[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 118 (Tuesday, September 3, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9683-S9690]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE DRUG EPIDEMIC

  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about drug use. 
You may recall that many people derided or made fun of Nancy Reagan's 
``just say no'' approach to the use of illegal drugs. But I think it is 
interesting that for 11 years in a row during the Reagan-Bush era drug 
use among our children declined. Just saying no was a policy that 
worked. It seems now that we are not saying no enough in Washington and 
our children are not saying no enough in our junior high schools.
  If we look at the record on drug use, it is a frightening sight as to 
what is happening. Overall drug use has more than doubled in the last 4 
years. Drug use among teenagers is up 105 percent in the last 4 years. 
The use of marijuana among teenagers has risen 141 percent. Cocaine 
usage among teenagers in the last 2 years has gone up by 160 percent. 
Today 1 out of every 10 children in America between the ages of 12--
that is the sixth grade--and 17 now are using drugs at least once a 
month.
  How did Washington contribute to this tragedy that is occurring in 
every junior high school in America? I think it started when President 
Clinton took office and, in his first days, cut the drug czar's office 
by 83 percent. President Clinton cut drug interdiction spending 25 
percent below the level carried in the last Bush budget. Between 1992 
and 1995, 227 positions at DEA were eliminated. Drug prosecutions in 
1993 and 1994 declined by 12 percent, and the average sentence for 
selling marijuana declined by 13 percent from 1992 to 1995.

  I think if we are serious about this problem that we need to end the 
debate that we have been engaged in with the administration for the 
last 4 years where the President is trying to eliminate mandatory 
minimum prison sentences for hoodlums who are selling drugs at junior 
high schools, and we need to enact reforms that the Senate has adopted 
numerous times, and yet which has not yet become the law of the land. I 
have proposed 10 years in prison without parole for selling drugs to a 
minor or involving a minor in drug trafficking, so every hoodlum in 
America, when they are thinking about selling drugs to a child, will 
understand that if they are convicted they are going to prison and they 
are going to serve every day of 10 years in prison no matter who their 
daddy is or how they may think society has done them wrong.
  I also want life in prison for people who get out of prison having 
been convicted once of selling drugs to a minor and turn right around 
and do it again.
  I think when we look at this data on drug use it is obvious that we 
are not doing our job. I think we need to change that pattern. I want 
to double the size of the Border Patrol. This last year we took a first 
step. It is a major step in the right direction. Right now we have more 
police officers in Washington, DC, than we have Border Patrol agents 
trying to police and control the entire border of the United States of 
America. It is not unusual--in fact it is the norm--to have on any 
shift in a 300-mile strip from Brownsville to Laredo 87 Border Patrol 
agents actually working that line. We are using in many cases near-
obsolete sensing devices, while the military has great night vision and 
infrared capacity. We do not have similar capability in the Border 
Patrol. That needs to change.
  We need to double the size of the Border Patrol over the next 5 
years. I believe that given the threat we face from armed drug gangs, 
with automatic weapons, with night-vision capability, and with 
sophisticated electronic communications basically invading our country 
nightly, that we do not now have the resources we need and we have 
certainly not committed the will to keep drugs out of our country.
  We need to expand the capacity of the FBI Academy. I think we should 
have a goal that within 5 years we double the training capacity of the 
FBI Academy. In no other way can we give local law enforcement 
personnel the enrichment of training that they need and which can, in 
turn, be passed on within their police departments and their sheriff 
departments.
  We need to expand the size of the DEA. I think if you will look at 
your individual State, you are going to find that in many vast regions 
we have only two or three or four DEA agents. And let me make it clear. 
I have no criticism of our Border Patrol agents, our FBI agents, our 
DEA agents. They are doing their job. The problem is they are not 
getting the support they need from Washington.
  We need to prosecute vigorously drug felons in general and criminals 
who are selling drugs to children. I would like to see us change our 
building code and stop building prisons like Holiday Inns. We have at 
least three Federal statutes which criminalize making prisoners work. 
Prisoners cannot produce goods to be sold across State lines. They 
cannot produce items to be sold within the State. We have limits on the 
transport of prison-produced goods and you have to pay the union scale 
if you make prisoners work. Needless to say, not many prisoners in 
America are working and producing anything of value.
  We took the first step in the Senate toward changing that last year. 
That effort died because it was opposed in the House and by the 
President. But I think we need to continue to work to change the 
criminal justice system in America.
  In addition to that, we have to take a zero-tolerance approach to 
drugs. We need to make it very clear to young people that drug use is 
not acceptable. We need to hold people who are buying drugs just as 
responsible as people who are selling drugs. Whether we are talking 
about a high school student or a wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, 
drug use should be a serious matter. I think we ought to call on our 
professional athletic leagues, the NFL, professional baseball, 
professional basketball, to set higher standards. If people

[[Page S9684]]

are going to be set out as role models for our children, I think when 
they have established a pattern of drug use they ought not to be 
playing professional football or professional basketball.
  I think these are changes that need to be looked at. If you look at 
this data and you are not alarmed, then I think you do not understand 
this problem. I think drug use represents one of the greatest threats 
we face.
  I thank our colleague from Georgia for leading this effort to try to 
make the public more aware of it. I am hopeful that we will have an 
opportunity in Commerce-State-Justice appropriations to look at our 
priorities in terms of the Border Patrol and law enforcement. We should 
pass a major new crime and antidrug bill which is aimed at getting 
tough on those who are selling drugs but which also holds accountable 
those who are buying drugs.
  I am very proud of the provision in the welfare bill which for the 
first time takes the public policy position that if you are convicted 
of a drug felony, we are not going, through our welfare programs, to 
give you a base pay in welfare and food stamps while you are out 
selling drugs at the local junior high school; that one of the things 
that is going to happen to you if we convict you of a drug felony under 
our new welfare bill is you are going to lose your cash welfare 
benefits and you are going to lose your food stamps.
  I think that is a perfectly reasonable proposal, and I think it is 
something that should be expanded. Our society should take a zero-
tolerance approach to drugs. I think that is the only way we are going 
to solve this problem. When Nancy Reagan was saying no, when our 
country was taking a stronger approach, drug use fell for 11 years. It 
seems in recent years our Government has not been saying no, and, as a 
result, drug use has skyrocketed among our children. I think we need to 
do something about it.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. I thank the Senator from Texas for the remarks he has 
made and the contribution he has made over the years with regard to our 
constant battle with narcotics. I appreciate very much him joining us 
this afternoon.
  Mr. GRAMM. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, in a moment I am going to call on the 
distinguished Senator from Ohio, but I would like to take just a few 
moments to put before the Senate a question I put before local 
policymakers all across my State about a week ago. I went from one end 
of the State to the other and in each jurisdiction I said: I want this 
meeting to be a wakeup call. I want it to be absolutely clear in all of 
our minds when we leave this meeting and when we leave here today that 
there is a new drug epidemic in the United States. Epidemic. You will 
hear these figures throughout the afternoon, but essentially drug use 
among teenagers has doubled.

