Congressional Record, Volume 144 Issue 49 (Tuesday, April 28, 1998)

[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 49 (Tuesday, April 28, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H2415-H2421]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

SCOURGE OF ILLEGAL DRUGS AGAIN UNDER ATTACK

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is recognized
for 60 minutes.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Oklahoma is once again to
be commended for his leadership on this issue. There is no doubt that
the number one fundamental problem in this country is the breakdown of
character, the breakdown of the value system, the principled
foundations of this country and the resultant breakdown partly,
directly, the two things go in tandem, of families as well.
The number one outgrowth that we are seeing in this country is the
problem of drug abuse: drugs of all types, marijuana, cocaine, heroin,
alcohol, tobacco, but in particular what we have been focusing on is
this explosion among our youth of the narcotics, of marijuana, heroin,
cocaine, crack, methamphetamines and other artificial stimulants.
Tonight we are going to spend some time discussing this issue.
It is a relatively historic night. Tomorrow we are going to have our
first pieces of legislation, what will be a comprehensive multi-week,
hopefully multi-month, year and up to three years extended start of a
battle on drugs. We have done piecemeal legislation over the last few
years but we have not had the concentrated effort that we will see
starting as of tomorrow.
We have a needles bill in front of us tomorrow to ban the use of
giving free needles to heroin addicts with taxpayer dollars. We have in
the higher education bill an amendment relating to taking back student
loans if students abuse drugs while they are on a government subsidized
loan requiring them to go into treatment programs, and I have a second
amendment on drug testing. It is the start.
We are also having announcement of a major initiative and Republican
effort later this week. The number one person behind this is our
Speaker.

[[Page H2416]]

Speaker Newt Gingrich is committed to having an all-fronts war.
I am going to yield now to my friend the gentleman from Florida who
has been a leader in this. Many of us have been involved in this, not
just now but for many years. Congressman Mica and myself both were
staffers before we became Members of Congress. He was elected in the
class before I was, but he was also on the hill before I was working
over as Senate chief of staff. I also worked in the House and Senate
before I got elected to Congress. Both of us have had experience in
working with drug legislation before we were elected to Congress.
This is not a new issue. These things go in tides. Right now we are
at a high tide level again and we need to up our efforts. He is to be
commended for his leadership. I now yield to the gentleman from Florida
to fill us in on some of the battles that he has been watching, some of
the background, and particularly a lot of what has happened in Orlando
and Florida which has been at the epicenter of it, kind of backed off,
and now you have another wave, which is exactly what is happening in
this country.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I certainly thank him
for his leadership on the drug issue and also on so many other issues
before the Congress.
We do have the privilege of serving together on the Government Reform
and Oversight Committee and on the subcommittee that deals with our
national drug policy, and that is the Subcommittee on National
Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice. The gentleman
from Indiana has brought tremendous leadership and, again from his
tremendous experience both as a staffer and a Member of Congress and
someone who cares about this issue, cares about his constituents and
also is very compassionate towards what illegal narcotics are doing,
and drug abuse, to the children of our Nation.
Tonight I want to take a few minutes, if I may, and review a little
bit of the history of how we got ourselves into this situation. As the
gentleman from Indiana said, I was a staffer back in the early 1980s on
the U.S. Senate side working with Senator Hawkins from Florida. You
have also heard and understand, I think, that no State probably has
been more severely impacted historically by illegal narcotics
trafficking than the State of Florida.
When Senator Hawkins was elected, the streets of Miami were overrun
with illegal narcotics trafficking, we had unprecedented amounts of
illegal drugs coming in and transiting through Florida and into our
Nation, and for the first time we saw record drug abuse in our State
and Nation. The question was what should we do and what could we do at
that time.
We were fortunate to have the tremendous leadership of a new
President who brought a vision, who brought integrity, who brought
honesty, who brought vision to the White House. His job, and Senator
Hawkins and others who served in the new Senate majority at that time,
was to get a handle on this situation. In fact they did, even joined by
the First Lady who initiated a program of saying ``Just Say No.''
I do remember and recall how the new Republican majority in the
Senate began an Andean strategy. As a staffer I helped develop the
certification law that requires that countries that get United States
foreign assistance or trade assistance or financial assistance are
certified each year for their eligibility for United States largesse by
a review of their efforts to eradicate drug trafficking and illegal
narcotics. That was another product of that era. There was tough
enforcement.
What we saw in the 1980s under the Reagan Administration and the Bush
Administration, I am not sure if this will show up to my colleagues
watching C-SPAN, but in fact teenage drug use declined dramatically in
the early 1980s, and not until 1992-1993 did we see that trend reverse.
In 1992 I was elected to the Congress. History now records George Bush
being defeated and the Democrats controlling the White House, the
United States Senate and the House of Representatives.
One of the first acts that President Clinton took, and I would like
to review this historically because I think it is important for the
record of what took place and what the results of those actions are
today, one of President Clinton's first actions on taking office was in
fact to gut the Office of National Drug Control Policy. In fact,
President Clinton gutted the staff of the Drug Czar's office by 80
percent. The facts are, it was slashed from 146 staff members to 25
staff members. Also in his first year, President Clinton cut $200
million in drug interdiction efforts in the Caribbean and another $200
million from alternate crop production and drug eradication in Mexico
and the Andean drug-producing countries.
Back in the 1980s we thought that the most cost-effective means of
stopping drugs was at its source, where it is grown, where just a few
pesos or a few dollars is given for the product at its source. It
seemed to make a tremendous amount of sense. Rather than try to catch
drugs when they entered our borders or when they entered our streets or
were disbursed through our communities and our schools and trying to
cut off drugs at that point, we felt then, we believe now, that
interdiction, eradication, crop substitution programs at the source
countries are the most effective means of stopping drug trafficking.
You stop it right at its source, in its heels.

