[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 67 (Friday, May 22, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5362-S5364]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        DRUG ABUSE AND ADDICTION

  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, when we return a week from Monday, from 
the Memorial Day recess, we will revisit the tobacco debate, and at 
that point I, along with my colleague from Idaho, Mr. Craig, and my 
colleague from Michigan, Mr. Abraham, will offer an amendment to the 
tobacco bill that would create a new section. The section we will be 
offering as suggested additional legislation for the tobacco bill will 
be a section on drug abuse and addiction.
  Mr. President, to me it is illogical--and I have been puzzled 
throughout the debate--that we would be talking about teenage addiction 
in the context of tobacco only. It is not good policy to talk about 
teenage addiction and leave out the single, most important crisis that 
teenagers face today, which is drug addiction, drug abuse, and the 
swirling epidemic that has engulfed our Nation. If we are going to talk 
about addiction, we must include a component that deals with the 
Nation's No. 1 teenage problem.
  Mr. President, in the last 7 years teenage drug abuse has increased 
by 135 percent--135 percent. Tobacco usage has increased as well--40 
percent. That is significant, and we must attack that but not by being 
silent on a new drug epidemic in the United States. In 1979, 14.1 
percent of the population age 12 to 17 were involved in drug use--that 
is 3.3 million. The Nation got serious and it said we cannot accept 
this. And by the year 1992, drug use had been driven down by two-
thirds, from 14.1 percent down to 5.3 percent. This is important on a 
couple of points. First, it demonstrates to the Nation that you can do 
something about this. There are many in our community who would argue, 
well, we have just been fighting this forever and it doesn't do any 
good. That is totally wrong.

  We have demonstrated as a Nation if we get focused on this problem, 
pay attention to it, and if we do the right things, we will keep people 
from being entrapped by drug use. We went from 14.1 percent down to 5.3 
percent. In other words, instead of 3.3 million children getting caught 
up in this, we have taken it down to 1 million--a two-thirds reduction. 
And then we got lazy. We quit talking about it. We made light of it. 
The interdiction was reduced. The drug czar's office was closed, for 
all practical purposes. We mothballed Coast Guard ships in the 
Caribbean. We turned our back on this problem. And what happened? Well, 
we should not be surprised. We are moving right back to 1979. You quit 
talking about it, you reduce the effort on the border, you shrink up 
the resources, and our youngsters get the idea that it is not 
dangerous. In the meantime, the cartels have become ever more 
sophisticated, generating ever more resources. They have as good a 
distribution system in this country as some of our most famous brands.
  At a hearing recently, we had representation from Customs, from the 
Justice Department, and from the FBI. I asked them at the end of the 
hearing, ``How recently have you been to a school?'' Well, none of them 
had been recently. I said, ``You ought to do it.'' Mr. President, if 
you want to know what is going on, go into any school and 12-years-olds 
can tell you the whole story. They can tell you how few minutes it 
takes to buy them. They can tell you that they are prevalent 
everywhere. They can tell you the name brands of all of them. And when 
you ask them what the most serious problem is, a few will hold up their 
hands on various issues--alcohol, cigarettes--but they all hold up 
their hands in unison when you say, ``Are drugs the most serious 
problem you face?'' All the hands go up. I challenge anybody to do it. 
They will get the same answer.
  Those kids, I think, are wondering what we are doing about it, what 
is this Nation doing about it? It is time for a bold response. And 
throughout this entire debate, there has been silence on this massive 
problem. One in four students in high school today in the United States 
is using drugs regularly. One in nine in junior high is using drugs 
regularly. Eight out of ten prisoners in any jail in America, anywhere 
in America, are there on a drug-related charge--direct or indirect. 
This is fueling crime in our country, with enormous cost consequences, 
and we are taking millions of casualties. If this evil force wore a 
uniform, we would have declared war on it.
  What else would take down a million kids--a million, and it is 
increasing--that would produce 100,000 crack babies every year and 
thousands of deaths--14,000 a year?
  The silence has been deafening, just deafening. We have been in a 
struggle with the administration over this, asking them to step 
forward. We are finally just moving on our own. The plan that they have 
given us says we are going to have an accountability period in the year 
2006. The first measurement would occur in 2002. That is 2 years into 
the next Presidency. We need to be aggressive now. My colleague, in a 
moment, will describe in his 10-minute period the bold response.
  I yield the floor to my colleague from Idaho.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho is recognized.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, why have we spent the last 3 days on the 
floor talking about tobacco? Nearly everyone who has come to the floor 
to talk about tobacco has said we have to get it out of the hands of 
teenagers. There are two reasons we are on the floor talking about 
tobacco. First of all, it is darn good politics, and, secondly, we are 
mad at the tobacco companies and we are going to act in a very punitive 
fashion because they lied to us. They withheld information as to the 
addictiveness of nicotine, and we are angry as a public, angry as a 
governing body. We are going to inflict upon them a very punitive 
action, and we are going to do it in the name of teenagers--thousands 
of young people every day picking up a cigarette.
  I am not belittling it, I am recognizing it. We need to try to get 
tobacco and the substance within it, nicotine, out of the hands of our 
teenagers. But thousands of teenagers today who start smoking today 
will not die tomorrow. Let me repeat that. The thousands of teenagers 
that we are all talking about--and, boy, have we heard it on the floor 
in the last few days--who pick up a cigarette today will not die 
tomorrow.
  Mr. President, young people who engage in the use of drugs can die 
tomorrow. As my colleague from Georgia said, thousands are dying each 
year in violent actions and crimes related to drug use and drug 
associations. Yet, we stand silently by. The administration dropped the 
ball and walked away, and, finally, my colleague from Georgia rose up 
and said, wait a moment here, what in the heck are we doing as a 
country and as a policymaking body? If we are going to do all these 
great things for kids to get the cigarette out of their hand, why in 
the heck don't we get crack cocaine, marijuana, and amphetamines out of 
their hands because it kills them--not 30 years down the road.
  By the way, if you start smoking today, you have a chance to live, 
because you can quit down the road. But if you start crack cocaine 
today, you will probably die on the street in a month or two for one 
reason or another, because you are stealing the money to get the crap 
that is called crack, or you are shot in some transaction that went 
bad.
  That is how teenagers in America are dying today. The statistics that 
were just given by my colleague from Georgia about seventh graders and 
eighth

