[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 69 (Thursday, May 16, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H5264]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                A WAR ON DRUGS REALLY SHOULD BE DECLARED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, earlier today I took a 1-minute 
on the floor to discuss a problem that I think the American people 
demand we address. According to experts, 70 percent of all crime in 
this country is caused by people who are dealing in drugs or are drug 
related one way or another. Our kids are being infected by the drug 
culture. It is destroying our inner cities and our suburbs. It is 
causing a myraid of problems.
  The prisons are filled with people who have dealt with drugs, used 
drugs, or committed crimes while under the influence of drugs, and each 
one of these people that are incarcerated cost up to $30,000 a year to 
keep in jail. Yet the war on drugs goes on and on and on, and nothing 
seems to be accomplished.
  We read every day that more and more people have been arrested, more 
cocaine has been picked up by the DEA, and yet we hear about tons and 
tons of cocaine that is getting past them into the United States, even 
though they are working very, very hard to keep that kind of thing out 
of here.
  Now, I was in a place called the Upper Yuagua Valley in Peru about 4 
years ago, and I found that 65 percent of all the coca in the world is 
produced in this one valley that is about 25 miles wide and about 150 
to 200 miles long. We know exactly where two-thirds of the world's coca 
is produced. And right across the border in Bolivia another 20 to 25 
percent of the world's coca is produced. So about 90 percent of the 
world's coca that is turned into crack and cocaine that comes into our 
country and affects our kids and hurts our society and costs the 
taxpayers billions of dollars is in these two locations, and we are not 
doing a darn thing about it.
  They have people down there we are paying to cut down these coca 
plants with a thing that is kind of like a metal weed-eater, and a good 
campesino cutting down these coca fields can only cut down about an 
acre a day. As fast as they cut it down, it is replaced tenfold by the 
drug dealers down there, the Medellin cartel and the others, and we 
cannot stop them. And we call this a war on drugs.
  So I said to my colleagues this morning and I say to the 
administration and anybody else, Mr. Speaker, that might be paying 
attention, that if there is a war on drugs, I missed it. And if we do 
not really have a war on drugs, then let us declare a war on drugs. We 
could put an aircraft carrier off the coast of Peru, load it up with a 
herbicide called tebucyron, or spike, and at 5 o'clock in the morning 
take off and fly up and down the Upper Yuagua Valley and drop these 
little pellets that are environmentally safe. We could do the same 
thing in Bolivia. We would have to fly a little bit further. But we 
could knock out 90 percent of the world's coca production in a week. I 
hope everybody is listening. In 1 week we could knock out 90 percent of 
the world's coca production. Now if you do not have coca, you cannot 
make coca paste, and if you do not have coca paste, you cannot make 
crack cocaine or cocaine. All of the chemicals that they use to perfect 
coca paste and make crack cocaine that is dumped into the tributaries 
that is going into the Amazon River and the other rivers down there, 
that will no longer be going into those rivers, thus infecting the 
environment and killing the environment.
  So I would like to say to my colleagues today, if we really wanted to 
stop cocaine, or if we really want to destroy the poppy plants and 
heroin use in this country, we know where they are producing it. All we 
have to do is have the guts to go in there and destroy it. And we have 
the ability to do it.
  Now, the State Department, I talked to them about it, and they said 
well, we cannot violate the territorial sanctity of a sovereign nation, 
meaning we cannot go across the border of Peru or Bolivia without their 
permission.
  What are they going to do, shoot down our planes? Of course they 
would not do that. The fact of the matter is the war on drugs really is 
not a war on drugs; it is a hollow political statement that does not 
mean a darn thing. And we are spending billions of dollars nipping 
around the edges and our kids continue to be infected with this sort of 
thing.

                              {time}  1715

  We could deal with it very quickly. So I want to say to my 
colleagues, in closing, there is a way to deal with it. Go down there 
and destroy the coca plants and they will not make crack cocaine. They 
will not make cocaine, and it will send a tremendous signal to the drug 
cartels around the world, and that is, if they plant that stuff, we are 
going to destroy it.
  Now, some of my colleagues say, well, then they will start making 
designer drugs in the United States. Well, if they do that, we can nail 
them at their laboratories because we will be able to pinpoint those. 
Now we know where the coca is coming from and we are not doing a darn 
thing about it, and it is a crying shame because it is killing American 
citizens.

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