[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 140 (Monday, September 11, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13150-S13152]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


        DECLINES IN FUNDING FOR INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS PROGRAMS

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, in the past several months, the 
international drug program has not fared very well in Congress. Funding 
for interdiction, law enforcement, and international efforts have 
declined steadily. In part this is the result of a failure by the 
administration to either present a serious strategy or to fight for it 
in any meaningful way. The President has been all but invisible and his 
drug czar, left without support, has been ineffective. The obvious 
consequence of this dereliction in tough budget times is an erosion of 
funding and support to other projects that have more defenders.
  Unfortunately, the administration's indifference has reinforced the 
attitudes of some in Congress that the program is not worth fighting 
for, that nothing we do to combat drug use works, and so we should 
surrender. The result has been devastating for our international effort 
and for the morale and capabilities of our frontline forces.
  It is a myth to believe that nothing we do to combat illegal drugs 
works. In fact, whenever we have consistently and seriously attacked 
the problem--and we have a history going back to the beginnings of this 
century--we have had considerable success in reducing drug use and 
reversing epidemics. The trouble comes in believing that we should only 
have to combat illegal drug use once.
  The belief in some quarters seems to be that, unlike any other major 
social problem, we should have some magic formula that banishes the 
issue forever. This attitude seems peculiarly endemic to our counter 
drug efforts. Despite a long history, we have yet to solve the problem 
of murder, spouse abuse, incest, rape, or theft. One rarely hears the 
call, however, that because these problems persist we should give up 
trying to stop them or legalize them as a way out of solving our 
problem. Everyone recognizes that to seek such a solution would be 
irresponsible. Yet, when it comes to drugs, we seem to take a vacation 
from common sense.
  We must also remind ourselves that our measure for success cannot be 
some simplistic formula. Too often, the standard that critics apply to 
the counter drug effort, to prove that nothing works, is to create an 
impossible standard of perfection by which to judge it. For some, if 
there is one gram of cocaine on the streets of America somewhere, or 
one trafficker left in Colombia, then our efforts are a bust. Such 
counsels of perfection are enemies of realistic approaches. It is a lot 
like arguing that because we beat the other team 28 to 17 we really 
lost because they managed to score. Like a football team, our effort 
must be continually renewed. You do not win the championship once and 
for all, you have to train for the next season. The struggle to control 
illegal drug production and trafficking does not simply end when the 
whistle blows. Nor can our efforts simply stop.
  But let us look more closely at whether all our drug efforts are 
failures. In the mid-1980s, The American public made it quite clear to 
this body that stopping the flow of illegal drugs to the United States 
and ending the poisoning of millions of America's young people was a 
top priority. We got the message. In a series of legislative 
initiatives, we forced the administration to take the drug issue 
seriously. We created a drug czar to coordinate efforts. And we voted 
to increase funding across the board for counter-drug programs, from 
law enforcement to education and treatment.
  Remember that those efforts came after almost two decades of 
tolerance of drug use and a major cocaine and crack epidemic. When we 
decided to act, we faced a massive addiction problem and a widespread 
acceptance of drugs as an alternate life style. Yet, look at what 
happened. In the space of a few years, less than a third of the time it 
took us to get into the mess we created, we reversed attitudes toward 
drug use, and cut causal use of drugs by 50 percent and cocaine use by 
over 70 percent. Working with our Latin America allies, we wrapped up 
the Medellin cartel--which critics said would never happen--and made 
significant inroads in stopping the flow of drugs to this country.
  Now, we clearly did not eliminate either drug use or trafficking, but 
elimination was hardly the criteria for our programs nor the measure of 
success for evaluating them. It is also clear that we have more to do. 
But serious reflection on the issue shows that this is one of those 
problems for which continual effort is our only possible response. And 
our efforts pay dividends. While there is no ultimate victory parade, 
surrender is not an option--unless we are prepared to live with the 
consequences. Our past responses to public concern indicates that we 
are not.
  But can we afford the price? The notion that we are spending an 
inordinate amount of money on fighting drug use is one of the arguments 
used to justify cuts in the program. Such criticism, however, only 
works in isolation. Looking at the context shows a different picture.
  The total Federal budget is $1.5 trillion. Of that, the entire drug 
budget of the United States--for all drug-related law enforcement, 
treatment, education, and international programs--is less than 1 
percent of the total. Of the money we allocate to the drug program--
before present proposed cuts--we spend less than 4 percent of the total 
on international efforts. Even adding in all DOD detection, monitoring, 
and law enforcement support the total is only 8 percent of the Federal 
drug budget. Hardly significant sums.
  Compared to what Americans spend on other activities, these sums are 
insignificant. We spend annually five times as much on beauty parlors 
and personal-care products than we spend on the total drug budget. At 
current wholesale prices, a mere 8 percent of the cocaine imported into 
the United States would more than cover the costs of our entire 
international counter-drug effort; and 20 percent would cover the costs 
of adding in DOD efforts.
  Moreover, we cannot afford the annual the costs of not acting. At 
present levels, the annual costs of drug use--some $60 billion to 
industry, some $50 billion spent on drugs, and untold billions in the 
costs of crime, violence, and medical costs--dwarf our expenditures on 
counterdrug programs and create major social problems. Yet, critics 
argue than we spend too much. We could double our drug budget and still 
be spending only half of what we spend on legal services. It is simply 
not the case that we are spending too much.
  The issue, however, is not just a question of throwing money, however 
small, at a problem, but of what we are getting for our investment. As 
I indicated, the returns are significant and if they had been achieved 
in other areas of public problems we would regard them as successes. 
Yet, we act as if a 50-percent overall reduction in drug use is a 
failure. We become frustrated because this is one of those problems 
that requires ongoing efforts not one-time quick fixes. If we forget 
this simple fact, we will find ourselves repeating history--of once 
again having to dig ourselves out of a major addiction problem. The 
signs that we are drifting in that direction are already there, we 
ignore them at the peril of our young people. We need to sustain the 
efforts that have proven themselves in the past. Success, however, is 
not a one-time thing. It requires both the moral leadership and the 
consistent message to our young people that illegal drug use is risky 
business. 

