[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 143 (Wednesday, October 22, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H9002-H9004]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE WAR ON DRUGS IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Brady). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. Speaker, my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. Peterson] 
and I would like to carry on a little bit of this discussion on drug 
use in America. As I mentioned just previously, we have seen in my 
state of South Dakota drug use rise in a dramatic way. The number of 
arrests has almost tripled in the last four years' time.
  I want to draw particular attention to one instance that I was 
recently informed about, which is a good example of this. In July of 
1995, drug agents in Lincoln County, South Dakota, got warrants to 
search a home in the City of Worthing.
  Now, Worthing is not what you would call a hot bed of criminal 
activity. It had a population of 371, but even Worthing, South Dakota, 
is not immune to the problem of drugs.
  When agents entered the home they found what you might expect to find 
in any home around this country, and that is someone cooking. The only 
difference was this person was using a recipe from something called the 
Anarchist Cookbook. He was not cooking with food, he was cooking with 
chemicals. When agents entered that home in Worthing, a community of 
371 people, they found the beginnings of a methamphetamine lab. The man 
in the home had a wide array of chemicals spread out, and he was trying 
various combinations, trying to come up with the perfect recipe to cook 
up a good batch of meth.
  Well, eventually he did find the right recipe. I am happy to report, 
thanks to South Dakota law enforcement agencies, he is now serving a 
second stint in the South Dakota State Penitentiary. But it goes to 
show that no city, no matter how large or how small, is immune from the 
problem of drugs.
  That does not mean our communities cannot fight back. There are 
important initiatives going on all over our State, I believe all over 
this country, that are attempting to address this important problem in 
ways that are very practical, very realistic, and I think get at the 
heart and the core of what the problem is.
  If you drive into South Dakota today, you will see when you arrive on 
the interstate one of 14 different billboards. It says ``Warning: If 
you bring illegal drugs into South Dakota, plan to stay a long, long 
time.'' It looks something like this, but you will see it anyplace you 
enter our state.
  These signs are not the result of some piece of Federal legislation, 
they are not the result of some Federal grant or program. Every 
billboard is sponsored by a local business. No tax dollars are used. It 
is an effort coordinated with the state, with local businesses and the 
cooperation of the private sector, to keep drugs out of our states and 
out of our communities.
  South Dakota is doing other things as well, particularly in the area 
of our schools. In the largest city in our state, police officers are 
not only fighting drugs from the police department. They are fighting 
the war from the hallways of the city's high schools.
  Each high school has its own full-time police officer. Each officer 
has an office at the school. When they walk their beat, they are 
walking past lockers, past the gymnasium, into the school parking lot, 
and back through the cafeteria.
  The students do not just see the cops when the law is broken. They 
see officers every day under all kinds of circumstances in the hallways 
at their schools. These officers are forming bonds with kids, and kids 
are learning the very fundamental fact that cops are not bad people.
  These officers are also able to keep an eye on drug traffic in the 
schools while keeping an eye on the kids. They talk to students, they 
talk to parents, they talk to teachers, and they all work together to 
keep our schools drug free.
  People in South Dakota are working at every level to fight the war on 
drugs. Not long ago a 15 year old came to the attention of the South 
Dakota Juvenile System. She was running away from home, skipping 
school, using drugs and drinking.
  But instead of just locking her up and then releasing her a few hours 
later, the State of South Dakota tried a new and novel approach. She 
was put in a treatment and counseling program. Shortly thereafter, she 
discovered she was pregnant. Counselors worked with her and with her 
family to help her quit drinking and taking drugs. She was then placed 
in a long-term counseling program. She had her baby and went on to 
live, with the supportive family members, who helped her through the 
recovery and counseling stages of the process. She went back to school 
and graduated.
  Recently she and her baby showed up at the South Dakota Division of 
Alcohol and Drug Abuse to thank those very people for helping her to 
get her life back on track.
  These people are trying new programs which bring judges, police 
officers, teachers, parents and problem children together to deal with 
the problem when it starts. Hopefully this young woman will go on to 
lead a productive and fulfilling life. The drug

