[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 84 (Monday, June 10, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H6097-H6098]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        OUR NATION'S DRUG POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I come before the House tonight to talk about 
a situation as serious as the one my colleague has just enumerated with 
the burning of the black churches in this country. Certainly I support 
her comments, and everything should be done in that regard to resolve 
this situation.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about another serious situation, and that 
is the lack of a national drug policy. I represent central Florida, a 
beautiful area between Orlando and Daytona Beach. I am so fortunate. 
Other areas of the country sometimes have problems, and we have 
problems. But it is normally a very tranquil place. People work and go 
to school. But lately I get home, got home last weekend and turn on the 
television. I do not know whether I am in Washington, DC, with the 
murders, with the atrocities that are being committed by certain 
individuals in our society or whether I am in Detroit or New York or 
wherever. Sometimes you read the conflicts. But last weekend, we had a 
13-year-old car hijacking. We had the incident of 18-year-olds involved 
in murders, some double murders. I look out in the community, and I 
have seen people that I have worked with who have lost family now in 
this drug war. I wonder where our Nation's drug policy is.
  Really, what you sow, I guess, is what you reap in this business. I 
am really disappointed in the President and this administration. I come 
before the House tonight to talk about the drug policy. I am afraid 
that under the President, it has been an absolute disaster. I guess 
when you take some actions like the President has taken, first thing he 
did was dismantle the drug czar's office and fire everyone in the White 
House with only a handful left working on the drug czar.
  Then he appointed Joycelyn Elders our Nation's number one health 
official. And what did she say? She said: Just say maybe, maybe we 
should legalize drugs. Then we stopped sharing the drug information 
with our South American and other allies in the drug region. We saw how 
our policy was a disaster in that regard, only through an uproar in 
Congress did some of that get changed.
  Then we witnessed the destruction of our drug interdiction program, 
how we found recently assets that were destined for drug interdiction 
got diverted to Haiti, to other projects, how the Coast Guard, who in 
the Caribbean had a $630 million budget and now is getting up to maybe 
$370 million to fight drugs, a dramatic decrease in interdiction 
because this President wanted the money to go for treatment. I submit 
to my colleagues tonight that treating just folks in this drug war is 
like treating the wounded in a battle.
  Mr. Speaker, we have seen the results. The results are absolutely 
startling. Tonight I want to talk about a report that is out by the 
Drug Abuse Warning Network which talks about the increases of cocaine, 
which talks about the increases of marijuana, which talks about the 
increases of heroin. It is not just among our adult population. It is 
now in our children.
  Look at this chart, which details, and you can see from the 1980's, 
how drug abuse and drug use are going down. In 1992, when this policy 
kicked in, you see what has happened here, with 12th graders, with 10th 
graders, and even 8th graders. This is not an acceptable situation.
  Let me read from this report that just came out last week. The Drug 
Abuse Warning Network, commonly known as DAWN, collects data from 
hospitals and other reporting agencies. The news according to this 
report is terrible.
  Let me quote it: Compared with the first half of 1994, which was the 
high water mark for drug related emergency room cases, cocaine related 
emergency increased 12 percent, from 68,000, to 76,000. In heroin 
related episodes, that rose 27 percent. Marijuana related episodes 
increased 32 percent and methamphetamines and some of the designer drug 
cases grew by about 35 percent. So we have seen the results in our 
emergency rooms and our communities, with some of our children, some of 
our young people out of control.
   Mr. Speaker, let me also cite this report that we have seen what has 
happened with cocaine prices. On cocaine prices, we see the 
consequences of the changes in this administration's policy. Cocaine 
prices actually went down, and we made cocaine more available. Prices 
were from $172 a gram to $137. So in interdiction where we have 
dismantled the program we see the direct results.
  I serve on the committee that oversees our drug policy. Let me tell 
you, the report that we came up with on our assessment of this 
situation is detailed in this report released in March. I brought it 
before the Congress. It should also be startling to everyone in the 
media, everyone in the public, and everyone in this Congress. This 
details

[[Page H6098]]

increases in heroin use, cocaine use, designer drug use. What is 
interesting even in the marijuana area is that the marijuana that was 
used in the 1960's and 1970's was nowhere near as powerful as what this 
report says is 30, 40 times as powerful and is messing up the brains 
and the genes and the minds of our young people. That is one of the 
problems that we see with crime, with disorder and again with the use 
of these drugs by our young people.

                              {time}  1830

  So the reports are in. The Congress, my subcommittee over at 
International Affairs and Oversight has released this report. We now 
have the report of the drug abuse warning network that shows that the 
problem is even worse than what this chart details before us.
  But I think, my colleagues, that it is time that we took back our 
children, I think it time that we took back our schools, that we took 
back our streets, we took back our communities, the violence that we 
have seen, the crime that is related to drug abuse. My sheriffs and 
police chiefs have told me that 70 percent of the criminals that they 
have incarcerated are involved with drugs, and narcotics and illegal 
substances.
  So we know where the problem is. It is not going to be answered by 
curfews, it is not going to be answered by regulating cigarettes, it is 
not going to be answered by uniforms or V-chips. It is going to be 
answered by the highest leadership of this country, the White House, 
taking this issue seriously. It is going to be answered by this 
Congress providing more resources to a drug interdiction program and 
education programs, some of which have been gutted by this 
administration, and making drug abuse and misuse a serious topic of 
conversation because it is ruining our ability to live as a society.
  We heard about the black churches that have been destroyed across the 
Nation. Well, just in this city since I have been in Congress the last 
3\1/2\ years, 1,000, in excess of 1,000, young black males between the 
ages of 14 and 45 have lost their lives in a drug war. I asked the 
President in any war I would send in the National Guard, and when we 
saw what was going on here with the deaths, he denied our activity. I 
participated in a hearing in San Juan today, and we found that where 
they brought in the National Guard where they had high intensity or 
problems that, in fact, they took their streets back.
  So we are going to have to take whatever measures are necessary 
because we are in a war. The victims in this war are children. We are 
losing a generation. Our jails are filled. We cannot put any more 
people in prison, so we are going to have to concentrate on what has 
become a national scandal and a national problem, and that is drug 
abuse and drug misuse. The direction the President has been heading in 
is the wrong direction. We need to get in the right direction, and we 
need every American to speak out on this, not just in Congress, but 
throughout the land.

  Mr. Speaker, we must solve this problem or we are not going to again 
have safe streets or have our children have an opportunity for the 
future.

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