[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 40 (Monday, March 15, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H1262-H1265]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   DRUG PROBLEMS OF THE UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Mrs. Mink) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Mr. Speaker, I thank the leadership for allowing 
me time to address an issue which is very, very important. The Nation 
has certainly understood the gravity of the problem of drugs within our 
communities, within our States, and throughout the whole country. It is 
a problem that I certainly have recognized in my years of service to 
this Congress as well as in the local community.
  But I think, like most citizens, I have more or less assumed that 
this was a problem that individuals like ourselves could not deal with 
in any effective way, that we had to rely upon our law enforcement 
agencies, our Federal Bureau of Investigation, our DEA agents, and the 
Justice Department, and, in some instances, the State Department to 
come to grips with this very, very critical and persuasive problem.
  Not until this year at the beginning of the 106th Congress did I come 
face to face with the reality that I did indeed, as one Member of this 
Congress, have a great responsibility for the development of the policy 
and the course of action and the emphasis and the direction that we 
would take with regard to the drug problem within our United States.
  I left the 6-year term, left service of the Committee on the Budget 
in the House of Representatives and returned back to my committee 
previously known as the Committee on Government Operations, now known 
as the Committee on Government Reform, and found myself being named the 
ranking minority member of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug 
Policy, and Human Resources.
  Under that jurisdiction, it became my responsibility not only to 
formulate human resource policies and directions and oversight, but to 
take a very critical look with the rest of my subcommittee on the 
overall problems of drug usage within the United States.
  First, an immediate responsibility came in being invited to join the 
chairman of the subcommittee on an extensive field trip through El 
Salvador, Panama, Peru, Bolivia, and on through Mexico in order to 
investigate the whole problem of the trafficking of these narcotic 
drugs into the United States.
  It was a very interesting field trip, and I learned a great deal. I 
learned where the drugs were coming from, where they are being 
produced, how they were entering into the traffic, by sea and by air 
and over the land, and to some extent what the individual countries 
were doing with respect to this whole traffic issue.
  Some countries I felt had done a great deal. Peru, in fact, was 
probably the outstanding example of where a changeover in national 
leadership made all the difference in the world in terms of their being 
able to handle the traffic that was flowing through their country into 
the United States.
  Colombia was another place that we visited and met with the president 
of that country and learned from them the monumental steps that that 
country had taken. Of interest in Colombia is, in fact, that several 
years ago, Colombia had been decertified because the leadership of the 
Congress felt that their efforts to try to curb the traffic and to do 
something about the offenders and all of the drug lords was minimal at 
least, and so the decision, under the wishes of the Congress at that 
time, was to decertify that country in order to emphasize the fact that 
the United States felt they could do more.
  In fact, the consequence was that that country did more and did a 
very aggressive job in arresting and curbing the traffic from Colombia 
to this country. So they have now come back into a cooperative venture 
with the United States in trying to help us deal with the problem.
  The issue, therefore, that the Congress now faces is that every March 
1, the President of the United States must make a recommendation to the 
Congress as to whether all of the countries with whom we have 
relationships should be certified in terms of their enactment, pursuit, 
administration, and enforcement of a drug policy which helps the United 
States to deal with the traffic coming from that particular country.

                              {time}  1415

  The big debate this year, as has been in the past, is whether Mexico 
should

[[Page H1263]]