These programs were gutted by this administration. These are the
facts. The facts speak for themselves. We have seen, again, the
results. In 1993, President Clinton dropped the war on drugs from 3rd
to 29th in the national security list. The President produces a
national security priority list. It was his action that dropped the war
on drugs to 29th as a national priority.
To date, he has continued to allow the State Department to let
counternarcotics issues lag far behind other priorities in our
relations with other countries. Only recently have we heard the
Secretary of State begin to speak out because the problem has reached
such tremendous proportion and the cost and effect in our communities
is so dramatic.
The number of individuals, and this again is fact, I cite only fact
here tonight, the number of individuals prosecuted for Federal drug
violations fell from 25,033 in 1992 to 21,900 in 1994, a 12 percent
drop in just 2 years. So there was a deemphasis of prosecution at the
Federal level. Again, the results are very clear of what we see.
It is interesting to note this, because with the election of Rudy
Giuliani as Mayor of the City of New York, he introduced a zero crime
tolerance policy, he introduced a tough prosecution policy, and there
has been as high a drop recorded as 30 percent in crime, a dramatic
drop in drug trafficking in that community of New York City. We have
seen that tough enforcement, tough prosecution works.
And we see the results at the Federal level of what has happened with
a decrease in Federal prosecutions, again citing only the facts in this
case. From 1992 to 1995, again when the other party controlled the
House, the Senate and the White House, 227 agent positions were
eliminated from the Drug Enforcement Agency, and Clinton's fiscal year
1995 budget proposed cutting 621 drug enforcement positions from the
DEA, the FBI, the INS, the United States Customs Service and the Coast
Guard.

{time} 2200

In fact, my community, and I represent central Florida, probably one
of the more affluent, more prosperous areas, one of the vibrant areas
of our State and Nation, a great community of people who are law
abiding but who nonetheless have been inundated by a flow of illegal
narcotics. An investigation of this issue found that, in fact, a
tremendous quantity of drugs is coming in through Puerto Rico; and some
people blame the Puerto Rican State Governor and others, the
Commonwealth, for not really taking a lead on the issue.
What we found, and our subcommittee went down and held a hearing on a
Coast Guard cutter on San Juan Bay, was that, in fact, this
administration had cut the Coast Guard resources by nearly 50 percent.
The Coast Guard, United States Coast Guard, in fact, since Puerto Rico
is a Commonwealth and does not have its own armed forces, relies on the
United States Coast Guard for coastal protection. That, again, that
protection was cut by this administration by 50 percent, and

[[Page H2417]]

