
to see him have the flexibility necessary, and I hope we can
negotiate that as we move forward with this. And it does take a
while to get this through, but it is important.
There are other provisions in here that are so important to
HIDTA and proper operation of HIDTA. We've spent some money,
because of political pressures and others, where maybe we
shouldn't. The drug czar needs authority to make certain that
these funds are properly expended and in communities that need
that assistance. There are a whole host of issues here, and the
drug czar's ability to focus on not only prevention and
education but interdiction, the international programs that are
so important.
So as former chair of the subcommittee, I'm pleased we're
moving forward. I hope we can wrap this up. And again finally,
I do hope that we can give him the flexibility to do what needs
to be done during this reauthorization period. I yield back.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Do any other Members wish to make statements? Members will
have 5 legislative days to submit opening statements for the
record.
I'd like to recognize our witness, John P. Walters, the
director of the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy. It's the policy of the committee to swear you in before
your testimony. Will you rise with me and raise your right
hand?
[Witness sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. You can go ahead
with your statement. We'd like to keep it to 5 minutes, but
frankly, if you need to go over a couple minutes, you're our
only witness today. We want to give you ample time. Your total
statement is in the record. And then we'll go on, I think
Members will have a lot of questions.
So thank you for being with us. Again, I apologize for the
delay.
STATEMENT OF JOHN P. WALTERS, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG
CONTROL POLICY
Mr. Walters. No apology necessary.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your work,
Ranking Member Waxman, subcommittee Chairman Souder, and the
ranking subcommittee member, Mr. Cummings. This is the
culmination of a lot of hard work by many of you with whom I've
met. Many of you have traveled, individually and with us,
looking at this problem. We've benefited from your advice and
counsel, as well as your support for these programs.
I appreciate the speed with which you have pursued this
because we not only have the office, but one of the programs in
the office that's important that we have now, are lacking full
authorization and are continued as a result of appropriations
language. Obviously we'd like to try to have these foundations
as stable as possible.
In February of last year, the President announced the
ambitious goals of reducing drug use by 10 percent in 2 years
and 25 percent in 5 years. We had an initial progress report in
the 2003 strategy that was released earlier this year. The good
news is we have a decrease in youth drug use. Teen use is
headed in the right direction again, down. Last December,
monitoring the future survey found that use of illicit drugs in
the past year decreased by a statistically significant amount
for 2001 to 2002 among 8th and 10th graders. Percentages of 8th
and 10th graders using illicit drugs were their lowest level
since 1993 and 1995 respectively.
In addition, we've had reports of historic successes in our
efforts to control the supply from key sources outside our
country. The latest cultivation figures from Colombia show that
coca cultivation, the source of most of the, if not the vast
majority of cocaine coming into the United States, has declined
by a historic 15 percent last year. Overall, Indian region
production of cocaine reduced by 12 percent. That's over 100
metric tons of cocaine that was not flowing to the United
States and other places.
In addition, last year we now have data showing a reduction
in poppy cultivation for heroin of 40 percent in Mexico and 25
percent in Colombia. This corresponds with a 6 percent
wholesale purity reduction we saw in imports into the United
States. We are making initial, although we need to follow
through, significant progress, we believe, on both supply and
demand. We need to expand it to more areas, and as I say, most
important of all, we need to follow through.
The administration has proposed for fiscal year 2004 a
budget of $11.7 billion for drug control programs. It focuses
on three areas, as you asked in your letter of invitation for
me to summarize. I'll do that briefly and then touch on the
points with reauthorization that I'd like to ask your
consideration on and then be happy to take your questions.
Our strategy is three parts. I'll begin first and foremost
with stopping drug use before it starts. Everybody that looks
at this understands prevention is the best way to avoid the
terrible consequences of drug use for too many of our
communities. We also have long research that shows if young
people do not start using dangerous addictive substances in
their teenage years, they're unlikely to go on and use later.
Our task is in one sense simple and commonsensical: don't
expose our children and our young people as they pass to
adulthood to these things and we will change the dimension of
this problem for generations to come. The task is to do what
common sense tells us.
We have made an effort to strengthen our prevention
programs in the year, a little more than a year that we've been
reviewing with Congress these efforts. We have tried to
strengthen the media campaign, which I'll touch on in a moment.
We have tried to strengthen what we do with community
coalitions to bring these efforts together and we are trying
with the Department of Education to strengthen programs that we
provide to individual schools.
Our second priority is to heal America's drug users. The
President has committed a historic $1.6 billion to additional
Federal treatment spending for 5 years. As a part of this in
the State of the Union, with this budget, we have requested an
additional $600 million over 3 years for a targeted treatment
effort to reach more people who need and are not getting
services, and to improve the quality of services.
We estimate now that there are roughly 6 million Americans
who have a dependency or abuse problem such that they need
treatment from illegal drugs; 23 percent of them are teenagers.
We've never had estimates with that high a percentage being
that young part of the population. We need to expand capacity,
we need also to more intensively look at the problem as it
exists among teenagers in the United States.
In part to do that, we have been working with the
Department of Education with the help of many Members of
Congress at expanding knowledge of student drug testing where
there have been problems. The old view was student drug testing
was punitive, it was a way of punishing kids who already had
trouble. The law in practice is radically different today. It's
confidential, it's a way of finding kids who have trouble
before that trouble gets so bad that they drop out and are
involved in more harm in getting them the help that they need.
Schools that have done this for this reason and have saved
lives. And for schools that have had deaths, and I've been to
some of your districts and we've talked about this, have had
deaths of kids from overdose, where parents feel they have to
be standing by and watching victims, we don't. We have a tool.
It's got to be done and implemented with the consent and the
support of institutions in the community. But it is a tool that
will help save lives. We want to make that tool more available
as one part of what we do to reach the teenagers who need
treatment in this country.
In addition, a third part of our effort has been to reduce
the market for drugs. In addition to what we've done
internationally, we have worked at bringing law enforcement,
Federal, State and local together in a more systematic and
direct effort on the markets that are the drug trade in
America. We have combined for the first time all Federal, State
and local task force information on the major drug trafficking
structures.
We want to do to this what, frankly, legitimate business
worries Government's going to do to them, to use the regulatory
and criminal power of Government to make it increasingly
impossible for the business to operate at its current level.
You've given us new tools in connection with terror at our
borders, with intelligence sharing, with moneys to expand the
work of law enforcement. We're trying to implement those more
effectively here.
Let me just touch on a couple of items that are pertinent
to the markup at this point. First of all, I'd like to thank
everyone that's been involved for both the extensive
consideration of the work of my office and for the measures
that have been put into the draft and the markup from the
subcommittee. The vast majority of what's in that bill will be
helpful to us and we support entirely.
There are a couple of areas where I'd ask for your
consideration as you review and mark up from the full
committee. First, the media campaign. As you mentioned, Mr.
Chairman, the campaign has been the subject of some criticism
in the past. Everyone wants this to work, everybody believes
the advertising we use in business, the advertising we use to
inform people in elections, the advertising that we use in
other areas of public safety and health needs to be better used
here if we can. The question was, could we get it right.
We are currently spending nearly three quarters of the
media campaign money on advertising and at my direction, that
advertising and the campaign's activities were changed in a
number of ways to improve the performance of the campaign.
First, I had more direct involvement in the development of the
ads and the content of the ads, with our partners and their
execution. Second, I required testing. The ads before were not
focus group tested as effectively as I thought they should have
been before they went on the air. As a result, I believe in
some cases we had content that was not very powerful. And we
need to have as powerful an ad, I think we all agree, as we can
get. That's now happening.
We refocused the age group from lower and subteens to mid-
teens, so that we could put on more powerful and appropriate
ads at an age group where we know substance abuse doubles,
between middle school and high school. We cannot forget about
young people. We also cannot forget that mid-teens is a very
large area of initiation and expanded use.
Fourth, I asked that the campaign focus on marijuana.
Marijuana accounts for over three quarters of illegal drug use.
More young people, teenagers, seek treatment for marijuana
dependency in this country than for all other illegal drugs
combined. In the last 2 years, more teenagers have sought
treatment for marijuana dependency than for alcohol dependency
nationwide. We have had a view in too many cases that has
under-appreciated the danger and the role that marijuana plays
in the substance abuse problems of this country. We need to
correct that. So we focused additional ads on the major
substance of consumption and dependency among the illegal
drugs.
Today we will release, and we're making it available to
committee staff, a report that is the preliminary findings of
attitude tracking study of the media campaign changes since
last year. This too is good news. I'll summarize some of it
just briefly here, and we'll provide the full report to the
staff. Again, this is a preliminary report that Congress asked
because they wanted to see whether the changes were working.
Not only is youth marijuana use down substantially over the
course of the year, between 2002 and 2003, there's direct
relationship between exposure to anti-drug advertising and the
improved attitudes and drug use behavior. Past year marijuana
use among youth grades 6 through 12 dropped fully 13 percent
between 2002 and 2003, according to this preliminary report.
Our primary media campaign targets youths in grades 9 through
11, use dropped 16 percent.
Further, there's a direct relationship between exposure to
the media campaign, marijuana advertising and positive results.
Youth who reported high exposure to the campaign's marijuana
ads were significantly less likely than those who reported
seeing none of the ads to report using drugs in the last year.
In fact, they were 22 percent less likely.
Similarly, for past month marijuana use, those with high
exposure to our ads were a remarkable 38 percent less likely to
report past month marijuana use than those kids who had no
exposure. Youths with high exposure to marijuana TV ads versus
those with no exposure were likely to perceive great risk and a
number of negative consequences to marijuana use. Marijuana use
is seen as highly risky, and youths were significantly less
likely to want to hang around those who used marijuana by
nearly a 20 percent change between the 2-years.
These numbers are preliminary. We will learn more about the
picture as more data becomes available. But they are very
encouraging. It is important to note that in the past, the
attitude tracking survey has tracked very closely with other
important surveys, such as monitoring the future. Taken
together, the recent results from monitoring the future, the
annual pride survey of youth, and now the attitude tracking
survey strongly suggests that there is a new dynamic in our
effort against illicit drug use in our schools and communities.