  What does that mean? That means 2 million more teenagers are involved 
with drugs today than were just 36 months ago. The increase on the part 
of teenagers in the last 12 months--12 months--increased 33 percent.
  You heard the Senator from Texas begin to talk about the fact that we 
had to restore interdiction efforts on the border. You will hear many 
other suggestions that we need to restore and reopen the drug czar's 
office, that we need to double our efforts, we need to quit reducing 
military capacity involved in interdiction and restore it. But that is 
going to take some time. That is not going to happen tomorrow. These 
systems were being shut down, and it takes a lot of funding and time to 
turn them back on.
  In the meantime, what I would ask is that every policymaker, be they 
Federal officers, Members of the of the Senate, a county commissioner 
or teacher, every policymaker at every level, every chamber member, 
every business leader, every church, every family at their kitchen 
table, the media, they can make an enormous contribution by being part 
of the wake-up system. While we are waiting for these other systems to 
be put back in gear, I would ask every citizen of this country to help 
us warn teenagers, particularly young children, kids that are 8 to 13, 
that drugs are dangerous, that drugs will ruin their lives, alter their 
lives, change the way they are educated, where they can get a job or 
cannot get a job. They are making decisions that are going to affect 
them for their whole life.
  For some reason--and I am sure it will be talked about here this 
afternoon--we have the highest number of teenagers in modern history 
who do not think drugs are a threat or a risk, so, conversely, they are 
using drugs in unprecedented numbers. It is up to us, the leaders of 
our Nation, to warn them, to give them the opportunity to understand 
this is dangerous stuff; this will unalterably affect their lives. 
Hopefully, those who are ensnared can be rehabilitated. But even if we 
do, it will be at great cost and you will never be able to put all the 
pieces back together for these kids.
  One last thing and I am going to turn to the Senator from Ohio. The 
difference between this epidemic that we are in now and the one in the 
1960's and 1970's? There is a striking difference. The target audience 
then was age 17 to 21. The target of the cartels today is kids 8 to 
13--8 to 13. This is the first war that has ever been waged against 
kids.
  I yield up to 10 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Ohio.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio is recognized for up to 
10 minutes.
  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I first thank my colleague from Georgia 
for leading this discussion today. I cannot think of a more appropriate 
forum than the U.S. Senate, nor can I think of a more appropriate topic 
for us to be discussing today than what is literally the crisis that is 
facing our young people.
  The evidence is out. The statistics are there. We have seen the 
headlines in the newspapers in the last few weeks that others have 
detailed on this floor already today. But I would like to spend a 
little time talking about it and maybe reflecting on my personal 
experiences in dealing with this problem. I used to be a county 
prosecuting attorney in Ohio. I dealt with kids who were certainly at 
risk, kids who were starting out on lives of crime, kids who had 
unbelievable problems. Later I served as Lieutenant Governor in a State 
with a very large at-risk youth population. I worked on the education 
system, but I also worked on the prison system, and I saw a lot of kids 
leading, certainly what we would describe as, broken lives.
  Based on that experience, I am convinced, if we truly want to save 
the next generation of young people in this country, we can no longer, 
as a country, pretend the problem does not exist. I am afraid, to some 
extent that is what we have been doing. We have to face the problem and 
we cannot do that, frankly, without Presidential leadership. Over the 
last 4 years, we have basically surrendered on the fight against drugs. 
A couple of weeks ago, President Clinton's Department of Health and 
Human Services released a report stating the total failure of the 
Clinton administration on this particular issue. The statistics are 
unbelievable.
  From 1992 to 1995, overall drug use by teenagers, young people age 12 
to 17, has risen by 78 percent. Marijuana use is up 105 percent, more 
than double what it was 4 years ago. That is after 11 years of 
declining marijuana use, 11 straight years of declining marijuana use 
under President Reagan and President Bush. Now we are up 105 percent in 
just a couple of years. Use of LSD and other hallucinogens is up 183 
percent, nearly triple what it was 4 years ago. Cocaine use is up 166 
percent. If you really want to see the tragedy my colleague from 
Georgia has talked about in the past, if you really want to see the 
tragedy, look at the emergency rooms and look at the people who have 
gone into the emergency rooms for overdose problems today.
  One out of every ten children age 12 to 17 is using drugs on a 
monthly basis--1 out of every 10 children. We must do something. This 
administration's approach has basically been one of neglect. For years, 
the Reagan and Bush Justice Departments would concentrate their most 
intensive efforts on two areas of law enforcement: Gun crimes and 
drugs. When President Clinton came in, this effort simply withered 
away. Here are the statistics.

[[Page S9685]]

Under President Clinton, the prosecution of gun-related offenses in 
Federal court by U.S. attorneys went down 20 percent--down 20 percent. 
That is after an increase year after year under the Bush and Reagan 
administrations. Further, under President Clinton, drug prosecutions 
have gone down 12.5 percent.