[[Page H9003]]

war, I think we all have to keep in mind, is not going to be an easy 
war to win. But by bringing parents and children and communities 
together, we can work to keep drugs out of our communities and out of 
our children's lives.
  I might also add that I think it is important and it has been 
mentioned previously this evening, that we have to somehow get the 
message through to our children before they make the decision to try 
and experiment with drugs. To do that, I think we have to let parents 
be parents and give them more time to spend with their kids.
  We are working in a very intensive and conscious and deliberate way 
in this body as the Republican leadership to allow parents in this 
country to keep more of what they earn, so they do not spend all their 
time working three or four jobs, so they have more quality time to 
spend with their kids.
  We tried to provide education tax incentives so that young people 
today will see hope and an opportunity to go to college, to go on, to 
continue their education and lead productive lives. Ultimately the best 
deterrent that we have for drug use in this country is the family. It 
is the family more than anything else, that helps us shape and define 
the values of our culture and of the next generation.
  I believe, we need to continue to work at that level, in families, in 
churches, in communities with individuals, law enforcement people, 
working together, to try and discourage kids from experimenting with 
drugs in the first place. I look at my two young girls who are seven 
and ten, and the temptations that are out there today are pervasive, 
and they are something that is an incredible pressure that I believe 
all our young people have to deal with in a way we did not when I was 
growing up.

  But even in our state of South Dakota we are seeing an increasing 
use. It is a problem which is drawing a considerable amount of 
attention all over this country, and I think that we need to look, 
again, into the areas that ultimately are going to be responsible for 
solving this problem, not some big government solution, but people 
working together in a constructive, practical, real way, that meets the 
needs of people where they are at.
  I appreciate again the opportunity to discuss this issue this 
evening. It is a very important one to me, being a father, a parent of 
young children, who are entering that age of their lives when they are 
going to be faced with these pressures, and I know my good friend from 
Pennsylvania, Mr. Peterson, feels very deeply about this. I would be 
happy at this point to yield to him.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, it is certainly, again, a 
privilege to say a few more things. I ran short of time here a while 
ago and didn't get to say some of the things I wanted to mention. I 
think one of the issues we face is that not all Americans, and 
especially in rural America, are willing to admit to the problem. I 
think everybody knows there is drug usage in our rural schools. I think 
everybody knows there is some drugs in our small towns. But I don't 
think they are willing to quite accept the immenseness of it, the 
gravity of it, how much of it is really going on there.
  We really have a population across America of people raised in the 
sixties, and some of those people have never stopped using drugs. So 
here we have families raising children where drug use has never ceased 
since the sixties. They have continued to use some form of illegal 
drugs because they are hooked, and they have not admitted that it is a 
problem in their lives. But it is.
  Last year, I visited a high school close to home, and was concerned 
about some information I had received about the availability of drugs 
within the block of the school, about the availability of drugs in the 
junior high school, and so when I made that visit, I questioned do you 
bring in dog teams, do you check lockers, do you really make sure that 
drugs are not kept here?
  I was told in Pennsylvania, you cannot do that. It is different State 
by State. We have had a recent court case in Pennsylvania that has 
somewhat put the fear in the hearts of administrators and school 
principles, that they will be sued if they do that.
  I am sort of an adventure type. I said I would get sued if it meant 
keeping drugs out of the school, making sure that every locker, you 
don't have to really search, you bring in a good dog and you will know 
if there are drugs in that school, what backpack they are in, what 
locker or desk they are in. That is just that easy. But that is not 
common practice in many schools.
  I think sometimes school boards are, again, and school 
administrations, are not willing to admit, I know last year when I 
questioned sixth and seventh grade having the problem equally to junior 
high and senior high, I was disputed with that. But then last year, 
several young people in sixth grade were caught with drugs and were 
arrested and were prosecuted.
  It is clear now. They are afraid of the ACLU. They are afraid of the 
legal community out there who is going to nail them. I think that is 
unfortunate. We somehow need to untie our superintendents', our 
administrators' hands, so they can take whatever means are necessary to 
make sure that weapons and drugs and stolen property is not being 
stored on school property.
  I think in some cases young people can harbor those things easier in 
a school where searches are not done and dog teams are not brought in 
than they can at home, and that is very unfortunate. It is interesting. 
I was talking to a lady at a restaurant that I stopped at to pick up 
something on the way to the airport the other day coming in to session 
this week, and she said to me she closed her private airport in a 
little town of 1,000. The reason she closed it was too many small 
planes were coming in and big cars and she didn't know who they were 
meeting them. It was a little grass strip in the country, but she 
allowed people to use it. It was a licensed, legal airport, long enough 
and in a good location. She closed that airport because she had a sense 
that drugs were being delivered there.
  They came in at the inappropriate times and they quickly sped away 
after they met the airplane and there were people who have since 
lobbied her that they sure miss that airport. With the small airports 
across America, it is very easy to fly a large amount of drugs into our 
communities very easily.
  The other problem that rural communities face, and I am again 
speaking in a Pennsylvania perspective, more than once as a State 
Senator I brought the State strike force, the narc units in, and more 
than once they told the local police they would hang around a while to 
appease the Senator, but they were going back to the urban-suburban 
areas where they were really fighting the war on drugs. They didn't 
want to be in rural America.
  I do not personally think in a lot of cases, small rural towns have 
the same ability. When you look at a small police force of 10 people, 
you cannot use them as narc agents. You cannot have them investigating 
in the school and places undercover with young people to find out or in 
the local pubs where drugs are often sold. You cannot have them, you 
have to have strangers, you have to have people who know what they are 
doing. It is a very dangerous business.
  So I think another area we need to take a hard look at is, does rural 
America have the same ability to fight back that urban-suburban America 
has. I think some people think it is their problem; it is not ours, but 
I want to tell you, I think drug use is almost as prevalent in rural 
America today as is in urban-suburban America. That is my own personal 
view from my own experiences as a parent, as a grandparent, and as a 
community leader before I was involved in State and Federal Government.
  It is an issue that I think we just have to start a war on drugs. We 
have never fought a war on drugs. We may have had a few skirmishes, a 
few arguments. We may have spent some resources, but when you look at 
how much resources, I will go back to something I was talking about 
earlier.
  In the first days of this administration, the President cut the drug 
czar's office by more than 80 percent and the administration cut DEA by 
227 agents. Total funding for drug interdiction in the Caribbean, that 
includes DOD, Coast Guard, Customs, DEA and the State, dropped by more 
than 40 percent from '92 to '95. However, the $1.6 billion the 
President recently requested for