those drugs came in in incredible quantities into Puerto Rico in
transit for Florida and the United States.
Those are the results. They are documented. We have seen this, and we
have seen what this type of policy has provided as a legacy for our
Nation and our children.
The President, in fact, has not substantially increased funding for
accountable youth prevention programs but instead has nearly doubled
the amount of funding. His policy was to promote a doubling of funding
for drug treatment programs, and this has been described sort of as
treating the wounded in a battle and not addressing the fight itself or
just approaching it from sort of the most demoralized end of the game
with the least potential for success.
Then, of course, President Clinton recently certified Mexico, and
again no nation has been more responsible for the influx and transit of
hard drugs into our Nation than Mexico, again another slap in the face
of the American citizenry.
I have not brought up other instances of incredible misjudgment on
the part of this administration and this President, but I must when you
appoint a surgeon general such as Jocelyn Elders, who adopted a program
that said to our children, just say maybe, maybe it is okay. Then you
had echoed by the President of the United States, a figure that every
child looks to in this Nation, and his comments which I have heard over
and over on various television programs and news broadcasts: If I had
it to do over again, I would inhale.
Now what kind of a message does that send to our young people? In
fact, we know what the message has done. The message has, and this is
entitled Trends In Youthful Drug Use, Ages 12 to 17. We have seen from
that reduction I showed you under Reagan and Bush, the just say no to
just say maybe, a skyrocketing of youthful drug use in this country.
We are talking about not only marijuana in incredible amounts and a
more dangerous marijuana than we saw in the streets in the 1960s, we
are talking about cocaine, we are talking about methamphetamines, we
are talking about heroin.
Again, I come from a community, and my community is one of the most
rock solid in Florida, fairly prosperous, as I said, and economically
doing well, and I have this headline from our local newspaper, the
Orlando Sentinel. It says: Long out of sight, heroin is back killing
teens.
My community in central Florida, again a peaceful community, was a
victim of this policy, letting down the guard and gut slashing the
budget, which they did when they controlled this body, the Senate and
the White House. The guard around Puerto Rico in heroin came down not
only through that country and hurting that territory of the United
States but into our country and into our State and into our
neighborhood so that our particular situation has been that in the last
few years central Florida has seen heroin deaths on a par with other
major metropolitan areas like Detroit, like New York, like Los Angeles.
So this is the legacy that we have inherited through this policy. It
is clear. It is documented.
One of the other things that I wanted to mention tonight was that my
colleague has mentioned that we took over the Congress in, what was it,
36, 40 short months ago. We have been able to bring some of our
Nation's finances into balance, but we are trying to focus as leaders
in this new majority with the leadership of Speaker Gingrich in
addressing some of the social problems. And if drug abuse and misuse is
not a problem, I do not know what is a problem. Two million Americans
are behind bars.
We held a hearing, and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) and
others came into our State. They heard our local officials. One of my
local sheriffs said 80 percent of those behind bars in his county jail,
that went through his jail, were there because of drug abuse or drug
related crime. This has an unbelievable effect on our communities and
on our children. And, again, this drug problem is not relegated to the
poor, to the ghettos, to the across-the-railroad-track neighborhoods.
This is hitting every neighborhood, every level of society, and we must
do something about it.
So our committee, under the leadership of the Speaker, under the
leadership of Chairman Hastert, have begun a program of restoring the
funds in these programs that were cut. We have got the military back
into the war on drugs, and the Speaker and others are committed to make
certain that they have the resources to conduct a real war on drugs. We
have restored the cuts in the Coast Guard and other protective
agencies, Customs and DEA, to make certain that they have the tools and
the resources and the financial capability to conduct a real war on
drugs.
And what we are doing this week is launching, in fact, a concerted
effort to see that we have the laws in place, that we have the tough
enforcement in place and that these individuals who are charged in our
Federal Government with this new policy have every resource to see that
it, in fact, is accomplished.
So that is the purpose of our coming together tonight, is to announce
this policy. We have seen some terrible mistakes in the past when we
did not have control of the Congress, when we had leadership in the
White House that, in fact, strayed. And maybe they were well-intended,
but the results, in fact, are just devastating to our young people and
our communities and the social cost involved.
But we are determined again to turn this around, and whatever
resources it takes we are going to devote full measure effort,
whatever, again, finances the Congress can muster to make certain that
we bring this under control so that the people who we represent, those
who are trying to raise their children in communities, get them through
schools, those who are retired trying to live in peace in their
communities, young people.
I met a young lady the other day in one of the local department
stores working, going to college, and she told me she could not go to
school at night, and it was difficult for her to work and earn enough
money because she was afraid to be out at the bus stop at night because
of a potential for crime. And, again, 80 percent of the crime in my
community is drug abuse related, and that is a pretty pitiful
statement.

So for those people who we represent, their children and those trying
to make a living or gain an education or live in peace and retirement,
we owe them this effort, and we are going to see it through. And indeed
it will succeed because we have the commitment, this new majority, and
we hope we have the support of every one of my colleagues who are
listening.
I thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) for yielding to me,
and I am pleased also to join him tomorrow as we pass a resolution
making certain that a needle exchange program which almost came into
effect was stopped at the last minute through the efforts of the new
drug czar, General McCaffrey, and others who know this is the wrong
policy. It sends the wrong message. It is not the way to go. And if we
are concerned about the minority communities, young black men and women
who have been killed, we should be applauding that decision not to fund
this.
I am speaking tonight at the United States Capitol in Washington,
D.C., the District of Columbia. No jurisdiction in our Nation has been
more oppressed by drugs. No segment of our communities in this Nation
have been more devastated. Since I have been coming to Washington over
the last 18 years, almost every year between 300 and 400 young black
males between the age of 14 and 40 have been slaughtered on the streets
within view of this Capitol building, a travesty which surpasses the
casualty in many of our international conflicts just here in
Washington, D.C.
So, if the Black Caucus, if other Members are concerned about policy
that will turn this situation around and save some of these young
people's lives and not destroy the great young men, the young black
citizens of our nation's capital who have just had their lives snuffed
out, then they should be here joining with us to see if we can turn
this situation around.
We know what has been done, and what was done by this administration
did not work. We see the results. These are not abstract or
manufactured statistics. This is what has taken place from a failed
policy, and we need to turn that around and give these people a chance.