[[Page S5363]]

graders is real. I have done the same thing that Paul Coverdell has 
done. I have gone to the schools of Idaho. I go to them regularly 
anyway. I spend a lot of time talking with teenagers, kids, and when I 
ask the question, ``What is your problem?'' the hands go up with drugs. 
Most of the hands go up.
  The Senator from Georgia is right. They know who sells it, and where 
you can get them. If they had a brand name on them, they would know the 
brand. Most importantly, if they had a brand name on them and they were 
being trafficked in the market today, we would be here going after the 
companies that were selling them because it would be killing our kids.
  But today we are angry. We are mad. We are going to be vindictive. We 
are after the tobacco companies. We are after their big money to fuel 
big government. I am not going to vote for a big tobacco bill. I am 
going to vote to get cigarettes out of the hands of teenagers. It is 
the right thing to do.
  But if we stand silently by and let what is described by my colleague 
from Georgia as the most significant epidemic amongst our youngsters go 
unspoken to and uncorrected, then we have erred grievously; we have 
erred grievously as policymakers.
  New polls are out. When you ask parents what they are worried about, 
here is what they say: Thirty-nine percent, using illegal drugs. 
Thirty-nine percent of the American public say that is the No. 1 
problem. Sixteen percent say joining a gang. Nine percent say drinking 
alcohol. Why? You get drunk, you get in the car, and you kill somebody, 
and you kill yourself.
  Why then are we on the floor to spend weeks and millions of dollars 
trying to reach out and get billions of dollars out of tobacco? I will 
tell you why. Because it is good politics. Yet only 3 percent of the 
American people say they worry about it when they worry about their 
kids.
  It is time we speak out. That is what my colleague from Georgia, my 
colleague from Michigan, and I are doing. We will have an amendment on 
the tobacco bill that will deal with this issue, or there will be no 
tobacco bill.
  We must wake up the White House, wake up our Government, and wake up 
this policy body to what we are about to do. Here is what we want to 
do. We want to attach legislation that deals with this issue in a most 
significant way targeting three primary areas: Attacking the supply of 
drugs by strengthening our ability to stop them at the border; pull the 
mothballed Coast Guard fleet out and put it back in the water. Bill 
Clinton put it there. The heck with Bill Clinton. Put the money back 
in. Get them out in the water, and stop by interdiction. That is what 
our amendment does.
  Second, we want to provide additional resources to fight drugs that 
reach our neighborhoods. Give the tools to the law enforcement 
communities and the schools and the communities at large to join 
together to block grant and create their own initiative along with our 
directed initiatives to get at the problem at the local level.
  Then the third thing is to create disincentives for teen use of 
illegal drugs.
  Those are the three major areas that will be involved in what we are 
about to do. We are going to spend a lot of time on the floor week 
after next until this proposal, this amendment, is part of the overall 
bill that will move, I believe, out of here.
  So what do we have to do? When it comes to the supply side, we have 
to go straight at it. We have to deal with interdiction. We have to 
strengthen the borders. We have to stop slashing Coast Guard budgets 
and put some money back in it.
  We talked about a 53-percent decline from 1992 to 1995 in the ability 
of the Coast Guard to reach out and interdict. That simply has to stop. 
Our amendment does exactly that.