Young people are getting the message and they are changing
their behavior for the better.
We have tried to use the advice of experts who try to
change behavior through such marketing and such advertising to
tell us what works more effectively. We have had extensive
discussions, of course, with staff and Members of Congress as
is appropriate. We have tried to reinforce the media messages
with a full range of state-of-the-art support, through Web
sites, guides, fact sheets, and supporting materials so that
people who get the message and are concerned about how to
respond can get more detailed messages and it can be put on
immediately in one small spot or advertisement.
We have sought the flexibility and used the flexibility to
manage the campaign to make changes that will improve
effectiveness and to expand the techniques that will help to
make the messages more powerful and more effective. We are
looking now at the latter part of this year, we're developing
with experts an additional flight of ads, not a substitute for
all for what's going on, that will look at early intervention
for those people who are beginning to have substance dependency
problems. This will require some additional information about
referral to treatment and support.
We want to use the campaign to help change the attitudes
about drug dependency. In too many cases, this disease is made
worse because people look the other way. We want to try to
change attitudes, so that people help save more lives early,
and they support recovery and they support treatment and they
support getting people who are in recovery back into the
mainstream of society. That is a portion of what we want to do
with the future.
Let me turn now briefly to the High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area program. This program was initially funded at
$25 million for the first five HIDTAs back in President Bush's
father's administration. I was there when this was originally
started. Today there are 28 HIDTAs, and the program now
receives $225 million for fiscal year 2003.
Over the course of its creation, parts of the program have
lost their focus. They have tended to drift from focusing on
the targets of high intensity drug trafficking operations that
fan out into larger areas and drifted to various other
priorities, all perhaps worthy but not a tool that fully and
effectively, in our judgment, has done what it needs to do.
And in the judgment of many in Congress, the results and
effectiveness of this program, the results of the review with
OMB and my office, were we had to have better results. If this
is going to be simply a revenue sharing program, as many of you
know, while the 28 sites are valuable, a national revenue
sharing program is more fair. So the goal of this program is to
help the whole Nation through the focus on particular points of
particular trafficking and marketing.
We have tried to do that. I've met with most of the HIDTAs,
the Federal, State and local officials that are part of their
executive boards, and I have tried to lay down guidelines that
will provide focus, results, evaluation and can show you
difference. We have created a consolidated priority targeting
system at the Federal level that we are working with the HIDTAs
to also deploy in appropriate manners. Again, here what we're
trying to do is provide resources for results and results that
look at the--integrate into the national problem.
I appreciate the efforts by the committee and the
subcommittee to try to help us with that focus. We'd like to
make sure, though, that any restraints and constrictions still
allow us to in an overall manner focus on making a difference
in the trafficking organizations that operate in key areas
around the United States. That has to be, we believe, the key.
There is between this and the OCDETF programs are the key
programs, and we've been working with the Attorney General to
get them to focus more directly, because we believe we can make
a difference.
In conclusion, let me say that I appreciate all the hard
work. I visited a number of you in your districts. I have met
with a number of you separately. I know that you, in addition
to all your other responsibilities, work in your communities to
help support these efforts. We are going to try to join with
you more aggressively in the months ahead, as my staff goes
into major areas around the country to help bring together
those who are working on this problem, demand and supply
program, and local efforts.
I think the evidence now is we are beginning to see a
change for the better. We have done this in the past, we need
to continue. The problem has been follow-through. And I
appreciate the hard work that you've done on this
reauthorization. I ask only that what you do in adding or
subtracting from the tools we use, give us the ability to
continue and follow through.
Thank you for this time, thank you for hearing me at this
time. I'll be happy to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Walters follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. We'll have a
number of questions for you. Again, Mr. Walters, your entire
statement is in the record.
I thank the Members for bearing with me. Mr. Mica, would
you like to start the questioning?
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walters, you brought us some good news today about
decreases in the teen use, and cited specifics. Over the years,
we've seen the drug problem as one where we push down in one
area, it's sort of like Jello, and it pops up some place else.
What's the situation with substituting, say, marijuana or
cocaine, for designer drugs or heroin or some other illegal
narcotic?
Mr. Walters. We have tried to more carefully map what's
happening for precisely that reason. I think there is the view
that we have failed to make overall progress because any
particular progress is offset by losses in other areas.
Overall, there are dangers we have to watch, with ecstasy
use, methamphetamine use, heroin use has increased in the
northeastern United States especially. But what we've tried to
do is focus on those key markets as markets and the
vulnerabilities there. We have had some success in some areas
reducing methamphetamine growth. Yesterday I was at a meeting
hosted by the Attorney General and Solicitor General of Canada
where we're working partly on problems of pseudoephedrine
diversion from Canada. Estimates are that pseudoephedrine from
Canada is supplying major pseudoephedrine for the large labs
that produce 85 percent of the methamphetamine in this country.
We just had a recent joint operation that closed down three
major operations that were diverting from Canada. We hope this
will have an effect. Overall we're trying to hit a bunch of
these drugs. We do not have movement in terms of the use
numbers that show a shifting. But we are trying to prevent them
from becoming a shifting.
Mr. Mica. Your preliminary data showed that young people, I
guess it was confined to, were 38 percent less likely to use
drugs if they had exposure to your program. Is that your
initial finding?
Mr. Walters. Yes, that's with regard to marijuana. Yes.
Mr. Mica. So it does have some impact, and that's only in
regard to marijuana, it's not other narcotics?
Mr. Walters. We asked them to measure marijuana, because
the large flight of ads that we started last year with the
revision were focused on marijuana. So we will have other
surveys coming up in the coming months that are other national
surveys that focus on the full range of drugs. But the effort
for this report, I want to be clear about, was the question, is
the media campaign working and are the changes that you made
producing the results. And we made the focus marijuana and this
is the first half of the large report of attitude tracking. The
second half will be available in a little over a month.
Mr. Mica. In addition to the media campaign, of course, our
subcommittee helped draft Plan Colombia and we want Plan
Colombia to work. If I understand also you had good news in
regard to diminishing the cultivation of coca crops. However,
from some reports, we have a problem now with heroin. You also
cited some statistics. Was that the U.S. entry of heroin, 40
percent from Mexico now and 45 percent Colombia?
Mr. Walters. No. The numbers I cited were our survey
reports of cultivation of opium poppy. A 40 percent reduction
between 2001 and 2002 in Mexico, and a 25 percent reduction in
Colombia.
Mr. Mica. Twenty-five percent during what period?
Mr. Walters. Between 2001 to 2002.
Mr. Mica. There is concern again that we have a major
emphasis in one area and then it pops up in the other area. We
do this, it's not DNA, but, my head's a little foggy right now
from this head cold, but we do an analysis of the heroin that's
coming into the United States. Where is it coming in from now?
We used to be able to tell almost from the field as to Mexico,
Colombia or other sources.
Mr. Walters. DA is what I think you're referring to, it's
the heroin signature program.
Mr. Mica. Heroin signature program, yes.
Mr. Walters. They analyze the elements in the heroin
samples that are seized to determine where they were processed.
Mr. Mica. What's our latest?
Mr. Walters. Roughly the estimate is--we won't have a
precise estimate on the basis of consumption. It's only on the
basis of seizure. Some of these organizations, it's easier for
us to target organizations in this hemisphere. But generally
speaking, the heroin available in the eastern part of the
United States has been largely Colombian heroin is the
estimate. It's now moved a little bit more west, for example,
into Chicago. Mexican heroin has dominated the West Coast
market.
Mr. Mica. We were getting figures, and I haven't seen them
in some time, again like we had 90 percent from Colombia, well,
we had zero percent before the beginning of the Clinton
administration, because most of it came from the far east. And
then we saw it gradually increase in Colombia. Can you give us
the latest statistic you have on the seizures and where they
come from? Because we know we can analyze it through the
signature program?
Chairman Tom Davis. This will be the last question, because
the gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Walters. I'd like to supply the specifics for the
record, just because the numbers have to be added, not only in
terms of the seizures but also in terms of what people think is
out there. Because the seizures only reflect the organizations
that we're working. But basically it's about half.
[The information referred to follows:]
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Mr. Mica. Again, Mr. Chairman, for the record, in the past,
we've gotten this. I'd like to see that. I think it's very
important. We have some historical data so we can see where the
stuff is coming from. As I understand, it's pretty accurate.
Because it's seized, analyzed, and we know almost to the fields
where it came from.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Waxman.
Mr. Waxman. Let one of the other Members go ahead.
Chairman Tom Davis. All right. I'll go to Mr. Towns.
Mr. Towns. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
You know, as I indicated, I'm still concerned about moving
ahead here today. But in spite of that, I'm going to raise a
couple of questions. The proposed reauthorization legislation
would require that 80 percent, Mr. Walters, of appropriated
program funds go to purchasing time and space for advertising.
What effect would this mandate have on your ability to direct
the agency as you see fit?
Mr. Walters. Consistent with the concern that has been
expressed in the past that the media campaign was not effective
because it wasn't doing enough advertising, we have increased
the focus as you know. The campaign gets $1 of free advertising
for every $1 it buys. It's unique in that regard. And we have
taken more of the matched dollar and put them into the central
advertising component.
We've asked for some flexibility. Right now it's about
between 74 and 75 percent of the ad dollars are spent this way.
So this is close. But the concern that I have in trying to
maintain flexibility here, it's not that we don't want to have
maximum power, it's that we want to make sure that we're doing
the other marketing that could support the advertising, getting
people to Web sites, getting people brochures, getting people
the hot lines that may get them additional information.
And to allow us to use, again what you categorize as
advertising here can also make a difference. So there's a
variety of ways to compromise on this. All I've asked is that
we have flexibility to try to drive the campaign where it will
have the best effect. So I think priority limits create some
greater complication in managing the campaign.
Mr. Towns. I know that most of your campaigns in the past
have basically been don't do drugs, which is a very important
issue and a very important message. But what about the young
people who are already hooked on drugs? What do you have for
them?