[[Page H2418]]

So I am pleased again to join with the gentleman from Indiana (Mr.
Souder) tonight and others as we launch a program to bring a meaningful
war on drugs, a war against drug abuse and a public awareness to our
young people and to our citizens that we must realize the consequences
of illegal narcotics and drugs.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida
once again for his leadership and for his compassion and heart for
those who have been abused, shot, lives wrecked and ruined by the
terrible scourge of drugs in this country, and it has been a
consistent, complete support.
One of the things I want to do, too, is a supplement to what the
gentleman from Florida has done, is to lay out a little bit what is
happening here in the past and where we are headed and what we have
been doing as we head into this major effort for the Members who are
sitting in their office doing mail, for the dedicated C-Span junkies,
to those who just will look through the Record later. Because some may
say, where did the issue come from? Why all of a sudden is Speaker Newt
Gingrich talking about drugs? Where did this pop in? Did they do some
kind of poll? People are going to say, well, we have not seen what is
all this action.
I want to establish that there are a number of logical things that
have led to the development of this big push you are going to see. Too
often, we have approached the drug issue as we approached the Vietnam
war, and that is we devote just enough resources to not quite win, and
so we keep falling further and further behind in a war we can ill
afford to lose.
What has happened here is that the grassroots, every one of us, know,
and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) detailed what we heard in
central Florida. We are hearing from prosecutors, we are hearing from
sheriffs, we are hearing from all sorts of law enforcement officials
that 70 to 85 percent of all crime in every jurisdiction has some
relationship to drug and alcohol.

{time} 2215

They are either stealing to fund a habit, they are high on the drugs
or alcohol, and that leads to 70 to 85 percent of all crime. Child
abuse, spouse abuse, not just robbery, rape, pillaging, automobile
wrecks when it is reckless driving; all of these types of things have
as its source one common problem. The average person knows this, the
communities know this, but it has been very difficult to tackle this on
a national level.
General McCaffrey argues that it is a cancer; many of us argue that
it is a war. It is both a cancer and a war. That means that we will
work to eliminate it as much as possible, but quite frankly, as long as
there is sin, we are likely to have some drug abuse there. It is a
question of how we are going to control it. It is also a war. People
are dying on the streets of America, people are dying around this world
fighting this drug war.
This is a dinner table issue. One of the criteria that the Speaker
looks for when we are going to have a major focus is, is this what
people talk about at their dinner table? Is this what parents are
concerned about at night when their kids are not there? Is this what
parents are concerned about in the schools? Is this something that
actually resonates with the people as opposed to being kind of an
inside-the-Beltway Washington concern or a concern of a special
interest that is lobbying because they have lots of funds, or of some
other reason in the ways we deal with legislation? This is what strikes
at the hearts and homes of American people, and that is why he is
leading.
Mr. Speaker, it did not just come out of the blue. If we have been
following this carefully, it has been kind of strange. Why did former
Senator Bob Dole, our Presidential contender, talk about drugs during
the campaign? It did not light a fire, it was not a hot media issue,
but he was out there talking about it. So was the Speaker. People
thought, this is kind of unusual. Why are they talking about drugs?
Everybody in Washington is talking about the budget, and they are
talking about taxes and so on. These people were talking about this
early.
One of the things is when we took over Congress, the figures that the
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) was looking at were highlighted by
then Congressman Bill Zeliff, who headed our subcommittee, and he got
the ear of our Presidential candidate, Bob Dole, and our Speaker and
said, look, there is a huge problem here. We need to start
concentrating on this.
This is not something that we came up with last week; this is
something that our committee, I am not sure whether we have had 30 or
40 hearings in the Committee on National Security and Justice Oversight
Committee, which, in addition to having jurisdiction over the State and
defense and the Justice Department, also has the drug czar legislation
that moves through it and some very broad jurisdiction, and we have
been concentrating on this. In addition, the gentleman from New York
(Mr. Gilman), who is the senior Republican on the former Select
Committee on Narcotics, has been focusing on the international issue.
The gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) has been focusing on
judiciary-related issues in his Subcommittee on Crime. The gentleman
from Ohio (Mr. Portman) has been a leader in community efforts.
It is not as though we have been silent. It is that we have not
gotten a lot of news media coverage. There is a difference. For
example, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) and I are on the
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight where we have been doing
the investigations into the kind of ``gate'' of the week of the
administration, whether it is Filegate or Whitewatergate or whatever,
Greg Livingstonegate I guess, whatever the variation is, and people
say, is that all you guys do? We have done less on that than we have
done on drugs. But drugs is not quite as sexy to put on the evening
news as talking about some kind of finance scandal.
It is not that I am concerned and humiliated about the influence of
the Federal Government on possible illegal influence of foreign
contributions and campaign finance, but the fact is we work on a lot of
other issues, too, but they do not necessarily hit on the front page.
We have had many oversight hearings; we have been in Indiana,
Illinois and Michigan; we have been down in Florida multiple times and
California multiple times and Arizona, up in New England; we have been
around the country in Plano, Texas, where we had kids die of heroin
overdoses in the district of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions),
just like they have done in Orlando.
I have been to South America three times now in the last 3 years,
where there is an actual war going on. We have been over in Asia and
the Middle East trying to meet with foreign countries where the heroin,
cocaine, marijuana and other drugs are coming in. We have had hearings
on Hollywood and the movies and their impact on the culture. We have
had hearings on the music industry and the impact on the culture and
what we can do related to that.
This is not something we invented yesterday. This is something we
have been working on almost from the month we took over Congress.
Everybody was focused on the Contract With America, but, in fact,
Congressman Zeliff and this subcommittee were starting on the drug
issue not very many days after we got here, and the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Mica) and I know that because both of us are on the
subcommittee, and we were up and running. Furthermore, the gentleman
from Florida (Mr. Mica) had been objecting for years that the
Democratic leadership of that subcommittee had not been focusing on it,
so when we got in control, we started to move on this issue.
Now, what we heard in these hearings were from young people who
talked, and I remember one at the Orlando hearing where a young man was
there with his dad. It was a tough day for them because they were there
together and going public, and his dad was fairly well-known. But he
said how he started with marijuana and how he saw that his parents did
not realize it, and then he started moving to harder drugs, and he
started stealing, and his dad, as he said, really did not want to
confront his son, did not really understand all of that, wishes now
that he had been more involved. His son did not understand why his
father did not get involved. They saw his grades dropping. It was very
touching.