[[Page S 13151]]

  In this regard, I intend to work with my Senate and House colleagues 
to restore realistic funding to our counter-drug efforts and to raise 
the priority. We cannot afford to return to disastrous policies of the 
1970's that did so much harm. We cannot afford to ignore the continuing 
public concern over this issue. We cannot afford to spend less on our 
counterdrug programs, or expect less for our investment.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I might 
proceed as in morning business to comment on the very able remarks of 
my friend and collaborator at this point from Iowa.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I Would like to share his concern about the state of 
the White House operation in this matter--the matter of drug 
interdiction and drug abuse--which was established by legislation in 
1988. The then majority leader, Robert C. Byrd, created a task force 
which consisted of the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Nunn, and myself, and 
I think we had more than a little influence in the legislation that 
finally passed. I will take a moment of the Senate's time to speak 
about that legislation. We saw the problem as being twofold.
  One was the reduction in the supply of drugs--most of which began as 
legal pharmaceutical products. They arrived from the onset of organic 
chemistry in German universities in the early 19th century.
  You take this gradual escalation from opium to morphine to heroin. 
Heroin, Mr. President, is a trade name. You can find advertisements in 
the Yale Alumni News, if you wish, for heroin in 1910 or thereabouts. 
It was developed by the Bayer Co., that produced Bayer aspirin. Aspirin 
is a trade name. Heroin was tried out and tested on its employees and 
it made them feel heroisch in German, heroic.
  Cocaine emerged from the same process, from the coca leaf to the 
synthesized product. Sigmund Freud's first publication ``Uber Coca'' 
described his use of cocaine as a means of treating morphine addiction, 
which did not succeed, and he became very much opposed to it.
  These drugs were outlawed in 1915, if memory serves, by the Federal 
Government, and remain so. It is the last of the prohibition decrees of 
that era.
  We thought in terms of supply and demand. If I can tell my friend a 
little story, I think it may be said that in the late 1960's we had a 
heroin epidemic in this country, very much so in this city. You could 
tell it by the incidence of robbery of small grocery stores and food 
outlets--small amounts of money needed by persons who are getting 
withdrawal symptoms from the lack of heroin.
  It was so serious that--at this point I was Assistant to President 
Nixon for Urban Affairs--I was called to a meeting across the street, 
cater-cornered from the White House, by some of the most respected and 
responsible citizens in the city of Washington, who asked me if I would 
ask the President to garrison the Capitol. Such was the problem.
  This particular flow of heroin originated in the opium fields in 
Turkey, made its way to Marseilles, where, in small simple 
laboratories, it was converted into heroin, thence smuggled into New 
York, more or less directly, and then around the country.
  It seemed to me a curious thing. In 1969, as Assistant to the 
President for Urban Affairs, I thought the most important thing we had 
to deal with was welfare, which we are doing today, and next the heroin 
epidemic.
  President Nixon, in August of that year, sent to the Congress a very 
wide-ranging proposal, the Family Assistance Plan, which would 
establish a guaranteed income and replace the welfare program 
altogether. It passed the House twice and never get out of the Finance 
Committee in the Senate.
  That done, I left immediately for Turkey by way of India, which is 
still the largest source of illicit opium. I would not want to live in 
a world without morphine, not with my teeth. But it is still widely 
used properly as a medicine for medicinal purposes.
  I went to Turkey, to Istanbul, and met with the Foreign Minister, 
representing the President of the United States. I said, we have an 
epidemic in our country and we have to stop it. That means we have to 
stop the production of opium in the province of Afyon. Opium is made 
from poppy seeds. Poppy seeds are part of the Turkish cuisine. They put 
poppy seeds on their bread.
  This was not an easy thing to do. It is like someone arriving in 
Washington and telling our Secretary of State they had to stop growing 
corn in Iowa--sorry about that, you just have to stop. The Secretary of 