Mr. Walters. We agree with that concern, especially when we
see what we have to treat. That's why, as I tried to briefly
touch on in my statement, we are developing an early
intervention campaign. It will be targeted on young people and
on adults, parents and other adults, to both understand the
signs of dependency, to understand what to do to refer people
to support, and I think most importantly of all, frankly, in my
view, to create a climate among young people and adults that
will support getting people into recovery and support them in
recovery.
We know nobody gets safely treated by themselves. We need
to have more willing hands and more understanding hands that
will help understand that there is hope, that there are
particular actions that can be done, that this is a disease. It
is a disease that requires effective treatment. It's not enough
just to say, well, get over it by yourself, and that there are
specific things people can do to help to optimize the
successful outcome for treatment. So we are specifically
looking and developing now, hopefully it will be releasable at
the end of this year, beginning of next year, a new part of the
campaign that will be directly targeted to early intervention.
Mr. Towns. Let me tell you one concern that pops up all the
time, is that in terms of getting involved, in terms of valid
initiatives, we have States that feel that based on the drug
usage problem in the area that they have an idea that might be
the best approach to it. And then you're coming in and saying,
no, we're going to campaign against that and spend Government
dollars. There is a real concern about that. I'd like to hear
your comment on it, because, and that the other part, I might
as well add, by being a little political, that you might come
in 3 or 4 weeks before the election.
Mr. Walters. I understand the concern. We made a decision
last year to change the way we behave. When I was in this
office during the President's father's administration, we did
not spend much time discussing legalization. It was a minimal
fringe effort, had been going on in some cases for years
unsuccessfully. And we gave it more credibility by joining
that, standing on a platform and debating than it had by
itself.
The difference, coming back this time is, the legalization
movement has received substantial funding, has aggressively
used the ballot initiative program, bringing in in most cases
people from the outside, funded to collect ballot signatures,
and then advertised with one-sided, outside advertising. I made
the decision in part because I met with people who were running
treatment centers, running prevention programs, working in
public safety, saying that we get drowned out by one-sided
campaigns that falsely frame the issue and we don't get a
chance to be heard.
I did not advertise in these States that I went into last
fall. I went in and stood with people who really every day save
lives, to give them a chance to be heard. I recognize this is
unusual, I recognize the risk of having somebody from
Washington or the White House come in. But I stood, and I stood
probably with bi-partisan people, I stood with the Republican
and Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Arizona who together
said, this is bad for our State. We tried to get a fair hearing
of the arguments on the other side, not a one-sided hearing
that had happened because of one-sided funding.
As a result, I believe, of hearing a fair discussion of the
arguments, those propositions lost. It is my statutory
responsibility to make clear why drug use is bad, why the law
is fair on these issues and I think that's a part of that
responsibility. But I think we're doing a good job with the
tools I have. I'd like to be able to continue that now. But I
don't believe I have to go any further than that, and I don't
think it's a partisan matter.
Mr. Towns. Mr. Chairman, I think my time has expired.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Edolphus Towns follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Let me move to Mr. Ose.
Mr. Ose. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Before we leave this subject, Mr. Walters, I want to
compliment you on the subject that you just discussed and your
involvement in a non-partisan manner or a bipartisan manner in
addressing this.
I do have a statement I'd like to enter into the record,
Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Without objection, so ordered.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Doug Ose follows:]
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[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8015.017
Mr. Ose. One of the things that I worked on when I came to
Congress, in fact, the only committee I begged to be on was the
drug policy subcommittee. And after wearing down Mr. Burton, he
finally consented.
Mr. Walters, we have in California a problem with
methamphetamine. There are about 80 of us here in Congress in
the methamphetamine caucus. We worked in the last appropriation
cycle to obtain an additional $20 million for the HIDTAs to
work on methamphetamine. I'm told that of that $20 million,
only $1 million of it went to support HIDTA operations and the
other $19 million got used elsewhere. I'm curious as to why.
Mr. Walters. I'll have to look. That's not in my
recollection, but my recollection is not perfect on this. What
we did with the HIDTA program consistent with the direction
that Congress gave us we've got obviously a variety of
directions from Congress in both chambers. But I think the
overall direction we got was, that this program makes a
difference on the key threats of drugs in the country. As I
said, have gone to most, not all yet of the 28 HIDTAs, and
asked them to get on board with giving us proposals that shrink
the drug problem in their area of jurisdiction.
In those areas where there is meth, we have supported meth
efforts. And where they presented credible programs to go after
the major meth threat in those areas, we will continue to
support them. What I've asked them not to do is to either not
define a problem or not define a substantial result from the
effort they're asking us to fund. We want to fund making a
difference. And if they're not going to make a difference, I'm
telling them to go back to the drawing board and create a plan
that will.
We understand, particularly at this time when we're making
progress against cocaine, I believe, at historic rates, there's
a great danger that progress could have particularly grave
effects against the meth problem. Because if we reduce the
availability of a stimulant dependent substance in one area, we
could increase the demand for such a substance in another.
I'll go back and look at what we did on the specific
requests from your area. But generally speaking what we've
asked them to do is focus on the major structures that are
marketing this and break them down. We've had some resistance.
I recognize that I'm asking for a change in the program. I
don't think this is bad intentioned resistance. Everybody's
working very hard here. What we're trying to do is get them to
join together in a way that understands that these resources
need to be focused on a better understanding of the threat and
a way of taking it apart.
Mr. Ose. As you consider the performance of the HIDTAs, the
one I'm particularly interested in is the central valley of
California HIDTA. Have you had any performance measurements to
indicate that they are meeting, exceeding or not meeting the
expectations that we have here in Washington?
Mr. Walters. I haven't met with their executive committee.
I'm now getting regular reports from my staff. I get briefed
every 2 weeks on their conversations with the HIDTAs. They've
had, as I understand it, some considerable success on some of
the cases going after meth groups that are operating in their
area and also marketing outside of the central valley into
other parts of California.
We are about to receive the proposals for the non-base
money for additional resources this year. I'll be happy to make
sure we keep you in the loop on that.
Mr. Ose. The reason I bring it up is that this $20 million,
the California members, of those 80 odd members that I cited
earlier in the meth caucus, supported that $20 million add-on
for the purpose of helping the central valley HIDTA with
methamphetamine. And your testimony was that they are making
progress. It seems to me that perhaps Washington ought to say,
you guys are doing well, here's some more money, go get them.
And I will tell you that in my short remaining time, I am
going to continue to watch this, and I will be either your
staunchest advocate or a pain in the neck. I'm interested in
the central valley HIDTA being successful, as you are. I look
forward to working with you.
Mr. Walters. I never have a problem with people who are a
pain in the neck because they want us to do better. I
appreciate the help and I will visit the central valley in
August, actually, to talk to them directly. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. The gentleman's
time has expired. Mr. Ruppersberger.
Mr. Ruppersberger. First I want to thank you for your work.
I think you've got a really difficult job, that you're pulling
people together as a team and making a difference.
I know in the bill that Congressman Elijah Cummings
proposed a witness protection provision to protect
neighborhoods and the safety. And it's a result of that
unfortunate situation where a family was attempting to
eradicate drugs in their neighborhoods, they were standing up
to drug dealers on the streets and the house was fire-bombed
and five children and husband and wife were killed. You and I
both attended that funeral.
Do you have any specificity or any plans for a situation
where that would happen again, where you have individuals who
have no place to go, they're trying to stand up to the drug
dealers in the neighborhood, they're getting threats? And if we
could act quickly before we get to a tragic situation like
that, where are we with respect to that type of issue?
Mr. Walters. We haven't prepared, let me be clear, we
haven't prepared implementation of that language, because the
language is now still pending. So we haven't done that. I have
worked with Congressman Cummings in his district to both look
at public safety issues and to look at community coalition
resources here.
We have relied in this partnership on local people taking
the lead, and he's been a leader in that area in bringing
people together. We've tried to help with my office in
providing expertise, as well as I think clear notification of
additional resources where they have been available. I am going
to, in the coming months, go into more areas of the country
with parts of my staff, bringing together people who are
working on community coalitions, on public safety, on treatment
and prevention, and the local officials, to try to create
better consensus about what needs to be done and what the
priorities are.
We are bringing together, with their help, the available
information we have from all Federal resources. We're going to
measure everything from where treatment sites and drug courts
are, from what the patterns of use are, to where open air drug
markets are, to where they have particular threats to the best
of our ability and then sit down with local leaders who have
the strength, who have the institutional leadership here, and
say, this is what you need to do to support them.
It's not about us. It's about building on the strong
foundations that exist in every community. I visit too many
people who work in this area on various parts who are doing
great work but feel they are too isolated, too alone, they
can't get people to come together. We're going to try to be a
convener to have communities recognize this, and where there's
witness protection issues, where there's neighborhood security
issues, where there's a matter of--we need more juvenile
treatment facilities, we want to help create a process where we
table those, look at Federal resources that can be brought, but
also look at State and local resources.
As you know, this is a time of a very competitive
environment at the State and local budgets. And I don't expect
us to trump everything. But I do think if we make a stronger
case, we do a better job of supporting programs that deserve
support.
Mr. Ruppersberger. One suggestion that I have, you have
witness protection programs for those individuals that are
usually acting as informants or working with law enforcement. I
think the reason Congressman Cummings put this amendment in the
bill was that we want to try to analyze with the local law
enforcement when there is a family that might be at risk
because they are standing up. And we have to move quickly. It's
kind of like an analogy to domestic violence, when you get an
order to keep maybe a spouse or someone or a friend away from
the other individual, it's done very quickly until another
hearing is had.
And I would hope that you would come up with a policy
working with the State, Federal, local law enforcement to
identify those individuals in those neighborhoods throughout
the country that are attempting to stand up and yet their lives
are at risk. It's unfortunate that we had this situation in
Baltimore. But as a result of that, let's not forget about it,
and let's move forward with a policy to make a difference.
One other issue. I'm very much concerned about the
resources being taken away from drug interdiction, drug
enforcement, all the issues because of what is happening in
terrorism. There's no question we have to deal with the issue
of terrorism and homeland security. It's almost an exercise
that is happening every day and we're learning, and we have to
do what we have to do to protect our country from terrorism.