  Our amendment also includes the Border-Free Drug Act, which attacks 
70 percent of the illegal drugs that enter the United States across the 
United States-Mexican border--70 percent of the drugs that are killing 
our kids on the street today, not 20 years down the road--today coming 
across the border from Mexico to the United States.
  So why not put more people on the borders? I think we ought to. We 
ought to strengthen the Immigration and Naturalization Service to hire 
Border Patrol agents to deal with the trafficking and get at the 
business of going at it. For example, our amendment increases the 
resources available to DEA and the FBI.
  An additional section of our amendment is the Money Laundering 
Prevention Act.
  Finally, last week this administration announced a major break in 
drug laundering with Mexican banks. We have arrested a few people. And 
we are trying to get the cooperation of the Mexican Government now 
because the money is big. How big? We are trying to get $800 billion 
away from the tobacco companies to spend on big government and some 
advertising that we think will convince our teenagers to quit smoking. 
But $100 billion a year in the drug business kills thousands of 
teenagers. And we have not spoken to that. Why don't we go after that? 
I hope we can. We should. That is our goal.
  While we deal with it in a national and an international way, we have 
to turn to our parents and we have to turn to our communities. The kids 
know who the drug dealers are. We ought to start asking them and 
involving them a little bit and recognizing the importance of that. We 
do that. We go after the demand side along with the supply side.
  I think the Clinton administration's green light to subsidize needle 
exchange and programs like that doesn't make a lot of sense. That is an 
encouragement. We want to stop that.
  Our legislation is comprehensive. The amendment that we will talk 
about over the recess and will offer as soon as we get back is going to 
be critical. Pieces of what we are doing have already passed the 
Congress in one way or another.
  We want to bring them together to create the focus to do the same 
thing against drugs as we have done against alcohol. You get caught as 
a teenage drunk driver you lose your driver's license. You get caught 
using drugs as a teenager you drive on. We will encourage the States to 
take the driver's license away.
  Let me say in closing, Mr. President, that if we are really worried 
about kids, yes. I agree. Let's get the cigarettes out of their hands. 
But let's stop them from their access to drugs of all forms. It kills 
them tomorrow. It killed thousands last year. It will kill thousands 
this year. As a policy-making body, we would be remiss not to deal with 
this issue now and force this administration to get out of their 
sleepwalk and deal with the issue in cooperation with us.
  I yield the floor.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Grams). The Senator from Wyoming, under 
the previous order, is recognized for 10 minutes.
  Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator yield?
  Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield so I might ask a question?
  Mr. ENZI. Yes.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding of the unanimous consent 
request made by Senator Coverdell was that he wants to get two on the 
majority side to use 10 minutes each. And we thought that was 
acceptable. Senator Enzi wanted to introduce a bill. I now understand 
that Senator Enzi wishes to consume up to 10 minutes. The difficulty 
with that is I must be somewhere downtown at 10:30. If I had understood 
that Senator Coverdell was seeking 30 minutes on that side before 
anyone was recognized, I would have had a different view, although I 
recognize that Senator Enzi came, in fact, before the previous two 
speakers this morning. I understand that. But we did it as a matter of 
courtesy to say it was acceptable to us to have two Republican speakers 
to go for 10 minutes each provided we then be recognized. The Senator 
from Wyoming, I understand, wants to introduce a bill.
  Does the Senator from Wyoming intend to consume up to 10 minutes?
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, my request was both on behalf of myself and 
Senator Bingaman. I don't see Senator Bingaman. So we can do it in 
considerably less time than that providing, of course, that the 
unanimous consent is that all of our statements be in the Record. But I 
would like to make a

[[Page S5364]]

few comments on something that is important to worker safety in this 
country. That is why I asked it to be in that order.
  Mr. DORGAN. I think there has been a misunderstanding. I will, as 
matter of courtesy, not object. But I would have objected earlier if 
the request was that we had 30 minutes on the majority side 
uninterrupted, because Senator Wellstone is here and I was here. The 
Senator from Wyoming, I know, was here as well before the other 
speakers. As a matter of courtesy I will not object. I regret that 
there has been a misunderstanding.
  Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for the purpose of a 
unanimous consent?
  Mr. ENZI. Yes.
  Ms. SNOWE. I thank the Senator from Wyoming.

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