[[Page H9004]]

interdiction is still less than the $2 billion spent by the previous 
administration in 1991.
  I guess I would like to come back and include in my comments that 
Congressmen need to speak out, State leaders need to speak out, and 
this administration needs to speak out. We need to have a crystal clear 
voice to America that drugs are bad.
  I know when I speak to youth groups, I tell them as straight as you 
can tell them, there is no upside to doing drugs; there is no win to 
doing drugs. It is a lose-lose-lose proposition.

                              {time}  2015

  Until we get that message to our young people, until they understand 
that that good feeling they have for a few moments, that they are going 
to end up with a brain that is sub-par, they are going to end up with 
all kinds of health problems, and the juvenile suicide rate in this 
country is very much related to drugs and the abuse of drugs and 
alcohol.
  I think we must always remember that the most abused drug in this 
country is alcohol. All of us have lost friends and loved ones to 
drugs, hard drugs, but we have lost many friends and associates to 
alcohol.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I would simply add 
that this is, again, an important subject, one on which I think most of 
us agree we need to do something, and the current approaches have not 
worked very effectively.
  Frankly, again, it is something where we need to work together. As 
the gentleman mentioned, I think, when he speaks to young people, one 
of the best jobs I have in this position is being able to talk to young 
people around this country about how important it is that they make 
decisions that are based upon something other than the temptation to 
use drugs.
  I think as we, again, debate this, we have an opportunity. We have to 
be role models from the top down. People who are in public life, 
athletes, everybody else, has a responsibility in our culture to try 
and help define the values that our young people adopt. They are very 
impressionable at that age.
  As I speak with young people in my State of South Dakota, that is 
something that is very important to me to be able to convey, a message 
that it is important that we establish a tone, set a tenor, where we 
discuss values, and where things like drug use are discouraged at a 
very early age, and we stop it at the point of decision. I think that 
is something that we have a very intense commitment to. I know the 
members of our class who have spoken here this evening are certainly 
interested in that subject.

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