But what concerns me, and from my conversations with people
within law enforcement, is that a lot of the resources that are
being put into fighting terrorism are being taken away from our
drug offices, our drug investigations. Do you see that? And if
it's the case, I think we have to make that some type of an
issue, so hopefully this administration will refocus on first
responders and giving the resources so that we don't walk away.
Because if you look at the numbers and statistics, a lot more
people are at risk and there's a lot more crime, especially
violent crime, generated as a result of drug interdiction
versus terrorism.
Mr. Walters. I appreciate your point. What we have done, I
think, is two things. One, we've had to make shifts. There's no
question about that, because of the additional terror threat.
We moved a number of FBI personnel out of drugs and into
counter-terrorism because it was important for the protection
of the country. I know people had disagreements about that.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I don't think anybody disagrees with
that priority.
Mr. Walters. What we've done to compensate for that is this
year and the next year in our request, we've asked for money to
hire more DEA agents to backfill those positions in the DEA. In
other areas, yes, we're still, I believe, fair to say in the
shakeout process of deploying additional resources to State and
local partners on various terror, drug task forces. I've been
working with the Attorney General's office to focus both the
HIDTA program and the OCDETF program. We are still, and I know
Congress is extensively involved in this, although some of it
is not involved in my office, in deploying money for other
parts of homeland security.
I would say, in the transit arrival zones, we have not had
a substantial diminution of interdiction results. That's partly
because we've had greater cooperation from Colombia and Mexico,
where some of these have occurred. It's partly because we've
had some strengthening at the border. We've been at level one
on the border since after September 11th. It's partly because
of the tools you gave us to increase our intelligence sharing
and intelligence capacities.
We continue to improve that. But the real key, I think,
here, and what you're getting at, is to better work the
relationship and the partnership between State and local law
enforcement, which feels pulled many times in a way that they
compensate and they don't feel they're compensating for, to
focus these more generally. That's why we're trying to use the
HIDTA program and the intelligence units that are in there. We
are also linking the HIDTA program together.
And my director of intelligence has just become the U.S.
interdiction coordinator and narcotics advisor, cross
designated to Secretary Ridge. We're going to try to bring both
what we're doing in bringing some of the intelligence
resources, we're trying to build on what we've had successfully
happen in some of the HIDTAs as well as some of the new
capacities that are there.
I'm not denying it's going to take us a little bit of time.
And people are working very hard and have been working very
hard since September 11th. That's why we've had as good a
result as we have.
But I understand your point. We have taken some steps to
change some priorities since the immediate attack to elevate
the counter-narcotics intelligence collection and some of the
deployments. Nobody I think argues when we have a particular
time of threat, we're going to have to pull Coast Guard, border
and other assets back to protect our cities, our ports, our
territorial waters. We have then moved, fairly quickly I
believe, to re-deploy them in regard to drug interdiction down
closer to the threat. And we have had, as I say, greater
cooperation now, particularly from Colombia, that's produced
results.
So in addition to the over 100 metric tons of cocaine that
did not get produced because the plants were eradicated last
year, we had another over 100 metric tons of cocaine that was
seized that was headed for the United States. We are now taxing
them through this process well over 30 percent of what they
could make as a result of interdiction. And we've had reports,
some that have been recently declassified, talking about the
diminishment of profit in the drug, especially the cocaine
business, over the last several years. This is our goal, to
attack the market, to make it impossible for it to function at
the level it's functioning now.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. The gentleman's time has expired. Thank
you very much.
Mr. Lewis.
Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walters, thank you for the job that you do and thank
you for being here today. In Kentucky, probably the biggest
problem we have, and it's a growing problem, is of course
methamphetamine. But there is another problem that seems to be
growing, and it would be oxyacanthine. Are you addressing this
in a specific way and how pervasive is this problem? I know
it's a real problem in Kentucky.
Mr. Walters. The problem has sprung up over the last year
or two. It's been focused and some areas have been terribly
hard hit. I know Kentucky is one of those areas. We have gone
in with the authority of DEA and tried to look at it, because
this is of course a controlled substance, the diversion of this
substance through illicit channels. There are cases that have
brought to justice some people who were diverting it from
legitimate channels.
There have been efforts to better educate physicians. I
visited with some of them and we've been working with some of
the licensure bodies. Many times the diversion is also
contributed to, not from maliciousness on the part of
physicians, but by failure to understand that the behavior of
someone who is seeking to shop for doctors to get
prescriptions. They're used to seeing people come in who have a
serious illness who are frank and want to get well. So they
take people at face value. We need to add some dimensions of
education. And I think the medical community has been quite
responsive. In fact, if anything, we've also seen some of them
who are refusing to prescribe some of these, especially
oxyacanthine, because of its diversion possibilities.
We have the best medical institutions in the history of
humankind. We can treat pain as never before, we can treat
people for a variety of conditions that we've never been able
to treat before. We want to make sure we maintain the medical
efficacy at the same time we prevent the harm.
So we basically have used enforcement and education. We
want to broaden the education. I'm going to be meeting with the
AMA later this year, in a couple months, to try to talk about
institutionalizing more of these programs for physician
education. I think that's just a reasonable, prudent and a
desired educational component that will help protect more. But
we're going to have to go in where there are people who are
criminals, and we're going to have to find them and punish
them. Hopefully we can do that before too many people die.
Mr. Lewis. Absolutely. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Our next speaker
is Mr. Davis of Illinois. Not here? We'll go to Ms. Watson.
You're on for 5 minutes.
Ms. Watson. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
Mr. Walters, for being here. I'm reading the bill itself. And I
understand that as the bill is drafted, it contains a provision
that would permit you and your office to use taxpayers' money
to become involved in the political campaigns. Now, if you
would, I don't know if you have the bill in front of you, but
in looking at page 37, line 22, subsection 2, it says, the
prohibition, in paragraph 1(c). Now, 1(c) says that there's a
prohibition against using these funds for partisan political
purposes. But starting on line 22, subsection 2, the
prohibition in paragraph 1(c) does not apply in connection with
the director's responsibilities under, and it names the
sections.
So I would like you to explain to us how you would avoid
using these funds for partisan political purposes and how do
you guarantee us that this provision will not be abused.
Mr. Walters. Excuse me just 1 second.
Chairman Tom Davis. If I may interject, Ms. Watson, for
just a moment, if you'd yield for just a second.
Ms. Watson. Please.
Chairman Tom Davis. I think we've reached an agreement with
the minority to clarify and remedy this provision. But you've
accurately highlighted an issue. I'll let Commissioner Walters
respond.
Ms. Watson. Can you tell us what the compromise is?
Mr. Walters. I apologize for not being fully conversant on
this point. There was a provision, I believe, this is the
provision you read to me, that would seek to make the
restrictions on the Presidential appointment, appointed
managers in my office, subject to the same rules as all other
Presidential appointed managers in the Federal Government. I
think that's the provision you're referring to. That was to
conform to the standard that's been set throughout the rest of
the Government.
Maybe it's my own view of not being much of a political
asset, but I don't have great desires to campaign. I came back
into this job to make a difference on drugs. I've stood with
Democrats and Republicans. I think some of the Members here
today know that. This was a desire simply not to have the
office treated differently, I think, than other PAS staffed
offices. But if the provision is changing, then I'll have to
respond to the change, I guess, at some point.
But again, our original request here was simply to change
the existing authorization that treated the PASs in this office
differently.
Ms. Watson. Well, I would feel more comfortable, Mr.
Chairman, directed to you, if we could delete lines 22 on page
37 to lines 38 on page, excuse me, to page 38 line 5. That
would just be silent on that particular provision.
Mr. Waxman. Will the gentlelady yield to me?
Ms. Watson. Pleased to. This is directed to you, Mr. Chair.
Oh, I'm sorry, ranking member.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you. I certainly strongly support the
idea that this head of the office should not be out
campaigning, certainly not for partisan purposes and not to get
involved in other campaigns, political campaigns, as well.
We're trying to work out a legislation on this. So rather than
talk about specific language, I would hope that everyone would
agree that we don't want the head of the drug office to be
involved in politics.
Ms. Watson. If I can just suggest, maybe we can just delete
those lines and that would take care of it.
Mr. Waxman. Well, that's one way to do it, but let's
explore the language further.
Ms. Watson. Well, I would like that very much.
If I still have time, Mr. Chairman, and I'll continue.
Chairman Tom Davis. Sure.
Ms. Watson. Thank you for your cooperation on that issue.
There have been a number of questions raised about the
effectiveness of the anti-drug media campaign, and I understand
that a study is underway to assess the strength and the
weakness of the campaign. So what efforts are underway in your
office at this time to improve the campaign's effectiveness?
Mr. Walters. I touched on some of them in my testimony. We
are focusing it to the slightly older part of the teenage age
group. We're making the ads more powerful. We're testing them
to see if they are powerful and effective before they go on the
air. We have also added a focus on marijuana because of the
ignorance, I think, about the danger and the scope of the
marijuana problem among young people.
We have continued other parts of the campaign that will
focus on bringing parents in as well. The evaluation, that
first part of which I referred to that was released to the
committee today we just got, which was part of the urgent
review done at the request of Congress to show are the changes
we're making are making a difference. We will continue with
those evaluations and provide subsequent reports and the
overall evaluation of the program that a next stage of which is
due in the fall.
Mr. Souder [assuming Chair]. The gentlelady's----
Ms. Watson. If I'm out of time----
Mr. Souder. Yes, the gentlelady is out of time.
Ms. Watson. OK. Look at California's anti-tobacco ads.
Mr. Walters. OK, thanks.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Deal, any questions?
Mr. Deal. No, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. Mrs. Miller.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walters, I've been listening to you this morning with a
great amount of interest as you've talked about marijuana use
and just talking now about the advertising, the media campaign
with marijuana use. I come from Michigan, a border State, of
course, to Canada. Several things there. We have a municipality
in Michigan, for instance, that actually hosts the University
of Michigan, where the local city council has passed an
ordinance, it's a $5 fine for marijuana possession.