[[Page H2419]]

Every young person we have heard from, whether it is in Texas,
whether it is in California, whether it is in Florida, say, I started
with marijuana, and then I moved to cocaine. I robbed to support my
habit. My grades went down, my life was wrecked, and then I was spared.
And we looked at this type of thing.
We heard from one lady in Texas who talked about how her husband
would get high on cocaine; how she and her daughter were hiding out
because they knew he was going to kill them if the drug habit did not
kill him first. She was living in terror, and what are we going to do
about this? That is what we have heard about it.
We have heard how the administration's budget cuts have had an
inverse effect. When they cut the interdiction efforts, when they cut
the source country efforts, what we saw was supply go up, driving price
down, and for competitive purposes, the purity and the potency of the
marijuana and cocaine and heroin we have on our street is far greater.
It is not like the 1960s and 1970s. The marijuana is more like the hard
drugs of those eras, and the hard drugs are fatal today.

We had signals out of the administration, which the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Mica) has delineated very well, that we have kids' use
going up. Even though we see in some adult sectors cocaine usage and
others going down, the terrible news is it is soaring among kids.
I want to talk briefly about the international problem. The cocaine
comes from basically three places in the world. We can chase it all
over America and all over the world, but there is three countries,
Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, where the stuff comes from. And thanks to
the policies in Bolivia and Peru, it has mostly now shifted to
Colombia. Initially the coca leaves were grown in Peru and Bolivia, and
then Peru and Colombia were doing the transfer in the making cocaine,
and the Colombia was the cartels. And now most has gone to Colombia,
and it is a narcoterrorism threatening the very democracy and the
stability of the nation of Colombia.
Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, this is an interesting point the gentleman
raises about what had developed as an Andean strategy to stop in a very
cost-effective manner; we only spent about $200 million out of $16
billion on this whole drug effort, but we spent about $200 million down
there. It has been pretty much tightened up because of the efforts of
President Fujimori, who we met with when we went down there, and also
because of Bolivia's effort, but we learned some interesting things in
this experience.
We learned first that, and we had a knock-down, drag-out fight with
this administration when they destroyed the shoot-down policy. We had a
policy established under the Reagan administration that, given fair
warning over these air spaces, in fact, in Peru and Bolivia and
Colombia, the drug dealers would be shot down, and they, in fact, were
until a liberal in the Clinton administration moved from the Department
of Justice, I think, to DOD, and then turned this policy upside down,
and we saw a lot of these drugs coming back. I will say the other side
worked with us on this to get the attention of the President, but we
had to reverse that. That did a great deal of damage.
Then when we visited the jungles down there, we learned from some of
our agents that overflights that had been conducted in that region had,
in fact, been diverted, I believe, to Alaska by the administration to
look for other problems, I think environmental problems as opposed to
the drug problem flights. Then we, in fact, learned that our DEA agents
in the jungles were dipping into their own pockets in some cases to
keep programs alive, because money had been shifted from drug
enforcement and from those programs and strategies, and I think I heard
the figure of $40 million was put into Haiti for that incredibly failed
program where we wasted almost $3 billion to date. So each of these
attempts by the administration to destroy the program did not succeed.
The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) has also outlined how since
we took over the Congress, and in fact, I served on the subcommittee
and the committee before, the Democrats held one hearing of any
substance relating to national drug policy while all of this was being
done, in spite of my circulating a bipartisan letter of 132 Members
requesting hearings on our policy. And the gentleman from Indiana (Mr.
Souder) has said we are not Johnny-come-latelies in that, and in fact,
we have held over 40 hearings.
They may not be interesting to the media; they may not want to cover
them. They may want to spend more time on tobacco and some of the
outlandish figures that have been brought out as a diversionary tactic
by this administration while the country is going down the path of ruin
with illegal narcotics and drug abuse, and 100,000 dying in our
streets. And the social costs being absolutely astronomical, in
addition to, of course, medical costs and the families that are
destroyed.
But this is what we have learned, this is what we have done, and in
fact, we have taken these actions, as Mr. Souder has outlined, and now
we are faced with a dilemma in Colombia. The administration again, with
another failed policy, the Colombian failed policy. We begged, we
pleaded, we have sent letters. We passed, I believe, a resolution on
the floor of this Congress.
Mr. SOUDER. A law, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. MICA. To get aid to Colombia, which is now where there is an
incredible production of heroin. The heroin, when we went down there,
they told us they are producing 10,000 hectares which will make heroin
as cheap on the streets of the United States, and it is getting there
very quickly, and a much stronger, much more potent heroin, because of
our policy. We failed to provide the equipment.
The Congress directed the equipment, the funds, that spare parts be
given down there to fight this war on drugs, and in the meantime this
administration has denied those requests. Even of late when they have
decertified Colombia with a waiver, the goods and the materiel and the
resources to fight that war on drugs still have not reached Colombia,
and Colombian military are being slaughtered. The national police chief
Seranno has been here and begged us for assistance, and we still ignore
it, and we have an incredible amount of drugs, as the gentleman from
Indiana (Mr. Souder) just described, coming in now, not only
transiting, but they are now mass producers of heroin. They are even
into the cocaine business, because this administration has made it
profitable for them to succeed.
I can tell my colleagues, there is nothing more effective as far as
use of taxpayer dollars. Out of $16 billion we are spending this money
on treatment and programs that do not work. We talk about losing a
Vietnam War. This would be just like putting all of our resources in a
war and just treating the wounded, and that is what this
administration's policy has been, and that is why it has failed.
We have to have tough enforcement. We have to have tough and
effective education. We have to have treatment. We have to have
interdiction, and all of these elements coming together in a
concentrated effort to make this thing work.

