[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 60 (Friday, May 3, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4681-S4682]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            RISE IN DRUG USE

 Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, earlier this week I and several of 
my colleagues--Mr. Coverdell, Mr. Kyl, Mr. Nickles, Mr. Gramm, Mr. 
Domenici, Mr. Frist, and Mr. Craig--came to this floor to discuss the 
disturbing rise in drug use in this country since the beginning of the 
Clinton administration. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal 
editorialized on the same subject. I ask that the editorial be printed 
in the Record.
  The editorial follows:

                           Waiting to Exhale

       Now, in April 1996, with eight months left on a four-year 
     term, Bill Clinton flies the press into Miami so he can be 
     seen standing shoulder to shoulder with General Barry 
     McCaffrey, a decorated war hero he's enlisted to lead a war 
     on drugs. Standing among schoolchildren Monday, the President 
     poured his great rhetorical heart onto the drug war. Along 
     the way came these key words: ``Make no mistake about it, 
     this has got to be a bipartisan, American, nonpolitical 
     effort.'' Translation: Don't blame me for this problem, 
     especially during an election campaign.
       In fact, Bill Clinton's retreat in the drug war is among 
     the worst sins for which his Administration should be held 
     accountable. After years of decline in drug use, recent 
     surveys make it clear that a younger generation of Americans 
     is again at risk. The number of 12-to-17-year-olds using 
     marijuana increased to 2.9 million in 1994 from 1.6 million 
     in 1992. Marijuana use increased 200% among 14-to-15-year-
     olds during the same period. Since 1992, according to 

[[Page S4682]]