  It is incredible. The drug problem is skyrocketing but the Clinton 
administration's willingness to fight has gone down. President Clinton 
has cut 625 individuals, soldiers, out of the ranks of the war on 
drugs; 625 law enforcement personnel from 6 separate Federal agencies 
are gone. Under President Clinton, Federal spending on drug 
interdiction went down 25 percent.
  These are not just statistics, these are not just facts. This 
matters. This makes a difference, because spending less on interdiction 
makes a difference. According to recent Federal law enforcement 
statistics, the disruption rate--that is the amount of drugs that are 
blocked from coming into this country--dropped 53 percent between 1993 
and early 1995. That means that an additional 84 metric tons of 
marijuana and cocaine came into America and comes into America every 
single year.
  Since 1993, Coast Guard seizures of cocaine are down 45 percent. 
Coast Guard seizures of marijuana for that same period of time are down 
90 percent. That says a lot about the priorities of this 
administration. Instead of cracking down on gun criminals, people who 
use a firearm to commit an offense, repeat violent offenders, and 
instead of getting tough on drugs, this administration has literally 
taken a walk. I am sure that is one reason Democratic Congressman 
Charlie Rangel--certainly someone in the U.S. Congress who is one of 
the foremost leaders in this area, who has spent a lot of time battling 
the drug problem--said, ``I have never, never, never met a President 
who cares less about this issue.''
  That sums up very well the prevalent attitude of the current 
administration with regard to the war on drugs. It is an attitude of 
neglect. For anyone who cares about the future of this country, this 
attitude is totally unacceptable. The average young person who is using 
drugs in high school ends up in trouble. That individual represents 
America's future. This is something we have to get serious about. This 
administration, unfortunately, did just the opposite. They cut the drug 
czar's office. One of the first things they did is they cut the drug 
czar's office by 83 percent. Their Surgeon General talked about 
legalizing drugs. ``We should study that,'' she said. Their National 
Security Council dropped drugs--this is astonishing, absolutely 
amazing--their National Security Council dropped drugs from the top 3 
of national priorities down to 29th, the last, 29 out of 29, when they 
ranked the national priorities; dead last. That tells you something 
about what this administration's attitude has been.
  As a statement of our national priorities, as a statement of our 
national consensus, this administration's attitude and record are 
simply unacceptable. It is time for our national leadership to let the 
teenagers of this country know we are serious. Drugs do kill. We have 
to speak in this country with one clear voice.
  In the first 9 months of 1995, President Clinton was interviewed 112 
times. He mentioned drugs just once. He made 119 statements during that 
period of time, formal statements. He mentioned drugs just twice.
  We need an attitude of ``just say no.'' This administration, by 
contrast, has just said nothing. Drugs are a threat to the future of 
our children. They are a threat to the future of our country. That will 
be true even after this election year. It is time, frankly, for some 
followthrough in the Oval Office. We need to realize that our national 
effort against drugs is really not a war. All of us, myself included, 
use that term. That really is not the best of terms, because in a sense 
it is something more difficult than a war. When we talk about a war, we 
usually think of something where we go in as a country, we make the 
commitment, we pay the price, we get the job done, and we win and we go 
home, men and women go home--mission accomplished.
  The antidrug effort in that sense is a not a war. Rather, it is more 
of a struggle, a struggle that is always going to be with us day in and 
day out and for every young person is, in a sense, a new battlefield, 
and victory is never final.
  We live, Mr. President, in a society where we want everything 
instant, quick--instant oatmeal, instant coffee, everything has to be 
resolved in 30 minutes on TV from beginning to end, everything has to 
happen quickly. That is how we live our lives.
  I think we have to understand and accept the fact it simply is not 
true in regard to our efforts in the drug area, that we have to hang in 
there, we have to stay in there, we have to talk about this problem and 
fight this problem day in and day out. The good news is we can, in 
fact, make a difference if we are willing to stay in there and if we 
are willing to have patience and if we are willing to persevere.
  Mr. President, we need to win this struggle, but to win this 
struggle, we need to be focused. We need leadership. We need leadership 
from the top. We need leadership all the way through the system. There 
are many things that, frankly, we need to do.
  We spend a lot of time debating what is more important: treatment, 
education, or law enforcement. The reality is, they are all important; 
we have to do them all. That is what the reality is. We have to have 
education. We have to have treatment. We have to have domestic law 
enforcement, and we also have to have drug interdiction that goes to 
the source and goes to the transit countries. We have to do all four, 
and we have to continue to do them day in and day out.
  Mr. President, in a sense, this is a tall order. It is difficult to 
accomplish even when we have the best of intentions. But if you turn 
away from this effort, as this administration has done for several 
years, if you really do not act like there is a drug problem, you send 
the wrong message to the American people, but particularly to the most 
impressionable, and that is our young people. You send them the message 
that drugs are really not that big a problem.
  My colleague from Georgia said it very well a moment ago. The most 
frightening statistic in all these polls we have seen published, all 
this data we have seen, is that consistently as drug use goes up, the 
fear of drugs is going down, and there is a relationship--I should say 
an inverse relationship--between those two. Part of that lack of fear 
is maybe lack of experience. That is what we deal with when we deal 
with young people, a lack of experience. But part of it also is that 
the message has not been reinforced as it has to be time after time 
after time after time. That is what, frankly, we need the President of 
the United States to do.
  So, Mr. President, I ask that we recommit ourselves, from the 
President on down, to this antidrug effort, understanding that it is a 
long fight, it is a struggle, and that we are going to have to hang in 
there to get the job done.
  I, again, thank my colleague from Georgia for taking time on the 
Senate floor today. It is an appropriate forum for a very, very 
critical issue that we need to be dealing with in this country. I thank 
the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator from Ohio has expired.
  The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Ohio. I know 
that he is the father of a very large family and that there are many 
teenagers in that family, and this has to be an issue of personal 
concern to any parent, including the Senator from Ohio.