{time} 2230

And that is what we are hopefully going to do. But the gentleman from
Indiana has, in fact, outlined the failed South American strategy, and
we could go on more about Mexico.
Mr. SOUDER. I would like to make some additional comments on
Colombia. We were just down there again this past week as we went down
to the Summit for Americas. I had an amendment that passed and was held
in conference committee that three Blackhawk helicopters were supposed
to be sent to Colombia. If this administration had followed the law,
those Blackhawk helicopters would be down there and they would be able
to get in the areas and eradicate the heroin. They cannot get up there
with the Hueys. They do not get up to that altitude.
Furthermore, there is a shooting war where people are dying in
Colombia, while we stand here fiddling in Washington trying to decide
what to do, while we have grounded because of mechanical failure every
Huey helicopter that they have. They have nothing with which to fight.
They have lost 40

[[Page H2420]]

percent of Colombia, the effective control of the rural countryside.
For those who do not understand the significance of this, understand
that we have troops in Haiti. We have troops in Bosnia. The national
interest is a little unclear, even in the Middle East, where we are
spending $1.5 billion about every nine months right now, where the
gentleman from Florida and I just visited last fall and heard
skepticism from our own armed forces leaders that we need to be at that
level given the direct threat there.
And even arguing that the Middle East has multiple reasons of our
national interest, including our friendship with Israel, our
friendships with the potentially threatened Arab States and the oil
supply, let us look at Colombia. If it is supplying the cocaine and
heroin to this country where people are dying in my hometown of Fort
Wayne and throughout northeastern Indiana and all over America, the
drugs alone is enough to have national interest be a priority there.
But it is more than just that.
Along the Panamanian border they have lost effective control of that.
The drug dealers and control has spread into that section of Panama,
the Darien area. We are about to abandon Panama. I am very concerned
that not only are we going to pull out militarily, but that our efforts
to get an antinarcotics center there could be kiboshed.
That is extremely critical, as we just heard earlier from Congressman
Mica about the shootdown policy. They need the AWACS. If we send those
AWACS up to the United States and they have an hour-and-a-half transit
time to get down there, we are going to dramatically reduce our airtime
for surveillance, and we are going to have even more drugs at cheaper
prices on our streets, threatening our kids and families. We need to
make sure we have at least an antinarcotics center in Panama as we
leave.
Because Colombian narcotics drug lords are prepared to move in
through Panama. On the other side they control about half the
Venezuelan border where the jungle is. And control, in a guerrilla war
they do not have to have forts and troops and lines. Particularly in
the jungle they can move around. We have to have at least four times
the effective troops and an operative military defending ground or we
in effect lose control because they get to pick and choose where they
want to fight.
We have lost half the Venezuelan border. It is not the Middle East
that is our number one supplier of oil, it is Venezuela. Seventeen
percent of our oil comes from Venezuela. In oil by-products, Colombia
is our number one supplier. Talk about energy threat, the energy threat
is in Colombia. It is not in the Middle East. The Canal and the trade
threat is in Panama, and we have all the drugs.
And what is our response? We will not send them the three helicopters
that we were requiring them to send by law, and they are saying, well,
they need 20 helicopters. You know what, three is better than zero. If
we need to send them three more, we would not be arguing, maybe six, if
we had sent them the three last year, then we could get them the three
more this year. Frankly, they need the Blackhawks and more Huey IIs.
The alternative is American troops. Here we have a country, Colombia,
where they are willing to fight and die partly because of our
consumption here in America. Thousands and thousands of police
officers, and we were just down there in Colombia and we visited a
hospital, and we visited a number of Colombian national police who have
been shot down trying to eradicate the cocaine so that it does not hit
our streets. And what is our reaction? We will not give them the
weapons with which to do it. Apparently we are not going to do it until
we have to send troops down there.
This hat belonged to Colonel Gallego, the head of the DANTE, the
antinarcotics subforce of the Colombian National Police. General
Serrano and Colonel Gallego signed this for me. If anybody saw ``Clear
and Present Danger,'' it was a fictionalized account. The former
ambassador who went with us on one of the trips, I asked him if it was
an accurate movie and he said, ``Not completely. I died in the movie.''
It is a pretty accurate picture of the fight they are facing in
Colombia.
Colonel Gallego is the man who took down Pablo Escobar of the famous
Medellin Cartel. He is known as the lab buster. He has a $3.5 million
price on his head. General Serrano has an $8 million price on his head.
They want him dead.
These people, there is no blood on this hat, but there are thousands
of police officers and military forces who have died in Colombia
fighting our battle. I do not want to have American men and women. I
want to help the people who are fighting the war so that they at least
have a fighting chance to win and drive back the narcotics, the FARC
and others. I do not know that they will, but we ought to at least give
them the chance. We are the ones with our national security interest
directly threatened here.
I want to move on to a couple of other issues here in the last
remaining minutes. I touched some on foreign policy, but I want to say
that we are also approaching this comprehensively and domestically in
treatment. It is clear that unless we can get the hard core addicts,
and every hard core addict we get off, we have a dramatic reduction in
the abuse of heroin and cocaine in particular.
Now we also know that, let us just say, that treatment programs are
very erratic in their effectiveness. There are different measures to
use. Obviously there is going to be a high recidivism rate, and
obviously if people at least abuse it less than before, that is some
kind of progress. But there are a couple of basic principles here and
we will be putting these in as we move through the treatment question.
If we do not do drug testing, how do we know in fact if the treatment
program worked? One of the basic principles is that we ought to have
measurements in treatment programs and we ought to have monitoring. It
is only the most kindhearted and compassionate thing we can do for an
abuser, and that is hold them accountable for their behavior. Do not
let them fall back in, particularly after we use taxpayers' dollars to
try to get them out. Let us monitor and follow through.