     large surveys of high school students, there has been a 52% 
     increase in the number of seniors using drugs monthly. One in 
     three report having used marijuana in the past year. Private 
     anti-drug advocates such as Jim Burke of the Partnership for 
     a Drug Free America and Joe Califano of Columbia University's 
     Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse have been running 
     alongside this drug fire, yelling for help to anyone who'd 
     listen.
       Better late than never, of course, and it is good that Mr. 
     Clinton wants to mend his ways with General McCaffrey. We 
     applaud the appointment and think General McCaffrey has 
     sounded many right notes. Legalization, he says, ``is out of 
     the question.''
       A quarterly regional analysis put out by his office brings 
     the problem up to date: ``A recent New York State high school 
     survey reports that 12% of New York teens said that they 
     smoked marijuana at least four times a month, double the 
     number in the 1990 survey.'' Discussing ``Emerging Drugs.'' 
     the report notes methamphetamine's popularity in the San 
     Francisco area: ``in addition to its use by young users who 
     combine it with heroin (``a meth speedball'') it can also be 
     found in `biker's coffee,' a combination of methamphetamine 
     and coffee popular among young, fairly affluent urbanites.'' 
     Additionally, the report notes that ``Club drugs, a name 
     which generally includes MDMA, Ketamine, 2c-B, LSD, 
     psilocybin and a range of other hallucinogens, are 
     increasingly mentioned in this quarter.''
       These recent events are not a coincidence. The drug retreat 
     was the result of a series of explicit policy decisions by 
     Mr. Clinton and those around him. Which is why we think it is 
     worth focusing on the meaning of his wish that the anti-drug 
     war be ``bipartisan, American, nonpolitical.'' This means 
     that between now and November's election no one is allowed to 
     utter the phrase ``didn't inhale.'' No one is allowed to 
     remember Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders talking about drug 
     legalization, even as her own son was arrested and convicted 
     on drug-sale charges.
       Nor should anyone be allowed to bring up White House deputy 
     personnel director Patsy Thomasson's admission to a 
     congressional committee that some dozen White House 
     employees, including senior staff, had been ``requested to be 
     part of an individual drug testing program'' because of their 
     prior drug history. Ms. Thomasson's experience in these drug 
     mop-up duties extends back to her days in Arkansas when she 
     took over the business of Dan Lasater--Little Rock bond 
     dealer, Clinton campaign contributor and friend-of-brother 
     Roger--while Mr. Lasater served prison time for ``social 
     distribution'' of cocaine. This week Mr. Lasater is 
     testifying before the Senate Whitewater Committee, and we 
     assume he will be asked to enlighten the committee about 
     the millions of dollars of mysterious trades that his firm 
     made through an account without the knowledge of the 
     account's owner, Kentucky resident Dennis Patrick.
       On matters of pure policy, among Bill Clinton's first acts 
     was to cut spending on the war. The staff of the Office of 
     National Drug Control Policy was cut to 25 from 146. Drug 
     interdiction funds were cut. The number of trafficker 
     aircraft seized by Customs fell to 10 from 37 in FY '93-'95. 
     Drug czar Lee Brown wandered the nation's editorial pages 
     seeking the public support he rarely got from his President. 
     New York Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel announced: ``I 
     really never thought I'd miss Nancy Reagan, but I do.''
       Finally, about a year ago, Mr. Clinton received a stinging 
     letter from FBI Director Louis Freeh and DEA director Tom 
     Constantine, charging that the President's anti-drug effort 
     was adrift. So now we have General McCaffrey, who says, 
     ``There is no reason why we can't return America to a 1960s 
     level, pre-Vietnam era level of drug use.''
       Sorry, General, but pre-Vietnam America is not coming back. 
     General McCaffrey's current President is a founding member of 
     the generation that transformed America in the years of 
     Vietnam and those that followed. It bequeathed to all of us a 
     culture and ethos of such personal and moral slovenliness 
     that we must now enlist a battle-hardened soldier to save the 
     children of the anti-Vietnam generation from drugs. It is 
     perhaps the most perfect, bitter irony that when these 
     parents now exhort their children to stop using marijuana (of 
     a strain that is significantly more potent than anything they 
     dabbled in), the kids reply: ``Why should we? We're not 
     hurting anyone.''
       Basically, we'd very much like to know exactly why Bill 
     Clinton took a powder on the drug wars after he became 
     President. There was in fact a rationale of sorts offered at 
     the time for the change in tone and direction. In contrast to 
     what was thought to be the Republican approach of throwing 
     people in jail for drug offenses, the Clinton approach would 
     emphasize prevention and treatment. There is a case to be 
     made for prevention and treatment, but the heart of our 
     complaint with this President's attitude on drugs has to do 
     with what we would call it character, its moral content.
       Unlike the Reagans, you will never see the Clintons 
     articulating the war on drugs as an essentially moral 
     crusade. With its emphasis on treatment and programs and 
     prevention, it is mainly the kind of effort that the 
     sociologist Philip Rieff identified as the triumph of the 
     therapeutic. Rather than the school-marmish Nancy Reagan, the 
     Clintons, like the generation of liberal constituencies that 
     they lead, are going to be rhetorically correct, believers in 
     the powers of bureaucratic healing--and nonjudgmental. In 
     their world, no one is ever quite caught for disastrous 
     personal behavior or choices. Instead of absolution, there 
     are explanations.
       This, in our opinion, is the real reason the drug war waned 
     when Bill Clinton became President. The message this new 
     President sent to his young, yuppie, MTVish audiences was 
     that he was just too cool to go relentlessly moralistic over 
     something like recreational drugs. Sure he had an anti-drug 
     policy in 1992 and a czar and speeches, but Bill Clinton 
     wasn't going to have any cows over the subject. Surely, the 
     drug-testing White House staff understood that much.
       We don't doubt that a lot of people in this country, 
     especially parents of teenaged and pre-teen children, would 
     very much like to rediscover General McCaffrey's pre-Vietnam 
     world of less constant cultural challenge. But the people who 
     turned that culture upside down, making it a daily challenge 
     for parents, have at last been given the chance to run the 
     government. But this death-bed conversion on drugs simply 
     lacks credibility. As much as we applaud General McCaffrey's 
     new offensive, only a triumph of hope over experience could 
     lead anyone to believe it would be sustained past November if 
     Mr. Clinton and his crowd are returned to the White 
     House.

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