  Mr. President, I would like to, if I can, read from an article that 
appeared in the Washington Post this past Friday, August 30. It is an 
article about the military role in the drug war, which is now being 
debated, and ought to be, because I often say that we suffer more 
casualties annually in the drug war than we did during the entirety of 
the Vietnam war. If you add up the collateral damage, the personal 
damage, it is staggering.
  But to read from this article, not in its entirety, it says:

       It was the last Republican President, George Bush, who in 
     1989 began enlisting military forces in regular patrols of 
     Caribbean trafficking routes. But 4 years later, the Clinton 
     administration reduced the number of planes and ships 
     monitoring narcotics transit zones as a Democratic Congress 
     slashed counterdrug funds. The move came in part of a shift 
     in U.S. strategy that placed less emphasis on interdicting 
     shipments into the United States and more on assisting

[[Page S9686]]

     South American countries where the narcotics are produced. 
     Pentagon spending on antidrug actions dropped about 27 
     percent in 1993, from $1.1 billion to $800 million, and has 
     remained at about that level since.

  The point I am making here, Mr. President, is that, if I can take one 
exception with the Senator from Ohio, I don't believe our situation is 
one of neglect, but rather one of conscious decisions made to dismantle 
much of the interdiction force, just as this article has documented.

       The impact of the change has been argued ever since. 
     Cocaine seizures in the transit zone between the United 
     States and South American borders declined 47 percent between 
     1992 an 1995.

  That is by half.

       A General Accounting Office report recently criticized 
     interdiction activities as inadequately planned and staffed.

  The Senator from Texas spoke to the downsizing of the efforts at 
interdiction. The article says:

       A study for the White House last year by EBR, Inc., a 
     Virginia research firm, estimated that restoring $500 million 
     in military assets to blocking Caribbean routes could lower--

  Lower--

     the traffickers' success rate in shipping cocaine from 69 to 
     53 percent. But the estimate carried a high degree of 
     uncertainty and the administration--

  The White House--

     concluded the possible gain wasn't worth the cost.

  My point here is that the administration made specific changes in 
policy: closed the drug czar's office, cut interdiction in half, 
lowered military assets across the board.
  And now, Mr. President, the results are coming in. The data by the 
administration itself has ratified what we have been saying for well 
over a year: that drug use among our youngsters and teenagers is 
skyrocketing.
  I was just quoting from the Washington Post.
  Here is another periodical less known. This is called the Gwinnett 
Daily Post, which is in a county north of Atlanta. And they recently 
published an article in our own State. This is just a suburban 
newspaper and probably will not go down in the chronicles of policy 
setting.
  But, Mr. President, it is sort of interesting. I picked this up over 
the weekend scanning through clippings. It is written by Stacey Kelley, 
a staff writer for the Gwinnett Daily Post. But what she chronicles 
here is very significant. It says, ``The number of drug related cases 
handled by the Gwinnett County Juvenile Court has increased 738 percent 
since 1992, * * * '' Mr. President, I will repeat that: 738 percent in 
36 months. `` * * * with the most common cases involving marijuana and 
LSD, according to court records.'' And in 1992 the juvenile court 
handled 21 cases of drug-related crimes involving juveniles, kids. In 
1995, 3 years later, that figure had increased to 176.
  As I said to community leaders across my State--I would say it 
anywhere in the Nation--do not think your community is not experiencing 
these kinds of data because they are. It is everywhere. There is nobody 
free of this new epidemic. Nobody is free from this. Juvenile court 
deals with minors 16 years of age and under. Remember, Mr. President, a 
moment ago I said this epidemic is with a different-aged audience, aged 
8-13 when they are getting ensnared in this. And this documents it. You 
could document this anywhere you go in the country.
  We have been joined by the distinguished Senator from Idaho. I am 
going to call on him in just a moment.
  If I might read one other paragraph in this Gwinnett Daily Post. It 
says:

       Most of the drug cases that end up there [in juvenile 
     court] are cases of drug possession. Jackie White, Juvenile 
     Court Administrator, said it is rare to see a juvenile 
     charged with distributing drugs.
       ``Drug cases are growing at a rate higher than all our 
     delinquent cases,'' White said. Delinquent cases are those 
     presented in Juvenile Court which involve criminal charges. 
     In 1992, the Gwinnett court had 2,275 delinquent cases, and 
     in 1995, 2,740 cases.

  If you had these kinds of records in county after county across the 
country, and if you talked to local sheriffs or police officers, people 
that deal with juvenile courts, youth detention, they would all tell 
you the same thing. This is a massive epidemic. This is affecting a 
younger and younger audience, and the consequences are stunning and 
staggering.
  Mr. President, I yield up to 10 minutes to the distinguished Senator 
who joins us from Idaho.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho is recognized for 10 
minutes.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, thank you very much.
  Let me express my appreciation to the Senator from Georgia for 
bringing about this special order in which we could discuss a topic 
that has just now again burst upon the scene, at least from the 
standpoint of us having new figures and statistics to be concerned 
about. But many of us have recognized that it has been going on for 
some time in a way that this administration and others have just either 
ignored it or failed to address it.
  As I came to the floor this afternoon, my friend from Georgia was 
talking about national statistics on teenage drug abuse versus local 
statistics and that national averages probably mean local averages if 
you take a close look at the problem, because I have a feeling that 
many of us have the habit of saying, well, gee, that really does sound 
bad and certainly the consequence for younger Americans is tragic but 
that really is not going on in my backyard. I think in a State like 
Idaho that remains relatively rural and, at least from the standpoint 
of metropolitan areas has few, that would be the case with many of my 
friends and associates in Idaho.