And now you see Canada is relaxing their standards rather
significantly in regards to marijuana use. Of course, in this
area, we've got two of the largest, the busiest border
crossings actually on the northern tier of the Ambassador
Bridge in Detroit, the busiest border crossing, and then the
Bluewater Bridge, which is in my district, as well as the third
largest, busiest commercial artery along that tier. We've done
well, we think, with stepping up patrols, both from the Coast
Guard, homeland security is helping out as we try to do
interdiction and these kinds of things at the border crossing.
Can you comment? We have a lot of consternation about what
is happening with our neighbors to the north, with the
Canadians, as they seem to be taking a different path on
marijuana use and that kind of thing. I know I've talked to our
State drug czar as well, and they're sort of tearing their hair
out at this. Can you comment at what a State like Michigan,
what we should be doing and how we could work better with your
office as well?
Mr. Walters. Yes, I can. I've been troubled by what's
happening in Canada, too. It's the obvious irony of we have had
remarkable improvements in cooperation in Colombia and Mexico
and a serious problem develop, as indicated by the President's
letter, and part of the congressionally mandated certification
process, noting that Canada and the Netherlands have become
significant drug suppliers or precursor chemical suppliers to
the United States, expressing concern.
I have over the last year and as recently as yesterday been
meeting with Canadian officials, talking with folks in Canada
to try to express what our position is. The concern we have, I
also grew up in Michigan, I also have family and friends in
Canada, as many people in the United States do, particularly in
the area where we come from. We're concerned about what happens
to Canadians, but that's not my business as a Government
official. My business is the drugs they're shipping to the
United States. And they have produced a particularly high
potency version of marijuana. Chairman Souder visited Vancouver
with me and talked to Canadian officials. They have routinely
said the movement of this product, run by gangs, ethnic and
criminal motorcycle gangs, has moved aggressively, it's a
multi-billion dollar industry, and they have moved aggressively
from British Columbia across Canada, Manitoba, Ontario and
Quebec, and that substantial portions of this are being grown
for the purpose of shipping it to the United States.
By magnitude, the THC content, the psychoactive ingredient
in marijuana in the 1980's, was about 1 percent. The THC
content on the street today in the United States is 9 to 14
percent. The THC content of this high potency marijuana is 20
to 30 percent. It's much more powerful and that's why it's
being grown the way it is, and people are moving into Canada to
do this because the penalties are not serious. I've made clear
to Canadian officials, we don't want to have a problem at the
border greater than it already is. We have greater backups in
Mexico, not because we dislike Mexico, but because we have a
threat, and drugs are a big part of that threat. You need to
get a handle on this production problem, since the bulk of it
is headed to the United States.
On law enforcement side we've had fantastic, magnificent
cooperation. We have some problems with, I think, the decisions
about policy that are our business, because we're the ones who
are going to be victimized by a part of this.
I would welcome help by Congress in doing oversight
hearings that involve discussions of the policy that's going to
be tabled and discussed in Canada. Because I think it will help
to clarify what is a legitimate concern from what is I think
sometimes presented as, well, we don't like it because they're
not doing what they're doing. They have a right to have their
own domestic policy. They're a sovereign country. Nobody argues
about that except people who want to suggest that we don't have
a stand here.
What we have to care about, are these drugs, that is the
single largest cause of treatment needed in the United States,
is being now produced at remarkable potency levels in Canada
and shipped largely to the United States. That's a U.S.
problem. We have to protect our citizens.
Mrs. Miller. I appreciate that. I'd like a little bit of
information if you could send it along to my office, actually
next week during the break I'll be meeting with my counterpart
across the border there. We have about an hour agenda of a
number of different things. This is one of the items that I
have wanted to discus with him. I think perhaps if some of the
border States' members could talk to their counterparts as well
in Canada, and maybe sort of the bottom up of how frustrated we
are with their policy, and what kind of impact it is having on
our Nation. So I would appreciate that.
Mr. Walters. Absolutely. It would be very important,
particularly at this time.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Congresswoman Miller, if you could wait just a
second, I wanted to tell Congresswoman Miller that we just had
the U.S.-Canada parliamentary last weekend. And in addition to
the northern border caucus, we're going to have an ongoing
relationship like you talked about, and we'll make sure that we
get you involved in that.
Congresswoman Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you very much for your testimony and
all your hard work.
A number of groups are circulating concerns about the
administration using taxpayer money for issue ads. And one
concern is, who will approve the ads and make sure that they
aren't used for partisan purposes or whatever? What is the
approval process for ads that would be aired?
Mr. Walters. Let me make clear now, we do not air issue ads
at this time. The efforts that I made last fall were for myself
to travel and stand with people in States that are facing
ballot initiatives to make the arguments that they made about
why this was bad for their State. I know that many in Congress
are concerned that the efforts we're making to reduce drug use
and reduce the drug problem are undermined by efforts to
suggest that, well, we ought to just give up and legalize it.
And I share that concern, that's why I acted the way I did.
But so far, we have been very effective using what I think
is my current authority to speak and to stand with people in
communities. So----
Mrs. Maloney. So the approval process is basically your
decision of what the ad content is?
Mr. Walters. Right now, the ad content, which doesn't
include this dimension, and hasn't, is to look at the current
state of the drug problem among youth, because it is a youth
anti-drug media campaign. And to give direction, we briefed
Hill staff about what directions obviously we're going. And
there is a review process for effectiveness and efficacy that's
done by outside groups as well as managers of the program. And
then the ads are tested for power and effectiveness.
But right now, yes, I am the final, everything that goes on
the air is my responsibility. I want to be clear about that.
Mrs. Maloney. Who is funding these ads to legalize drugs?
You testified earlier that a great deal of money is going into
ballot initiatives, etc. Who's funding it?
Mr. Walters. The largest funders that have been identified
in the press, and I don't think that's inaccurate, have been
three individuals, George Saros, John Sperling and Peter Lewis.
There are other funders, smaller funders, but they are
relatively modest contributors to most of these campaigns. I
have asked and I continue to ask repeatedly to meet with them.
I think that those resources, I'd like a chance face to face to
say, can we put these resources in a place that will help more
people. And I think it's a little bit counter-productive to
have this battle back and forth.
I also think that, I understand that people have
differences and disagreements. And they may continue to have
disagreements. But I'd like a chance to have a face to face to
try to make a case that we could save lives. We don't have to
give up.
Mrs. Maloney. These reports that come out periodically,
that marijuana can be used medically, is helpful medically in
certain situations. Some doctors have said that. What is your
opinion? Does your research show it's not helpful?
Mr. Walters. There is now available by prescription a
marijuana medicine, Marinol. It's used for some conditions of
nausea and others. It has been demonstrated effective by the
same procedures we use for modern medicine, which is we use a
series of protocols to show that things have medical efficacy.
The Federal Government funds, I believe over $30 million this
year, in research to test other parts of marijuana that may be
efficacious. And we continue to look at it.
As I said earlier, we have the finest medical institutions
in the history of humankind. They're based on science, they're
based on efficacy and the problem here has been to say simply
that because a drug makes people feel better, or because a
substance makes them feel better it's a drug, that's not
scientific.
Mrs. Maloney. But Mr. Director, I think the concern that
has been expressed to my office, we have paid for advertising
for Governmental purpose. For example, the census, to encourage
people to participate and fill out their census forms, we had
an advertising goal. But it was a goal that everybody in
America agreed on.
In this particular case, there is a division of agreement,
and there's concern that it might go to other places where the
dominant view may then swamp the minority view. And I'll give
you one example. I believe very strongly in a woman's right to
choose. That's my personal belief. Many of my colleagues do
not. So what is going to protect us from having, say, in the
future, an ad campaign against a woman's right to choose paid
for by the Government, because there is a division of
agreement?
Personally, I agree with you. I don't believe we should
legalize drugs. I don't think that should happen in our
country. I'm opposed to it. But the concern for many people,
whether they agree with you or disagree with you, is they see
this as a step that might go into a direction of Government
interference in a public debate, basically. And we have paid
for advertising in the past, but it's always been not a
debatable issue. It was sort of a goal that everybody agreed
on.
On this issue, it's a debatable issue. I happen to agree
with your point of view. But many, some of my colleagues and
some of my constituents disagree. And they're concerned that
this is a silencing of--you understand what I'm saying.
Mr. Souder. The gentlelady's time has expired. If the
Director would like to briefly respond.
Mr. Walter. Let me just say to be clear, we have not used
the advertising campaign in this manner. We have used it for
what everybody agrees is appropriate, and that's why the
campaign exists. Drug use is particularly bad for kids. The
drug problem starts with kids. It's a pediatric, drug addiction
is a pediatric onset disease, we need to be thorough-going and
clear about that.
We have used this to alert young people, parents and adults
to the dangers and how to protect kids. The ballot issue
initiative is something I have gone in and stood with people
who worked the front lines and I think got a hearing.
I understand the concern about how much do you want to
again, and again, this provision is something that the
committee is going to have to decide on. I haven't used that
tool in that way. And you'll have to decide what the lines are
here. But I feel that over the last year I've shown that by
giving people a fair hearing in the way we've done it, we win,
that there is a giant consensus about this is a bad idea to
give up on.
So I feel I have a record of showing how we can do this,
and to get the job done I think everybody wants done.
Mr. Souder. I think it's important to repeat what Mr.
Waxman said a few minutes ago, is that we are working together
to try to come up with language because we have a mutually
agreed-upon goal, and that will require a little bit more
refinement from the current law. We do not believe it should be
used for partisan political purposes. We do not believe it
should be used for any, affecting any referendum that's
pending. And we have to come up with a definition that doesn't
just in general prohibit anti-marijuana advertising from ever
going anywhere that wasn't, in other words, you could
conceivably interpret that any anti-drug advertising is trying
to influence a referendum.
So we have to protect the integrity of the ad campaign but
we're definitely working to try to keep it out from any
specific referendum, any specific candidate, and we'll continue
to work on that language.
Mrs. Maloney. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. Souder. Yes.
Mrs. Maloney. I think you hit the core when you say protect
the integrity of the ad campaign. Personally I think you have
to develop some form that you do this in. In the sense of the
census we had a commission that was appointed by Democrats and
Republicans that looked at the final product and said hey, this
is good.