It is absurd to give out free needles to heroin addicts. They argue
that, well, they will be clean. They will not get AIDS. They will just
die of drug overdose. They will not die of AIDS and they will not
spread it. This would be the equivalent of going into the American
schools and saying these kids are going to smoke anyway, why not give
them low-tar cigarettes paid for by taxpayer dollars?
Why would we use taxpayers' dollars to sustain somebody in a habit
that is going to kill them, destroy them, wreck their families? If they
are a dad or a mom, it is abandonment of their children, and we are
going to give them clean needles? It is absurd. We should have gone
further than banning direct government money. We should have gotten the
fungible money where it is transferred from one place to another.
Furthermore, we should be looking into people like George Soras who
is funding a lot of these programs and also funding the medicinal
marijuana, the back-door legalization of marijuana. There are
legitimate cases, but they are few and far between.
Anybody who watched the special that focused on a lot of these kind
of drug clubs for the medicinal uses of marijuana in California, it is
appalling. Sit around and pass the pot. It is just like in the 1960s on
the college campuses, only this time it is under legitimate government
approval funded by George Soras and two friends in State after State.
There are basically three people with one person at their head funding
this, and we need to look into that question.
We need to also look at prevention programs. A lot of the drug-free
school money, while well-intentioned, has been frittered away. We need
to find particularly effective programs for those most at risk. A lot
of times it seems that these programs are mostly aimed at kids who are
not really high risk. We have to figure out those kids who are most at
risk and we need to try to get them off.
I remember at one school where I went around the district and talked
through these issues with high school kids at about 17 high schools in
my congressional district in northeast Indiana, and one student came up
and said that he had just gone clean the

[[Page H2421]]