  Let me start my comments this afternoon by talking about my home 
State of Idaho because what we are now finding in our checking of 
statistics with law enforcement is that the national trends are Idaho's 
trends. I think that is probably true across the Nation.
  In the last 4 years we have seen a dramatic reversal in the trends 
that we saw in the late 1980's and early 1990's in my home State of 
Idaho according to the Idaho Statistical Analysis Center. Juvenile drug 
arrests have jumped from a 9 percent decrease--a 9-percent decrease in 
1991--to a 69-percent increase in 1995, an absolute flip-flop of the 
record. Why is it going on?
  Juvenile drug arrests in Idaho are now growing at a faster rate than 
adult drug arrests. Let me repeat that. Juvenile drug arrests in Idaho 
are growing at a faster rate than adult drug arrests. Teens are 
experiencing drugs at younger and younger ages. And 7.1 percent of the 
ninth grade females and 1.5 percent of the 12th grade females used 
marijuana for the first time before the age of 13 in Idaho. And those 
are the statistics that ought to be alarming all of us because those 
are the same kinds of statistics that we have had reported to us by the 
substance abuse and medical health services administration in their 
statistics of a few weeks ago.
  Illicit drug use among youth doubling since 1992. Marijuana use among 
12- and 13-year-olds more than doubled since 1992, and tripling among 
14- to 15-year-olds. Those are the national statistics, Mr. President. 
And yet those are the same statistics of Idaho, a State of about 
1,300,000 people.
  Cocaine, crack, heroin, LSD use among teenagers is expected to soon 
rival the highest rates of the 1970's. Why? What has changed? What in 
America is different in 1995 and 1996 than was existing in 1990, in 
1988, in 1987 when we actually saw peaks and then declines in the use 
of some of these substances by our teenaged population? I think one 
thing has changed. And while over the last several years I have been 
unwilling to be bold in talking about it, clearly I think it is time to 
talk about it.
  I remember because I was here in the early 1980's when Nancy Reagan 
said, ``Just say no.'' There were a lot of the press and a lot of the 
liberal critics that said, ``Are you kidding me? Just say no? We have 
to have control. We have got to have institutional programs. You can't 
just argue with teenage America that they ought to just say no.''
  But what Nancy Reagan knew as a mother and what a lot of citizens 
know in our country, that one of the greatest areas of control is when 
national leaders speak out and when in most instances there is the kind 
of internal peer pressure that really does have an impact. And that 
kind of national leadership, certainly that kind of internal peer 
pressure that is produced as a product of national leadership has been 
relatively nonexistent since the early 1990's at a time when our 
President

[[Page S9687]]

openly admits he once smoked marijuana, at a time when his press 
secretary says, ``Well, yes, of course I did. And I've used it from 
time to time.'' In other words, what I am saying is, a national 
leadership with a relatively cavalier attitude that just simply says, 
``oh, so what.'' Well, the ``oh, so what'' is very simple. The ``oh, so 
what'' is teenage America listening to our national leaders with a tone 
that it does not really make any difference, that there is not really a 
problem there, that somehow it is OK.
  I am not suggesting in any sense that our President has openly said 
that. But what I am suggesting is that a White House that cannot get 
security clearances because of its current drug use, a White House 
whose press secretary says ``so what'' a President who says, ``My only 
defense against a past action is that I really didn't inhale,'' I am 
sorry, that is a leadership speaking out. That is our national icon, 
and the President of the United States is less than caring and less 
than leading on this issue.

  What remains today as the greater deterrent? A statement that was 
made in the early 1980's by a lady who was openly ridiculed for making 
it, ``Just say no.'' That ``just say no'' amongst teenagers today, with 
high school counselors and those who associate in peer-type 
organizations with young Americans is the strongest defense today 
against the use of illegal drugs or substance abuse. Say no, stand up, 
be an individual, speak out. But most importantly, say no. Say no for 
yourself and no for your peers.
  What is the rest of the story beyond that, beyond tone setting, 
beyond leadership? We could pour billions of dollars into this, and we 
should put more into it. We tried to put more into it. As you know, the 
Clinton Justice Department issued a study recommending a reduction in 
mandatory minimum drug sentences, and the Clinton administration cut 
355 DEA agents and 102 persons from the Justice Department's crime drug 
enforcement task force, and the Clinton administration cut the Coast 
Guard drug interdiction budget by $14.6 billion. I could go on and on 
and on. We do need that side of it. We must have that side of it to 
stem the flow, to deter that kind of activity. Put all of that 
together, and this Congress will work hard to get it back on line.
  But well beyond that, Mr. President, remains the fundamental 
responsibility that our national leadership must speak out that this is 
no longer something that you shrug and grin and walk away from because 
those who you put around you cannot meet the test, cannot meet the 
standard, are violating the law by their action behind the scenes. That 
is something that is unacceptable in this country.
  We reap the whirlwind of inaction. We reap the whirlwind amongst our 
teenagers for a failure on the part of our leadership to clearly and 
openly stand out in opposition to this kind of illegal and harmful 
activity. We all know what it can mean when drug abuse starts, when 
substance abuse begins. One action can lead to another. The use of 
marijuana oftentimes--by the admission of those who have used it--can 
lead to the use of harder drugs. That can lead to criminal activity 
beyond the act itself. Those are the kind of things that we need to 
worry about.
  Why now, then, do the criminologists of this country, why, now, do 
the people who study our demographics say to us that as a society we 
need to prepare for something that we are institutionally unprepared to 
handle? That in the coming decade, starting now, we can anticipate a 
teenage and juvenile crime wave of the kind this country has never 
seen. That is the whirlwind we reap because we have failed to be 
responsive in the kind of leadership necessary to deal with the current 
statistics, the kind that we now see today, be they national or in my 
State of Idaho or any other State in the Nation.
  This is an issue that will not go away. It is clearly an issue that 
this administration and that this Congress has to redress and move 
forward on. I want to thank my colleague, the Senator from Georgia, for 
his willingness to take this kind of leadership. What I have said today 
and what he is saying is not easy to say. I do not want to be a 
condemner. I want to be a supporter. I want to build up. In this area, 
clearly, amongst all other areas, we would like to be proud of the 
statistics that would be positive for our young people. That 
is nonexistent in this area today. We must deal with it. I hope we deal 
with it aggressively.