But to make sure that this is not used politically, and
understand, although he's doing a wonderful job, if you instill
this power into just one person, which according to his
testimony he said he has the final decision on whether it's
appropriate or not, I'm just saying that maybe there should be
some review panel that's bipartisan that makes sure it's
appropriate. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. I thank the gentlelady.
Mr. Murphy.
Mr. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr.
Walters for your testimony.
I wanted to shift gears if I could a little bit into
another area here. Although you were just beginning to talk
about how this is a pediatric problem, and as you know, my
field has been working with children all my life. One of the
areas that I want to know about is what we're doing to engage
parents in this process. It is good to stop cocaine in
Colombia. It is good to stop drugs at our borders. But really
enlisting every parent in America as part of your team, as part
of our mutual team to stop it is of concern.
And let me bring up a couple instances which concern me
most. That begins with alcohol. Alcohol is the most commonly
used and abused drug, one that's legal, one that many people
suffer with, with alcoholism, and of course, begins in youth.
And as a gateway drug, children who start with alcohol
oftentimes move on to other things. It's of particular concern
when parents' attitudes, habits and behaviors almost promotes
this, directly or indirectly.
In particular, let me describe to you a scenario which I'm
sure you have heard all too many times. That is when parents
believe that children will get involved with drinking anyway,
at parties, on prom night, gatherings with friends. And they
have what I can call at best a sick interpretation of youth
behavior, and they believe if they purchase the beer, if they
have the kegs, if they have the alcohol there, and they do
something as almost as childish as taking the students' car
keys away and letting them drink at their home, they think
they're doing the kids a favor. Because they think otherwise
the kids will sneak off into the woods and drink, and so
they're going to help them by almost advocating the use there.
And what I see happens is that other children then think
that here's an adult almost encouraging them to drink, so
perhaps they should do it, too. And it removes perhaps that
last best wall we have, and that's parents telling kids, you
don't have to drink to enjoy yourselves. It is not an
expectation of youth and adolescence. I would like to know what
kind of plans you see in your near future to help engage
parents more in this kind of activity to help stop that parent
behavior.
Mr. Walters. Yes, thank you. It's very important. And this
is one area where the media campaign efforts, and there's about
half of the campaign that has been focused on parents that has
been working, based on the evaluation we've had. We've had
parents better understand their role and responsibility, better
understand they need to talk about substance abuse generally
with their children. And also better understand they need to
supervise their children and to provide information to them
initially with the ad, but also to give them a referral to
other sources of information that we provide and others provide
that can give them concrete steps they can take in supervision
and if they don't know how to talk with their kids, with
experts like yourself giving advice of how to approach this
topic more effectively in different situations.
In addition, we provide through, as you probably know, the
media campaign is unique in that it gets a one for one match of
every buy it makes of media. We have used a portion of the
match to allow ads done by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and
other anti-alcohol programs that are part, then funded by of
course the campaign's efforts.
We also have sought to fund, as my office is responsible
for, the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions program that helps to
support members of communities coming together to focus on this
problem more effectively. Almost all of those community
coalitions, and there are hundreds now around the country, have
focused substantial resources for the reasons that you
mentioned on alcohol as well as illegal drugs, because of the
danger, because of, basically because of the ignorance and
because, I think most important of all, because as we spoke
earlier, the protection of children is only as strong as the
weakest link in the contact children are going to make during
the day. So if a parent does the wrong thing and doesn't
supervise or doesn't pay attention and your child is there,
they're likely to be more at risk than they would have been in
all the other things that you took care about.
So we're trying to approach this on several fronts where we
think we have effective leverage to improve what we say, what
we teach, what we do in supervising kids.
Mr. Murphy. I appreciate that and hope we can continue to
work hard. I know one of the things, and I don't know if this
is factual or not, but for the issue of those students up in
Chicago who were involved with harassing some other girls after
some football game, there were some allegations that parents
had bought the beer. I think it's important for the media to
tell more stories about this, when parents have stood by while
youth drank or while they purchased alcohol, and understand
that they are just as responsible if someone does get behind
the wheel, causes an accident, the blood is on their hands,
too.
I really hope we can stop this insidious behavior among
parents in America who somehow have got this perverted idea
that it's good to do that. When parents teach the children that
it is not right and you can't drink until you're 21, it's an
important message. Yes, sometimes youth will still sneak out
and do some things. But it's still our job as moms and dads to
be there to guide and set a good standard and to say no.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walters, let me first of all compliment you on the way
in which I've observed you criss-crossing the country, going
out in neighborhoods and communities and actually looking at
what is working, what people are trying, what they are
attempting to do. Coming from an area like I do, the
metropolitan area of Chicago and Cook County, I have a great
deal of interest in the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Plan.
Could you embellish that a bit in terms of what we're planning
to do with those areas?
Mr. Walters. Yes. We're trying to use some of the longer
established areas to do a better job of defining the problem.
Let me put it a little more straightforwardly. We want to do
more of applying what we've learned in the battle against
terror in the drug area. This has been talked about a lot but
it's not been done. That is, we have to identify the
organizations and the weaknesses that they exploit to be able
to market. We're going to provide money for treatment, we are
going to continue to provide money for community coalitions. We
also need to provide money to go after these marketing
organizations.
So we're working in this program with State and local as
well as Federal law enforcement. Chicago I believe has been an
area frankly that has been under-served here. It's
unfortunately had an explosion of drug use in some sections,
and it has become a more important distribution point for that
region; indeed, other parts of the country.
So we are working now with the law enforcement members of
that particular HIDTA as well as with OCDETF program, and
trying to use a better picture of the intelligence that is
there and also how to both operate for regional distribution
and to operate on the markets that exist in that area. Some of
that has involved monetary investigations to a greater extent,
some of it has involved better cooperation with the southwest
border, where heroin has been imported and moved into Chicago
as well as cocaine. Some of it has involved trying to focus on
how to better coordinate individual task forces that go after
higher and then some of the connections to retail markets.
But what we're trying to get is not just a situation which
we have in too many cases of people, we're doing important
things but how do those make any difference. I talk about this
as numerators without denominators. I can't tell whether we're
10 percent in the game or we're 60 percent in the game. We've
asked them, I know it's hard, it's a covert activity, but I
think the frustration everybody has is that we end up having a
battleground in too many of our cities, fighting over the same
ground and having communities destroyed. We want to make the
problem smaller systemically and bring resources together.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. We also have a great deal of concern
about the individuals who are incarcerated. You know, we have a
prison explosion in our country with over 2 million people
currently in jails and prisons and more than a half million
coming home every year. Many of these come as a result of drug
related activity. And then of course they get back into the
business because there isn't much else that they view
themselves as being able to do.
How do we see the connection in terms of reduction of use
as well as reduction of distribution if we somehow can steer
these individuals into other directions, making use of our
policies and programs?
Mr. Walters. I think that's very important. We visited a
site together in your district trying to help reintegrate
people from the criminal justice system into the community with
treatment and other support. We're not going to substantially
reduce demand if we don't reduce dependent use. We have to do
prevention, we have to do intervention. But the largest volume
consumers are dependent users. So if we're going to be true to
what I think is necessary, a balanced effort, we have to reduce
the dependent use.
What that means is we have to get better treatment, we have
to get it into the criminal justice system more effectively.
We're trying to expand drug court programs, we're trying to
expand in the treatment proposal the President has made for the
additional $200 million, that would allow vouchers to be used
for programs that would include at the basis of the discretion
of the State and local authorities post-incarceration treatment
and support services.
It would include support for drug courts, it would improve
support for outreach in communities for juveniles who many
times are not adequately served. Essentially it allows us the
greatest possible flexibility to bring providers like the
provider we visited to add capacity or to spin offsites or to
add satellite sites in other community institutions that will
make a difference here. And it allows us to measure for
quality.
We agree with you that we have to do a better job on those
people who are now dependent, who too frequently because of
that dependency are also in the criminal justice system. I
think the drug court movement has been universally welcomed
because it sorts out those who are suffering from a disease
from those who are simply dangerous victimizers and
incapacitates the latter, but gets help, effective help in many
cases, for the former. We want to expand that.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. I think you've laid out some sound
policies and directions, so I thank you very much. And I thank
you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Tom Davis [resuming Chair]. Thank you. The
chairman of the subcommittee, Mr. Souder.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. I just wanted to make a couple of
brief comments. First, I wanted to thank Director Walters for
his leadership. At times we may have small disagreements, but I
think you've done a terrific job, both at the international
area and in the national arena. I think few people realize the
complexity and diversity of challenges you face every day and
your office faces every day. We appreciate your leadership very
much. The President has given very specific goals for
reduction. You brought concise order and strategy to the office
to try to reach those kinds of goals.
At times that means there is frustrations in
implementation. At times people didn't want direction. But in
fact, if you're going to achieve goals that has to be done.
We've been working with you and your office on this bill as
well as other groups, and the subcommittee to now bring it to
the full committee. Nobody is particularly happy with
everything, but I believe that net, we're moving the ball
forward as we move toward conference.
I am very appreciative of the leadership of Elijah
Cummings, the ranking member, Danny Davis from Chicago,
Congressman Bell, Congressman Ruppersberger and many of the
minority. As we move forward, we've been working with the
minority as well as Members of the majority on some changes. I
believe that we can work most of these out, that will actually
in the end strengthen the bill and make sure that we stay
unified. We may have some things where we can't reach
agreement. And we have some votes, but we're doing the best we
can to work with your office, with the minority and with the
majority with diverse concerns as we move forward.
We have some additional data that we'll need over the next
few days and look forward to talking with you about that, so we
can make sure that what we have in this bill is something that
at least the overwhelming majority of Congress can live with,
the majority of the American people can be united to try to
squash the scourge of drugs and to fight with a united front
and not get too distracted in whether it's partisan political
campaigns or what's happening over in this State or that State,
but to try to say, look, we have key problem areas on the
borders, we have key problem areas in certain major
metropolitan areas, we have key international problems, we need
to have a focused, clear-cut, national ad strategy with proven,
tested ads that try to battle back a lot of the societal
trends.