day before because his friend had gotten high and committed suicide.
And he said, ``I don't want to do that.'' He said, ``I'm scared. I hope
I can get off.'' And he said, ``I wish my friend was still here.''
When are we going to try to identify these high-risk kids and try to
help them, as opposed to sometimes it seems we are more concerned about
giving out little rulers or having a skit than actually tackling the
very hard cases of the prevention.
The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) was a leader in passing
legislation which we now have, in northeast Indiana almost every county
now has a community-based group that is trying to pull the different
organizations together. Sometimes schools feel like there are 23
different groups hitting them up to try to do anti-drug programs. We
need community-wide organized efforts and we are trying to stimulate
some of that through the Portman bill.
The gentleman from New York (Mr. Solomon) has an amendment that we
have in the Higher Education Act that says that if students want a
subsidized student loan, then they have an obligation to stay clean. If
they do not stay clean for one year, the first time they are suspended
from their student loan and they have to go into treatment.
And I want to offer tomorrow an amendment that also says that drug
testing be included to make sure they are clean for two years, then
they can get reinstated. The second offense, they are off for two
years. Definitely, three strikes and they are out. We do not want to
have high-risk people not have the opportunity to get an education.
Self-esteem and education are critical to keeping them off of drugs.
But at the same time, taxpayers should not have to fund behavior that
is contrary to the law.
There needs to be a give-and-take with this, and we want to encourage
people to get clean. The best thing we can do for them, the college
education is a waste of money if they are on drugs. We have to get them
clean. If they sold, it is a suspension of two years for first offense
and indefinitely for second offense. So this will be up tomorrow.
The gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker) who has been a leader in
the needles issue, along with the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn)
will be working with that. We will work aggressively on prevention and
treatment.
Let me reiterate, the difference that is seen here is a concentrated
effort, not a dribbling of a bill here and a bill there. I am willing
to criticize the Speaker when I have disagreements, and I want to make
sure I praise him when I think he has taken the commendable leadership
in this, as has the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert) along with
his cochairs, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) and the
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) with the anti-drug task force. I
think we are going to see a difference.
Mr. Speaker, we need this administration to join with us. This needs
to be a bipartisan effort. This cannot be divided and have a bunch of
people on the other side posturing with this. This needs to be a joint
effort, a drumbeat from every source saying this is unacceptable.
As a goal we ought to say by the Year 2000 we are going to have a 50
percent reduction, and the President of the United States and others
should join with us and say we are going to have a 50 percent
reduction. A 50 percent reduction in two years sounds like a lot, but
that would only take us to the place where we were when this President
took office.
Mr. Speaker, the least he could do is, when he leaves, get it back to
the level of when he came. Then we can start to get rid of the drug
abuse that we had which was already there when he got here. We need his
help so that when he exits, we are at least back to the level that it
was when he came. He owes that to the American people, and hopefully we
can work together with that.
Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his
comments, and again for his dedication to this subject. I honestly
cannot think of any other issue before the Congress as far as the
social impact on our Nation. We have been successful in the last 36 or
40 months getting our finances in order, but now the number one
priority must be to tackle the illegal narcotics problem, the crime
that it does rain upon this country.
This week we have launched another stage in the battle, a new
offensive. It is going to take both Democrats and Republicans working
together to get that passed.
But we I think also tonight have documented that the policy from this
point, 1993, when he took office, to 1995, did not work. It was a
failed policy. The results are dramatic. Since 1992 drug use among
teens has skyrocketed, the latest statistics indicate by 70 percent.
Half of the high school seniors in a recent survey think it is easy to
obtain cocaine and LSD; and now eighth graders, where drug use has
increased by 150 percent since 1992. These are the latest statistics.
One in four high school seniors is a current user of illegal drugs.
This has had a dramatic impact on our young people. If we took out
the areas of tough enforcement such as Mr. Giuliani in New York, and
some of the other areas where some tough enforcement and prosecution
and zero tolerance has taken place, we can see that we still have a
very dramatic problem with tremendous cost to the taxpayers of this
Nation, not to mention the insecurity of individuals who fear going
from their car to the supermarket, from their community, from street to
street at night, or even in the daylight being accosted by someone who
is on drugs.

{time} 2245

Or the loss in our community just within the last 24 hours, as I left
one of the communities, Oviedo, where a young woman was found dead, 21
years old, who worked in a local bank, either of an overdose of cocaine
or heroin, just again within the last 24 hours in my community.
The incident we had in my community and the college reunion
festivities over the weekend in Daytona Beach, the young man from
Orlando who attacked the police with a gun was a habitual drug user and
had a record of cocaine use.
Almost every incident of crime, of social problem that we see today
is drug related, so we are committed to launch this campaign this week.
We have not just spoken in the past 36 months but also acted in putting
back together the pieces of an effective multifaceted war on drugs. You
can call it whatever you want, but it is going to be indeed a national
effort.
We beg the administration to get the resources to Colombia, to other
programs that are effective, to treatment programs that work. We are
not against treatment, but when you have them come before our committee
and testify, folks testify that these are failed programs, and then you
learn that sometimes the religious or faith-based programs are the most
effective, or the private sector, non-Federally or publicly funded
programs are most effective, you begin to wonder. We have been spending
more and more in treating these wounded.
So today we take up arms, and this week I know I will be joined by
everyone on this side of the aisle, and I know we will have many from
the other side of the aisle, to make a meaningful effort to turn around
this situation in our country, and again the dramatic cost to young
people and citizens of every age, race, and color across our Nation.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) again
for his leadership in taking time tonight. I know he and I would rather
be with our families at home, but this is such an important issue. It
is not to be made light of.
It will not be on the front page of tomorrow's paper, except it will
be there in the obituary page and the page of abuse, the page of
murders and crimes in our community, and the social costs and
disruption to each of our communities throughout this land. So that is
part of our agenda. It is part of our program. I thank the gentleman
for his leadership.

____________________