[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 28 (Tuesday, February 23, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H680-H681]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         DRUG ABUSE IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, it is ironic. Sometimes here we look more 
organized than we are. I was going to speak on the drug issue. I did 
not know the

[[Page H681]]

President was going to be sending over right before me his initiatives 
and comments.
  This is a particularly critical time in Congress as we look at 
decertification questions and the cooperation of foreign countries in 
the drug issue. We are going to face many issues in this Congress that 
are very important, the education issue; rebuilding our national 
defenses, particularly in missile defense; trying to preserve and save 
Social Security; trying to make sure taxpayers can keep their own 
money; trying to work with the health care problems we have in this 
Nation. But drug abuse remains on the street, in our homes and in our 
neighborhoods, one of the most critical problems we have.
  We have heard much over the last months about the moral crisis that 
our country is facing. And we do, indeed, have a tremendous moral 
crisis from top to bottom of our society. There is only so much we can 
do here in Washington related to that. One, we should lead by example. 
Two, we should try to strengthen those institutions, whether it is in 
the Tax Code or in different programs, that strengthen families and 
promote strong family values and moral virtues in our society.
  But in one area, in drugs in particular, the government has a direct 
compelling and active interest. And it is a manifestation of the 
breakdowns we have in our society that we see rising drug abuse among 
junior high kids and in high schools in particular, that we see deaths 
in the district of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions) and 
throughout Dallas and in the district of the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Mica) in Orlando and in the district of the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. McCollum), where heroin deaths have overtaken the communities to 
the point of having 25 deaths or more in each of those communities from 
heroin in a short period of time.
  Mr. Speaker, we see crack on the streets of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and 
small towns in Indiana and throughout our country. We see people 
sniffing coke, LSD, methamphetamines. We are getting overrun in this 
country with that.
  We need and will continue to work with a multitude of strategies to 
address this issue. We need drug prevention interdiction, drug 
prevention and eradication, drug prevention and treatment, drug 
prevention and programs in our schools, and drug prevention on our 
streets to help our police force. All of that is really preventing the 
drugs from getting there.
  The gentleman from Florida (Chairman Mica), of the Subcommittee on 
Drug Policy of the Committee on Government Reform, led a CODEL, a 
Congressional delegation, of which I was a part, to the Andean nations 
of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia where most cocaine and much of our heroin 
is coming from, as well as Central America where we spent 3 days, among 
other places, with the leaders in Mexico.
  We clearly have some major problems, but what we know is this: That 
in 1992 to 1994, when we backed up in interdiction efforts, and really 
into 1995, when we backed up in our interdiction and eradication 
efforts, this country was flooded with low-price cocaine, new sources 
for heroin, and methamphetamines in quantities that drove the price 
down in the streets of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, northeast Indiana, and 
throughout this country.
  We saw the purity go up, and the marijuana that is coming in is 
nothing like the marijuana in the late 1960s and 1970s that was 
glamorized in a lot of 1960s type shows. This is potent stuff on our 
streets that our kids are getting. Because when they have the huge 
quantities of it and it is cheap in the schools and the streets, there 
is no amount of DARE programs or treatment programs or putting 
policemen on the street that can stop this.
  Mr. Speaker, we know where it comes from. Some of these countries 
have been very aggressive for a number of years in eradicating the coca 
leaves and particularly the production in the cocaine. In Peru and 
Bolivia, we have seen a turnaround. We have seen their percentages 
drop.
  In Colombia they are at war, and we need to help the Nation of 
Colombia fight this so that we do not have troops down there. We also 
have our number one oil supplier on their border, Venezuela, and the 
Panama Canal on the other border.

                              {time}  1615

  That is where we have a compelling national interest. But we have 
some real problems in Mexico. The Mexican leaders, their government 
seem very committed to trying to change this problem. But we have deep 
problems.
  Everybody says we should forget the past, but it is difficult to 
forget the past right now when our information has been compromised and 
when we have had so much corruption.
  We are hopeful, and one of the debates we are going to hear in 
Congress is how we should deal with this decertification question, 
because it gets inevitably wrapped up in NAFTA, trade questions, and 
the fact that an important and critical part of our long-term interests 
will be to work with Mexico.
  But the question is, are we going to have any accountability 
standards? Since most of the drugs coming into my hometown and the rest 
of this country are pouring across the border from Mexico right now, we 
need to see results and not just rhetoric.
  Over the next few days and weeks, we are going to hear a number of 
Members coming down here talking about this issue and about the drug 
issue as a whole as we develop packages, as we try to work with the 
administration and drug czar, General McCaffrey, to try to solve this 
problem. I am looking forward to seeing if we continue to make 
progress.

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