Once again, I thank you for your leadership. The
legislative process is messy. We're continuing to work through
it. But at the end of the day, I think we can have a unified
and broadly supported drug strategy.
Mr. Walters. Thank you. Can I just make one comment? You
weren't here and I want to say this, because I worked in
Government for a long time, going back to the Reagan
administration. And I've worked with a lot of committees, under
the leadership of both parties. I have never had a better
working relationship than with you and Mr. Cummings. You have
both traveled, you have been supportive, you have been willing
to stand up. You know because you've been there that the
executive branch is also kind of messy, where we have better
ways of covering it up sometimes so you can see hopefully more
of the results and not the process that sometimes people have
to hammer out disagreements.
We try to be fair. You've been fair to me. You've been more
extensive than any subcommittee I've ever worked with in the
reauthorization process, covering all the major programs that
we're responsible for thoroughly and carefully. And most of
all, you've been helpful in your advice and counsel. And we are
doing a better job because of what you've done and I want to
publicly thank you. We're very close.
I appreciate the speed with which you've done this. I know
there was an issue raised earlier. But we want to have the
office on a fair and sound ground. We want to have it
authorized so we can continue. We want to make sure that we're
focusing on fighting the problem and not worrying that the
arrangement of the structures and authorities are going to be
up in the air and that causes a lot of confusion for people out
there, especially when you kind of squeeze the process and make
people perform, they think that they can wiggle out of
legitimate constraint because they can hope it will go away. It
makes our job more difficult.
But I want to publicly thank you especially, and Mr.
Cummings, as well as Mr. Waxman and Mr. Davis for their help in
putting this together. It's very important to what we do. And
as you know, my concern, and I know you share it is, we've got
to follow through. We've got trends now going in the right
direction. We've got to drive this down to the point where we
can see that the American people get what they want, which is a
country that doesn't suffer the way we suffer today.
Mr. Souder. In yielding back to the chairman, I want to
thank him for his direct involvement from the time he took over
this committee in going down to Colombia and being active in
the minutiae as we move this bill forward, giving us the
ability to be flexible in subcommittee and at the same time
take the chairman's prerogative of when we needed to
compromise, when we needed to work together. I want to thank
him for his leadership.
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Souder, thank you very much. But
our thanks is to you. You've devoted a substantial part of your
career here working these issues. It will bear fruit again in
the reauthorization.
I now yield to Mr. Waxman, 5 minutes.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to commend the work done by my colleagues,
particularly Mr. Cummings, in trying to figure out how best to
deal with this legislation so that we can have an effective
ONDCP. One of the key issues in controversy is, the bill
requires ONDCP to devote 80 percent of appropriated program
funds to purchase time and space for advertising. I understand
that an 80 percent media buy requirement could require
proportional scaling back of important aspects of the campaign.
Could you give us your views on that issue?
Mr. Walters. Yes. I've asked that we preserve as much
flexibility of our mix here as we can. I understand the concern
that people have that we need to put power behind the ads.
We've done that. We've tried to focus more resources on ads
that are effective and ads that are focused. We've taken more
of the match and devoted it this year and last year to our
central campaign.
The concern I have, and I know reasonable people differ
about this, is that especially as we look to some of the ads we
want to do on intervention, we need to refer people to some
additional information. We need to have some kinds of abilities
to market the message so it has resonance as modern media
campaigns do. We're at 75 percent now, or 74 point some percent
now. So I'm not talking about flexibility for the purpose of
evading the central concern of putting ads on the air that you
have to do to get the job done. The question is the mix of
other things that might be supportive here.
If it's within the judgment of the committee, and I
recognize, I certainly respect that you're going to make this
judgment, to allow us this flexibility, I'd like to have it,
because I think there are times when we may want to, especially
with some of the things we're talking about, to get after youth
dependency, we may need some of that flexibility. But I also
want to be clear that in asking for that, I am not in any way
trying to evade the central point, which is I inherited a
program where some, especially appropriators, were concerned
that we had spent $1 billion and drug use was not going down.
They warned me this was a powerful tool, but we're going to
have to take it away because of the competition and the concern
about the campaign.
I took responsibility and said, give me a chance to try to
fix it. And if I can't fix it, then you can take it away,
because we shouldn't waste money, we have a lot of other needs
here. I've made an effort to do that, I'd just like to keep the
tools that allow me to keep doing that and you will obviously
be the judges of whether or not that's successful now and in
the future. I appreciate that, I appreciate the responsibility
and I welcome the accountability. I'm trying to transfer it to
other places. But I need to have some authority and
flexibility, I think, to fairly carry out that accountability.
Mr. Waxman. There's a 3 percent cap on non-advertising
components of the campaign. And I'm interested in your views on
that, whether you think that would limit the reach of the
campaign's anti-drug message, particularly with respect to
segments of the population not reached through general
advertising.
Mr. Walters. Yes, I am concerned, we now spend a little
over 5 percent, I think, in this category. We would like to
maintain some, again, some flexibility here, for all the
reasons I indicated before. I understand we have to focus. The
campaign is a sophisticated, modern campaign. We have developed
materials to reach out to special populations because we know
one size doesn't fit all. We have tried to use the best
knowledge.
Can we make improvements? Yes. But this is not a cookie
cutter, crude operation at this point. It's sophisticated. The
question was, can we make it work. The report I cited today and
I think the overall trends show we are beginning to make it
work. I'd like to have some flexibility to include some of
these things. I know we've been criticized in the past, some
people thought they were frills and things expended on that
were beside the point.
We should not be doing that. And if we're doing that, we
should stop doing it. What I'd like to do, though, is have the
ability to do things that are not frills, that are focused,
that go beyond that, provide a modern marketing and provide
referral, provide support for the messages that not only then
do people see messages as young people, but they see them more
powerfully because there are some residents out in the rest of
the society.
This is certainly not different from many other Government
sponsored campaigns. The census was brought up earlier. It and
other Government sponsored campaigns for health and other
public good purposes also have a mix and that mix has to be
based on who you're trying to reach and how best to reach them.
Mr. Waxman. One of my colleagues, Ms. Watson, referred to
the fact that we've had some success in anti-tobacco
advertisements in California. It isn't just due to the
advertisements, it's the use of free media, it's other
expenditures. I think one of the best ways to change public
attitudes is through reports, hearings, press conferences that
generate the free news coverage. This bill would include your
activities to provide information to the public and the media
within that 3 percent cap?
Mr. Walters. Yes, it would. And we'd like to maintain, as I
say, the flexibility to do some of the things that you
enunciated that we think are not peripheral, are not a
diversion, but are central to improving the impact of the
campaign.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Mr. Walters, I want to thank you for your
comments and for your hard work. And I also want to appreciate
the support of the chairman of our subcommittee with regard to
the legislation. We still do have some problems to work out. We
will work them out.
And also I'm very appreciative with regard to the Dawson
language. I want to talk about that for a little bit. One of
the things that, as you know, and I was glad Mr. Ruppersberger
mentioned it earlier, we have many areas in our country where
neighborhoods sadly have been taken over by drug dealers. As a
matter of fact, I can think of, we have five Hope Six projects
in Baltimore, all of them had at one time, when they were high-
rises, had been taken over by drug dealers. I mean literally,
it was a drug dealers' place where residents were afraid to
even get on an elevator. Hope Six has for all intents and
purposes been eliminated with the President's budget.
Then we look at our States. And we see, we have situations
where States now, you go down the list, because they are
experiencing deficits, they are now cutting back on drug funds
for treatment and almost anything to do with drugs, they're
cutting back. And I think that's kind of a logical thing to
happen, because maybe they figure, well, here's something we
can cut back on, and they may not have the strong advocates for
these funds, lobbying or whatever.
It just seems like we've got a combination here where,
first of all, if States start cutting back, the question
becomes how does the Federal Government step in, and if we do
step in, how do we step in to be most effective. Because that's
real. When you're taking money away from drug treatment in
Baltimore, which has happened, I think we cut $5.6 million in
our State budget, because we've got problems. We just don't
have the money, like other States.
That means that a lot of treatment slots are not going to
be filled. There are a lot of problems. So I'm just trying to
figure out, when you take that into consideration, and then
with the Dawson situation, we still have this problem where
you've got these drug dealers who will threaten and kill. I
think about every 2 or 3 months there's some story in the
Baltimore Sun about some trial not going forward because some
drug dealer allegedly has harmed or killed a potential witness.
Of course, the thing that we see even more so than that is the
long list of unsolved crimes related to drugs because of the
fear.
And while I do appreciate Dawson and I think the
provisions, I just think some kind of way we have got to work
even harder to protect every regular, every day citizens, who
are like the Dawson family, who are simply trying to eke out a
decent life and get these drug salespersons, I call them
salespersons of death, off their corners, so they can live a
decent life. I'm just trying to figure out, where are we
generally with that? Are you working with the U.S. attorneys
offices and whatever, FBI and DEA on that? Because this is a
very important issue.
And the other question goes to the whole State budget
situation, with all the cutbacks, then how do, first of all, do
you see us stepping into the gap and filling it? And if not,
then how do we, I'm talking about the Federal Government now,
how do we still address the problem, which is not necessarily
getting much better?
Mr. Walters. Let me take the budget question first. We have
been working with HHS and others because we are concerned.
We're going to put more money into treatment, but the net
result is not going to be what we want, because there will be a
cutback in the contributed resources from States and
localities, because they're cutting back. As you know, many of
these programs have maintenance of effort provisions that we
are trying to be more scrupulous in reminding officials about.
I recognize when they have a budget deficit they've got to cut
somewhere.
But the fact is, as you said, you have to make a case and
you have to make the argument about what the priority and the
responsibilities are to maintain these efforts. I have been to
States where they are concerned that centers are going to
close, these treatment centers are going to close because of
the cutbacks. It's not so easy to turn those back after they've
been taken down.