  Again, it will not come by throwing money at it. It must come by a 
national conscience. It must come by knowing the difference between 
right and wrong. It must come from all of us as leaders here in the 
Senate and in the very White House that I have spoken of. That is the 
kind of leadership that we must have if we are going to deal with this 
issue and convince the young of our country that their actions must be 
changed for themselves and for their future.
  I thank my colleague and yield back the time.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Idaho. He has 
reinforced several points that are worth talking about a little more.
  I am convinced that most parents, until very recently, did not 
realize that we are in a new epidemic. I think they had heard year 
after year that drug use amongst our teenagers was falling. It did from 
1980 to 1992. It was cut in half, which should be a sign of optimism 
for us as a people because it means that you can win this battle.
  As the Senator from Ohio said earlier, it is a long struggle. It will 
never be over. But we can change the behavior and relationship of 
teenagers to drugs.
  What we are doing here today is something that has to reverberate all 
across the country. That is that we have to warn our parents that once 
again their children are at grave risk of being embroiled in this 
epidemic.
  The second point that the Senator from Idaho makes that I think is 
very important is that if you think as a parent or a policymaker that 
this problem is an inner city ghetto problem, that it is just in 
poverty zones across our country, you are making a grave, grave 
mistake.
  I do not care where you go in this country, you are going to find 
data like we have been hearing all afternoon. There is going to be more 
action in the juvenile court. There will be more action among law 
enforcement officials and teenagers.
  The article, which I will return to in a minute--the Gwinnett Daily 
Post is in one of the largest suburban counties in our country, just 
outside of Atlanta. In rural and inner city and suburban communities it 
was consistent. It did not matter where you went or what the 
sociostrata of the community was. It did not matter. This is the kind 
of data that we were finding in every kind of community. No one is 
exempt from this. Everybody better have that yellow light on in their 
home. Every church needs to rethink what it is doing about this 
problem. Every business leader needs to be thinking about what is 
happening with the colleagues in that business. If you think that you 
do not need a drug-free workplace program, you are making a mistake.
  I was talking to an executive of a substantial company in Augusta, 
GA. They make water cups. It has been a very long success story. They 
bought some facilities and they doubled their production. All of a 
sudden, Mr. President, there was theft of petty items, wallets, and 
purses. Then suddenly more and more material was missing.
  They called in outside consultants and they said, ``We think you have 
a drug problem.'' They said ``could not'' then. They resisted it. 
Finally, they hired an outside consultant, went to an undercover agent 
and, indeed, discovered a drug ring in the company, robbing it of its 
production costs and much, much productivity and many, many funds. It 
was difficult to correct, but they corrected it.
  The point I am making, Mr. President, is that any business, any 
family, any church, any community--it doesn't matter where --better 
have the wake-up bell on full. This is an epidemic, and it is in our 
backyard and our front yard.
  Now, it also means you are talking about a classmate, a brother, or a 
sister. Sometimes we lose the proportions of this when we talk about 
numbers, such as 178 percent, 141 percent, 2 million people. Just 
remember, Mr. President, that every one of those numbers is a personal 
tragedy, and the tragedy goes far beyond the person that has been 
embroiled in the use of drugs. It is going to affect everybody around 
them--their family, their workplace, their school, their church.

[[Page S9688]]

  Mr. President, about 4 months ago, I guess, I visited a youth 
development center. I know the chair, along with all of us, is 
constantly visiting places and trying to understand how they operate 
and work. Sometimes you are never quite prepared. You go to so many 
meetings like that, and you never really prepare yourself for them. The 
poignancy of them hits you cold in the face.
  In this youth development center, I met around 12 young females. 
Their average age was 14 to 16. They agreed to come and talk to me 
about what happened to them. I thought that was pretty courageous. One 
by one, they walked around, and they represented every walk of life, 
every income level, the mix of America. And they were there for 
attempted murder, assault and battery, auto theft, you name it. You can 
look at these groups of innocent faces and wonder how in the world this 
could happen. In a word: drugs.
  Every one of them had come there through a journey of drugs. Drugs 
had caused them to lose control of their lives. Three of them said that 
if they had not been arrested, they would be dead. I asked them, ``What 
would you say to the youth of the country if you could speak to them?'' 
I wish we could have filmed this and have every teenager in our country 
hear them talk.
  Mr. President, they said, ``Don't do it. Do not do it.'' No. 2, they 
said, ``You think that you can control these drugs, and you are wrong. 
The drugs will take over.'' No. 3, they said, ``Never, ever use drugs 
to enter a peer group or to be a part of it. If somebody wants you to 
use drugs to be their friend, they are not your friend.''
  I asked each of them, ``Well, how did you get started on this, and 
how old were you?'' Every one of them got into drugs between the ages 
of 8 and 11. Every one of them said drugs are everywhere. There was no 
problem at all getting them. And every one of them acknowledged that 
their lives would never be the same if they were lucky enough to get 
over it. The damage to their families, the damage to their dreams, the 
damage to their hopes and aspirations had in much part already 
occurred. I wish every youngster could have heard that message.
  Now, the Senator from Idaho was talking about message. In the article 
I just read from the Post, we talked about the fact that we had lowered 
interdiction budgets. We have heard various figures about shutting down 
the drug czar's office. Yes, all of those things have had an affect and 
are the underlying reason for this change of attitude among teenagers. 
But, in my judgment, the single most profound change that has occurred 
is in the message, what these very vulnerable citizens, these 
youngsters aged 8 to 13, are hearing. I think everybody admits that the 
Hollywood message is very, very disruptive, the glorification of drug 
use. It is a great debate in our Nation.