State will say, I see, of course.
  Actually, they did not close them down; they just harvested them in a 
different way, called straw poppy. You could still extract the 
ingredients needed for pharmaceutical purposes, but without the paste 
which is derived by simply putting an incision on the stamen of the 
poppy plant, collecting the moisture which oozes out by fingers and 
wrapping it up in a leaf until it gradually became raw opium.
  I then went to Paris where I found the American Embassy was not aware 
that anything was going on in Marseilles, much less going on in 
Washington. But they took my word for it and I met with the director of 
the Surete, their internal police, which has been there since the 
Napoleonic age.
  These conversations went back and forth a number of times. Finally 
the French agreed, all right, they would close down the Marseilles 
operations, and the Turks agreed they would move to this new mode of 
harvest.
  I was in a helicopter--I wonder if my friend from Iowa might hear 
this because it would help him--I was in a helicopter on my way up to 
Camp David and just back from Paris. The only other person present was 
the then Director of the Office of Management and Budget, George P. 
Shultz. I said to him, ``George, I have good news, I think we are going 
to close down the French connection.'' This is what it became known as. 
He looked up from his papers and said, ``Good,'' and then I said, a 
little deflated, ``No, no, really. This is important. They are going to 
close it down. I have it from the head of the Surete in Paris.'' And he 
looked up and said ``Good.'' Then, quite crestfallen, I said ``I 
suppose''--he being an economist--``I suppose you think that so long as 
there is a demand there will be a supply?'' He looked up at me and 
said, ``You know, there is hope for you yet.''
  Of course in 3 to 4 years' time the Mexicans were providing heroin. 
Now it comes in from anywhere in the world, and will continue to do so.
  That is why in our 1988 legislation, we said there will be two 
deputies in the newly created White House office--the Office of 
National Drug Control Policy. One would be the Deputy Director for 
Demand Reduction, who would seek a clinical device, a pharmaceutical 
block, an equivalent in one way or another in that general field of 
methadone treatment for heroin, who would learn the chemistry of this 
subject enough to have some treatment beyond the sort of psychiatric, 
psychological treatment available. The numbers would overwhelm us. We 
cannot cope.
  President Bush made extraordinary, fine appointments. He appointed 
Dr. William Bennett as the head of the office. As the Deputy Director 
for Demand Reduction he appointed Dr. Herbert Kleber, a physician at 
the Yale Medical School, a research scientist, and exactly the man you 
would want for this.
  Then after a while Bennett left, and Kleber also left. Kleber has 
gone to Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and is working at 
the New York Psychiatric Institute in this field.
  Nobody succeeded him in a scientific role. There have been a number 
of persons in the job. I am sure they are good persons, but they are 
nothing like what we had in mind in the legislation.
  Just 2 weeks ago, I tried to learn what had been the professional 
qualifications of the persons who had succeeded Dr. Kleber, and I found 
that in this office in the White House, they could not tell me. They 
did not know. This was not a long time back. It was 1988--well, 1990. 
They did not know their history 5 years back. They had no idea what the 
statute intended. They were not doing anything the statute 
contemplated.
  So I actually thought I would put in legislation abolishing the 
position, on the grounds that if it was not going to do what it was 
intended to do by statute, why not just eliminate it? 

[[Page S 13152]]

  I would like to think someone there is listening to what the Senator 
from Iowa said, and what I said. I doubt it very much. I will introduce 
that measure, or insist on it. But I may try to offer it as an 
amendment somewhere along the line.
  The main point is, we enacted a good statute which has been 
trivialized, a fact which I regret, but about which I can do very 
little.
  Mr. President, I see no other Senators seeking recognition. The 
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations is on the floor. He may 
be seeking the floor.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. HELMS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Craig). The Senator from North Carolina.

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