So we're trying to work to make sure that we have both
flexibility in the program that as you know the President
offered and that we seek support for on treatment, would allow
us to use vouchers also in targeted areas where on the basis of
need and a plan to meet that need. So it gives us more
flexibility than we would have with some of the, we're
maintaining the block grant but the current block grant, which
does distribution simply on the basis of population, doesn't
have the same kind of flexibility.
But ultimately, we've got to bring people together. What
I've tried to do in traveling is meet with State officials from
Governors' offices and State legislatures, from mayors' offices
and city council members. I was just in Atlanta a couple of
weeks ago. I also think this touches the second part of your
question. We have to make people safe in all neighborhoods. I
did what I did with you, and I think it is important, the
leadership I saw when you did this is--we have to walk into the
neighborhoods that are now threatened. We have to provide, both
give them hope, but also we've got to do more than give them
false hope. We have to make the problem smaller, we have to
make more people safe. It will not happen, as you know,
overnight.
But also, my office is collecting data on major
metropolitan areas that have been particularly affected. That
data includes where there are treatment sites, where there are
drug courts, where there is particular known need for
prevention and community coalition resources, on where there is
need that's not met. It includes data on where there are open
air drug markets. And what we want to do is sit down with the
people who are carrying the freight and in many cases feel
they're not being supported and bring the press and bring the
civic leaders and bring the political leaders together,
Federal, State and local, and say, what are our goals, how do
we make the problem smaller in a concrete way, not just
everybody says they want to do something, everybody talks about
how they care, and they all go home.
We want to come back to these areas on a regular basis,
several times a year with myself and my deputies. That's a job
that we have not taken at this office. We've been responsible
for programs and budget. We need to maintain that
responsibility. But what we also need to do, we need to make
sure that the deployment and the leadership is being supported
by what we're doing nationally. It will not be easy. It will
not work in every place. But I've made the decision with my
staff to go in and be more of a catalyst at the local level.
Mr. Cummings. One quick comment. I just hope that when you
talk about victories, I hope that you will find time, we will
get this bill done, the reauthorization done, and the Dawson
piece will be in there. And I will never forget the statement
that you made at the funeral for those six family members, in
saying that you would not let the Dawson family die in vain. I
hope that you'll come back to Baltimore and stand with us in
Baltimore to let the drug dealers know that we're trying to do
something to make sure that they don't have their way. Because
that's part of the process, Mr. Chairman. We've got to do those
kinds of things. I hope you will come back.
Mr. Walters. I will. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr.
Walters.
You spoke earlier of some dissatisfaction with some members
over our gun strategy and of course with your own
dissatisfaction, your own commitment to fixing whatever's wrong
with it. You spoke also of the fact that dissatisfaction comes
from the fact that drug use isn't going down.
I have a question about ad strategy. With some apology, I
wasn't here the entire time, two or three other hearings are
going on at the same time. I want to make this observation,
however. The ad business, particularly if you consider that
most people get their information from the visual and radio
media, the ad business has changed markedly, some of it good,
some of it bad. There's a niche market for everything on the
one hand.
The bad part about that is, it keeps us from being one
America. If everybody doesn't look at something that's the
same, then are we one people any more? Of course, the
electronic media, new technology helped push the notion toward
niche media, and of course, different strokes for different
folks, that makes some sense. Where we are now is that niche
media controls everything. I mean, it's not even young adults
any more. It's not even teens any more. It's teens between X
and Y who look only at certain things. It's young adults who
are at a certain sector of the 20's and those who are at
another sector of the 20's. Nobody even thinks about 18 to 35
any more. That's just how much of niches we've become.
Now, let me be clear. The racial niches are very worrisome
to me on the one hand, they are reality, on the other hand. The
reason has been the growth of black radio, and it's one of the
huge growth industries in the media. It's because black people
listen to this black radio. There's black talk radio, they
listen to the black music, we've got black proms and white
proms, God help us.
So folks are definitely into their own media. So Members of
Congress have to make sure they're on all the niches or they've
only spoken to small parts of their own constituents. And no
question in my mind that if you are going to deal with drugs in
inner cities that you're going to have to get into not only
black radio and Hispanic radio, but into niches within niches
of those. And if drug use is not going down in those
communities, I am left to wonder if some of it doesn't have to
do with the very finely tuned expertise it takes to know even
how to reach the communities that are most vulnerable.
In our communities, those most vulnerable to drugs are the
least advantaged, the most inner of the inner cities, the
places where there's no other opportunity and therefore,
particularly for a young black boy, those are the ones that are
most likely to get into drugs. When you see these huge
opportunities out here for drug dealing and no opportunities
for jobs in your community, for too many the temptation becomes
overwhelming, especially given the fact that one of the great
problems in our community is the growth of female headed
households.
I need to ask you then, the extent to which you are getting
advice on minority media, what percentage of this huge media
budget goes to minority media, what kind of experts are you
using so that we can get at what is the worst part of the
problem, and that's the drug dealing in the minority community
that has led to what in this city and across the United States
amounts to escalated crime in those communities.
Mr. Walters. Thank you. I think that while there's been a
kind of fragmenting of markets, that from the point of view of
what this task is, that's helpful to us. It allows us to
deliver messages, different messages that are going to work.
We've learned that one size doesn't fit all. The campaign has,
I think, a proud history, and I'll be happy to supply the
contractors, because I think they deserve recognition, for the
record. I don't have them off the top of my head.
[The information referred to follows:]
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Ms. Norton. I wish you would submit them so the Chairman
can get them.
Mr. Walters. Sure. Provide both content and provide advice
on buying slots to place that content. Because we do have both
different groups we're trying to reach. But we also have
adults, parents and young people. And so we are able, I think
this kind of allows us to do a parallel to smart bomb
technology. It allows us to put the message in the audience
that we need to reach and not just rely on whatever seepage
there is when we know that one size doesn't fit all.
Now, there are a lot of markets, and we're also providing
material in writing, languages with particular ethnic
populations. But I think we have a good record in regard to
especially ethnic groups that have been particularly suffering
from this. So I'm proud to provide that. I'll give you all the
details for the record.
Ms. Norton. I would very much appreciate that. Finally, let
me say how pleased I am to note that apparently for the first
time, the bill is going to require the development of a uniform
set of data, allowing some standard evaluation of all the drug
treatment programs. Now, we have them popping up all over the
place, people who think they can talk to people and get people
off drugs. I very much welcome the notion of evaluating what a
professional drug treatment operation should look like, so that
we can ferret out some of this stuff that comes forward.
My question goes to early treatment. Because young people
in the inner cities are so exposed to drugs so early, if one
can get early treatment that amounts to prevention. And I note
your interest and concern with marijuana, I'm right there with
you, because that's such an entry level drug. I wonder what
part of your operation, and I recognize the agencies that deal
with this on the one hand, but what part of your operation
influences treatment and the funding that goes into treatment?
And again, I am really not focused on people who are hard
core, understand their needs. I am here focusing on young
people who will get a weed early in life. I'm focusing on the
schools, I'm focusing on early treatment before somebody gets
hooked. Does your office have any substantial influence on what
amounts to what I can only call chronic complaints about the
absence of treatment? And here I'm not asking you to focus on
that whole humongous thing, because I know what that can mean.
But particularly given your interest in prevention, whether you
have any influence on, whether your office has any influence on
early treatment that might in fact amount to preventing
especially young people from moving on to harder drugs.
Mr. Walters. Yes, my deputy for demand reduction, Dr.
Andrea Barthwell, has been working with HHS extensively over
the last year. HHS has just released an announcement for a
series of grants that will focus on early intervention.
We agree that if we're going to take the disease of
addiction seriously, we ought to be clear. The way this disease
is spread is by non-addictive users who are usually young
people who initiate other of their peers. The carriers of this
disease are the young people who have already broken the
boundary of prevention and have now begun to use.
We have very cost effective and demonstrated efforts that
can start with education, that can start with more intensive
followup depending on the involvement of the individual. As I
said earlier, I'm not sure whether you were here or at the
other hearing, of the 6 million people we have to treat because
of abuse or dependence on illegal drugs, 23 percent are
teenagers. Many of them are in schools. They're in faith
communities, they're in after school activities, they're
obviously in their homes.
We have to do a better job of recognizing the symptoms and
giving people a place to go when they recognize it. Too many
times denial is not only part of the disease, it's denial of
the people around those who suffer from the disease. Some of
that is because they don't know what to do. What we're going to
try to do with the media campaign in the next year, as I said,
is do a better job of informing the public and its many parts
of what intervention is needed, why it's valuable, why it's
important to support intervention and recovery. And then what
to do, where to go.
And we're trying to do, with HHS, expand those programs
that will be there. In addition, we're trying with the
treatment proposal of the President to increase the number of
people who can provide it. We would like to see more community
clinics, other types of community institutions, more
pediatricians take on substance abuse as a sub-specialty, more
general practitioners. More knowledge in emergency room and
trauma centers, when people come in after we know that there's
extensive problems driving under the influence of drugs.
Wherever we see people in the system, schools, hopefully we
can even enlist faith institutions as well as those who enter
the criminal justice system. In many places we have juveniles,
we don't have enough juvenile drug courts. We should be able to
get people the first time they come in, get them in earlier.
All the evidence shows that the earlier intervened, the more
promising the prognosis. We have to use that knowledge more
effectively.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Walters, and thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Souder [assuming Chair]. Thank you today for your
participation. I will continue to work through a number of
these issues, including the constantly difficult question of
how to find specialty media expertise, and how to target all
the different sub-markets, whether they be Native Americans,
rural areas or urban areas.
One of the unusual things about this authorizing bill is
that some things you have direct control over, like the ad
campaign, and the HIDTAs, where we have details in the bill.
And in other things, you have the indirect ability to oversee
and influence all, including treatment. So our oversight
responsibilities sometimes are oversight, sometimes are
authorizing. It's led to an unusual bill and your office is an
unusual office.
But we thank you very much for your leadership and the time
you spent with us not only here, but in many oversight
hearings.
Mr. Walters. Thank you. Thank you all for your help. I
appreciate it.
Mr. Souder. With that, the hearing stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:25 p.m., the committee proceeded to other
business.]
[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay and
additional information submitted for the hearing record
follows:]
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