  The Senator from Texas talked about the role models that our great 
sports heroes are to a very vulnerable population. And I believe that 
professional athletics is going to have to step back and take a look at 
what their contribution is here. Everywhere I went, somebody in the 
audience would stand up and say, ``Well, what are we going to do about 
the fact that a national athlete, a $20 million baby, gets involved in 
drugs, and there is nothing that really happens about it?'' What does 
that say to these girls, to these 8 to 12-year olds, Mr. President?
  Mr. President, on June 16, 1992, on MTV, a youth-driven 
communications system, the questioner asked the President of the United 
States, ``If you had it to do over again, would you inhale?'' Candidate 
Clinton: ``Sure, if I could. I tried before.'' [Laughter.]
  Mr. President, the message is having a more profound affect on what 
our young people think about drugs than probably all these other assets 
we are talking about. I don't mean to suggest that we don't need to get 
that drug czar's office back in line. I think the selection of General 
McCaffrey is an excellent one. I wish he had been there all along. I 
wish we weren't confronted with this epidemic. But the most profound 
affect is what our leaders are saying to the country about drug use. 
This cavalier response, and the fact that there are contemporary 
employees of the White House who have recently broken the law and have 
engaged in drug use, the remarks by the press office about it, the 
remarks that were made by the first Surgeon General of this 
administration flirting with legalization, that message races through 
the country and very quickly sanctions, becomes nonthreatening to this 
very, very young target of the drug cartels.
  That is why I said earlier that we need a wake-up call at every level 
including the White House. All of us need to be engaged in putting that 
question mark in the head of every young person in America. This stuff 
is dangerous. This stuff is life altering. This will have a profound 
effect on you, your family, and your future. If that message begins to 
resonate, it will become the first line of defense in this struggle 
that we have with this new national epidemic. Message: What we say and 
how we act influences--always has and always will--the children of any 
country and any nation.
  Mr. President, we have been joined by my colleague from Texas. I 
yield up to 10 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Texas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized for 10 
minutes.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Thank you, Mr. President, and I thank the Senator 
from Georgia for starting off after Labor Day on this very important 
issue.
  Many of us were stunned when the first report came out that showed 
the enormous leap in drug use and drug abuse in this country in the 
last 3 years. We knew that it was a problem. But I do not think we 
realized how big a problem this has become. In fact, I was privileged 
to be able to see Mrs. Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, who started the 
``just say no'' whole effort when she was the First Lady of this 
country. And I think she was a leader. She was prophetic.
  I remember that people sort of ridiculed her in a way when she 
started the ``just say no'' program. They sort of acted like, oh, you 
know--that really was not cool. Well, it was proven by all of the 
studies that in fact her willingness to stand up and say we need to go 
out into our schools and tell our young people to just say no was in 
fact very effective because it started the thinking of our young 
people--that they did not have to be with their peers. They did not 
have to be cool just because their peers would ridicule people who just 
said no to drugs. In fact, it worked because she started the thinking 
process in their minds. And the studies showed that between 1985 and 
1992 drug use did go down.
  I remember the ads on television of some of our sports stars talking 
about the importance of keeping your body clean. That sold to our young 
people. But then when President Clinton came into office and his 
administration, he slashed the Office of Drug Control Policy from 147 
people to 25 people. There was not a focus on this very important 
issue. So the gains that were won during those earlier years went by 
the wayside.
  In the study that came out just recently in September 1995--the 
National Household Survey on Drug Abuse from the U.S. Department of 
Health and Human Services--said that since 1992 marijuana use among 
young people has increased an average of 50 percent. Marijuana use 
jumped 137 percent among 12- to 13-year olds since 1992, and 200 
percent among 14- and 15-year olds.
  Mr. President, we used to worry about our high school kids. And we 
still need to worry about our high school kids. We are talking junior 
high and even elementary schoolchildren who are now being introduced to 
marijuana and other kinds of drugs. And worse yet, of course, they are 
being introduced to it by their peers because the drug dealers have 
learned that if they can get a juvenile to do this crime that the 
juvenile will not be subject to the same penalties.
  So, Mr. President, it is going to take a concerted effort by the 
President with his leadership, and by the Congress standing with the 
President and saying enough is enough. Just say no makes a lot more 
sense than just say nothing. We must not let a whole generation of our 
young people think that we do not care about their minds and their 
futures and their potential. We cannot let that happen, Mr. President. 
We have to stand up and say we are going to do something about this and 
we are going to take it from every level.

[[Page S9689]]

  Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who is the new drug czar, is well aware of 
this. I think he is a man who can handle this issue. He, too, believes 
that having an annual drug awareness day is not enough for our young 
people; that we must show how serious we are by stopping drugs at our 
borders, by having education efforts, by having counseling efforts, by 
having peer groups work with troubled youth. And he is going to try to 
turn this around. But it is going to take more than just one person. It 
is going to take all of us working together to try to turn back this 
terrible increase that we are seeing. The national drug control 
strategy should interdict drugs in Latin America and at our borders.
  I am particularly hit by this because I have seen in my State what is 
happening with the drugs coming from South America through Mexico and 
right into Texas as well as New Mexico, Arizona, and California. But I 
happen to be closer to it because my own ranchers are devastated by 
what they are seeing. And they are frankly in a war with no defenses. 
We have common ranchers who are now meeting drug warlords with 
automatic weapons. And if a rancher objects to a drug lord coming 
across his or her property along the border they will be shot down. It 
has happened. They are so scared and so defenseless that the worst of 
all things is now happening. They are having to sell their property. 
Who do you think is giving them 10 times the worth? The drug dealers. 
They are the only ones who can afford it.
  So we are seeing drug dealers buying up the lands in remote parts of 
our borders so that they will have a free trail right up through South 
America through Mexico and into the United States. Mr. President, we 
cannot let this happen. This is a war and we must treat it as a war. If 
they had chemical weapons coming across our borders we would have an 
all-out alert. We would declare a war. Well, Mr. President, this is 
chemical weaponry. Drugs are chemical weapons that are ruining the 
people, and especially the young people of our country.
  So, Mr. President, we must get serious about this. I have seen it 
firsthand. We must increase the number of Border Patrol agents. We must 
use all the technology that we have available that we are not now 
using. We have better technology than we are using. A drug enforcer can 
sit in an office and survey for 25 miles and see movement. But we do 
not have the up-to-date technology on our borders that is available to 
us in this country right now, and we have to do something about that. 
We have to stop the money laundering.
  I was talking to a Border Patrol agent who said these people are 
getting so bold that they stopped a man walking down the streets of one 
of our border cities with a suitcase, dragging the suitcase along. And 
when they stopped the man and opened the suitcase there was $3 million 
in cash. That is incredible--that people would be dragging a suitcase 
with $3 million of cash down the main street of a border community 
right here in our own country because that money was headed right back 
into the mainstream of America. That was clearly drug money.
  So they think they can get by with this--that they would be so bold. 
Well, we have to tell them that the time has come and we are not going 
to allow the money laundering. We are not going to allow the buying up 
of our property. We are not going to allow people to just come into our 
country with chemical weapons against our young people.
  We cannot let that happen. We are going to have to come at this from 
all angles.
  I thank the Senator from Georgia for working with us to make sure 
that the people of this country know the seriousness of this issue and 
to let the people of this country know that Congress is going to get 
serious about it. We have to be able to work with the President to take 
control of this cancer on our society.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator from Texas has 
expired.
  The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas 
particularly for the personal observations with regard to the property. 
I have heard of that, but I have never heard it so vividly described as 
the Senator from Texas just revealed, an unbelievable condition in her 
State. I appreciate her bringing that to our attention.
  I yield up to 7 minutes to the Senator from Missouri.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri is recognized for 7 
minutes.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I thank my good friend and colleague from 
Georgia for the time. I join with him in thanking our colleague from 
Texas, Senator Hutchison, for describing the scope of the problem.
  We have all seen the numbers in recent surveys, the percentage of 
adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 who admit to using drugs 
within the last month. That increase has gone from 5.3 percent in 1992 
to 10.9 percent in 1995. The statistics from these surveys show that 
the use of LSD and hallucinogens is up anywhere from 183 percent, 
cocaine up 166 percent, marijuana use up 144 percent. But there are 
other factors that give us a better idea of the pervasiveness and the 
impact that drugs are having in our country. When the Senator from 
Texas tells about the Texas border and other places where ranchers are 
threatened by drug lords--and we have heard the same thing from the 
Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Domenici], talking about how the drug 
efforts are really moving a foreign, hostile nation into our borders--
we ought to be seriously concerned; the problems are very acute in the 
border areas.
  There are some other statistics that are very alarming away from the 
borders, in the heartland of the United States. In the August 21 
edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, we had the very frightening 
news that emergencies in the medical care units in St. Louis were up an 
astounding amount as it relates to drugs. The overall increase in drug-
related emergencies nationally has gone up significantly, but St. Louis 
for one had an even greater increase. Since 1992, heroin-related 
emergencies are up 111 percent in St. Louis hospitals and medical care 
facilities. That is even worse than the national rate, which is up 58 
percent. We are talking about an explosion of emergencies linked to 
heroin.
  Now they say: Oh, well, it may not all be exactly statistically 
related to the increase in drug use. It may be some bad heroin.
  When you look at the numbers nationwide and you see these 
emergencies, these are not people responding to a survey about whom we 
may question their veracity. These are people who are hauled in in 
serious condition to an emergency room. They are not deciding whether 
or not to honestly answer a question of a survey. They are hoping to 
start breathing again.

  Cocaine-linked emergencies were up 38 percent in St. Louis in the 
last 4 years. They are up 19 percent nationwide. Marijuana-related 
emergencies increased 316 percent in St. Louis in the last 4 years.
  There is no question, from whatever statistics you use, whether you 
listen to the Senator from Texas talk about the problems of property 
being taken over on the Texas-New Mexico-Arizona borders, whether you 
read the general national statistics that drug use is up, whether you 
take a look at the hospital and emergency-room-related emergencies, we 
see a very clear pattern that drug use is up, the abuse of drugs is up, 
and the problem for our society is getting worse, not better.
  I believe that the Clinton administration has had countless failures 
in this area, and they have even taken actions which might be conducive 
to an atmosphere of permissiveness. The former Surgeon General, as has 
been pointed out here before, advocated legalization of many drugs and 
also advocated needle exchange programs for heroin addicts.
  I served as the ranking member on the Treasury-Postal Appropriations 
Committee and wondered why, in 1993, there was so much of a problem in 
getting White House personnel security clearances. Well, it has come 
out that some of the officials in the White House have had recent drug 
use and among the drugs used were crack, powdered cocaine, and 
hallucinogens. The administration proposed and we opposed decimating 
the Office of National Drug Policy. But they were bringing into the 
White House people who used drugs in recent times.
  We saw significant cuts in the funding for the efforts against drug 
importation. We saw cuts across the board.

[[Page S9690]]

 We saw Customs cut significantly in terms of the efforts. The DEA has 
been cut by 227 agents. The FBI had proposed cuts of significance. All 
of these areas were where we are fighting on the front line against the 
importation, the trafficking and the use of drugs through law 
enforcement efforts. I think a primary goal of drug control policy must 
be to reduce the amount of cocaine entering the United States. 
Interdiction programs target source countries in the transit zone, 
about 2 million square miles between the United States and South 
American borders, including Central America, Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and 
the Caribbean Islands. About 780 metric tons of cocaine are produced 
each year in South America, and about 30 percent is shipped through the 
Caribbean into the United States, Puerto Rico, and Mexico.
  Funding for interdiction declined from $1 billion in 1992 to $569 
million in fiscal year 1995. There was no funding increase in source-
country activities. So the overall funding was decreased by nearly 
half. As a result, cocaine seizures are down from 70,000 kilograms in 
1992 to 37,000 kilograms in 1995. DOD funding for interdiction is down. 
Coast Guard funding for drug interdiction is down.
  I think the executive branch needs to develop a plan to implement a 
national interdiction strategy. Agencies have their own plans, but they 
need the coordination of the ONDP. We need to get serious once again 
about the war on drugs.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. I know our time has expired. I ask unanimous consent 
for 2 minutes just to wrap up this session.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COVERDELL. I thank the Senator from Missouri. I think he has 
reinforced everything we have been saying all afternoon. It does not 
matter what community you are in, whether St. Louis or Gwinnett County, 
GA, we are in the midst of a new epidemic.
  Just to summarize, major policy with regard to the management of the 
drug issue in the United States has been changed. The message has been 
either nonexistent or acquiescent, and as a result we have produced 
headlines like the Marietta Daily Journal, ``Georgia Crime Rate Reaches 
New High. Juveniles Are More Apt To Break the Law.'' Or, in the now 
famous Gwinnett Daily Post, ``Juvenile Drug Cases Up 738 Percent Over 
1992.''
  The first wake-up call has to be in our communities. Every 
policymaker has to get the message right. Drugs are not good and drugs 
will do enormous damage. Teenagers, do not use it. Listen to those 
little ladies, those friends in the Macon Youth Development Center, 
when they said: ``Don't use drugs. Don't think you can control them. 
Never use drugs to be a part of a clique, a group. Just say no.''
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________