be decertified or not. And we visited Mexico. We spent 3 days there 
discussing the matter with their leadership and trying to understand 
what, in fact, that nation was doing in terms of curbing not only 
production and the harvesting and the growing of these various drug 
producing plants but also what they were doing in the criminal 
enforcement area in picking up these narco-traffickers and putting them 
in prison and enforcing their own national laws, irrespective of our 
laws, which many of them had also violated and for whom outstanding 
arrest warrants had been issued without any particular results.
  So we are now back here in the Congress and one of the major issues 
that we have to decide and debate is what to do about Mexico. And the 
question before the Congress is whether, in our opinion, the country of 
Mexico has done enough, has maintained a substantial pressure within 
all the criminal elements in their country that has created this 
enormous traffic of drugs flowing from Mexico to the United States.
  It is a very difficult issue because, as we debate the issue of 
decertifying, we are questioning their sovereignty, we are in fact 
intervening in internal politics. But I think it is important to 
remember that this crisis situation within the United States is 
something of deep concern to the people of the United States. And while 
it attempts, it appears, to be invasive of another country's internal 
policies, what we must come to grips with is that these internal 
policies of our neighbors have a very, very deep repercussion on our 
own national well-being, the safety of our children and our families 
and of our own ability to deal with these criminal activities within 
the United States.
  Having said that, I have come to the conclusion that the steps that 
Mexico has taken, the level of cooperation that they have exhibited, 
their leadership having been expressed in many ways, including funding 
and including collaborative efforts with the United States, indicated a 
deep, deep abiding will to help themselves in their country of Mexico, 
as well as the United States, to bring an end to this very, very 
terrible miserable, criminal element in their society.
  They have some very profound problems of internal corruption, of a 
takeover of major portions of their country, and enormous instability 
in parts of their nation that contribute to their problem and 
exacerbate their difficulties. But I believe very strongly that, if we 
are to do anything about this supply coming in from Mexico, we need the 
continued cooperation of the Mexican government, and I believe that 
they have cooperated.
  The problem still exists and in some ways perhaps they have become 
greater in some areas. But I do feel the cooperation, the will to help 
us, is there. We just need to maintain the connection and keep 
insisting on progress.
  Looking at this whole drug problem within the United States, 
surveying it from the traffic element, it has certainly brought to my 
focus the element that it is not only the supply coming into the United 
States which is of crisis proportions, it is our own inability within 
the United States to come to grips with the criminal element which is 
within our own cities, within our own States, within our own borders.
  We are told by high placed DEA officials that the connection between 
the supply in Mexico and those who are harvesting billions of dollars 
within our cities, plaguing upon our families and our children, are 
right in our midst operating within our cities and within our States. I 
feel, if we are going to make an exhausting demand and inquiry as to 
what the Mexican government is doing in their own country, it is 
equally important that we make that same sort of inquiry with respect 
to our own law enforcement agencies and to look to the people who are 
controlling the purse strings here in the Congress to make sure that 
the budgets that we are providing our law enforcement agencies is 
adequate.
  The problem is very, very grave indeed. We have something like 14,000 
drug-induced deaths every year in America, some half a million 
emergency visits to our hospitals and clinics, all derived from drug-
related incidents. This is a very major problem, affecting at least one 
out of ten of our American families who have someone that we love dear 
to us involved in this particular problem. It is a problem that is not 
only disturbing but is something that we cannot ignore.
  We have a report that is produced by the Office of National Drug 
Control Policy. There are volumes. I brought to the floor with me today 
the Executive Summary. This is the National Drug Control Strategy for 
1999. It is in your libraries. I commend all of you interested in this 
issue to get a hold of the report and try to understand the enormity of 
the problem.
  The major thrust of the National Office is to look to ways in which 
we can reduce the demand. That means education. That means working with 
the young people. This means treatment and all sorts of preventive 
measures, and I think that those are very, very important. And I know 
that there are many, many agencies, local, state and Federal, that are 
engaged in that effort.
  The national budget is somewhere around $17 billion to help us reduce 
the demand. If we did not have a demand within this country, no amount 
of trafficking would make this issue into a major problem. So they are 
right in talking about reduction of demand. We are right in talking 
about the necessity of reducing these huge supplies coming across our 
borders from other countries. Those two issues are important.
  But equally important, as I see it, is the ability of our local 
enforcement officers, together with our Federal authorities, to make a 
much bigger effort to arrest, locate through high-tech purposes, or 
whatever, these individuals who are trafficking these drugs in our 
cities throughout America. And I do not believe that enough effort is 
being made.
  I was recently visited by a student from my district who said he 
reported to a local police officer that on a certain corner in his 
community he was sure that this individual was trafficking in drugs and 
the police officer or no one else has followed up on that. And I 
believe that that situation is indicative of fear, reluctance, 
inhibitions, intimidations, or whatever that exist in our societies 
that prevent us from being tough on the law enforcement area.
  Let's take a look at the realities of our drug problem within the 
United States. Here is a chart that indicates that Americans spend $57 
billion on illegal drugs each year. It shows the amount that is spent 
on cocaine, which is the largest column on the right, and a much 
smaller expenditure wasted on heroin and a smaller amount on marijuana 
and others. This indicates the monies going down the drain on an 
entirely abusive, illegal, nonfunctioning, harmful activity within the 
United States.
  We worry about where our resources are going. Here is where a lot of 
the monies are going, and we need to stop this waste. Look at the loss 
of human life. Drug-related deaths are increasing. Every year, almost 
10,000 drug-related deaths. This is not including all of the nondirect 
what they call ``other related'' deaths, waste of human life as a 
result of drug consumption in our communities.

  Our jails are being filled with people that have drug-related 
offenses. Something like 1.5 million total arrests either in the 
possession, sale, or manufacturing of illegal drugs. We have something 
like 1.8 million persons in our prisons today and those represent over 
a million in state prisons, at the cost of something like $25 billion 
to our States. We have about 100,000 in Federal prisons, at the cost of 
$3 billion, and another half a million in our local jails, at the cost 
of $11 billion. And when you add up the prison expenditure, it is 
almost $40 billion added to what I already showed in the chart of what 
is being spent on the purchase of these drugs.
  The rate of incarceration is the second highest in the entire world 
per capita. Russia is the only other country that surpasses us in the 
number of persons that we have behind bars today. And of the 1.8 
million, this report advises that 1.5 million are related in some way 
to a drug offense. Either they were drug users or they were drug 
offenders in particular.
  So our prisons are bursting at their seams. We are arresting people 
who are using and selling these commodities on our streets. But what I 
officially believe is that we have not gone after the major traffickers 
in our cities, and this

[[Page H1264]]

is what we need to pursue. The DEA tells me that they know who these 
people are, that in many cases they have issued warrants for their 
arrests but they have fled and they are not able to be found. I believe 
that these individuals' names, pictures, identifications should be 
posted all over America so that everyone will know who these 
individuals are.
  We talk about the Mexican traffickers and these drug lords that are 
running the traffic in Mexico itself, but the DEA tells us in their 
testimony before our committees that these people in Mexico are linked 
up to the distributors who operate within our cities.
  So while we are very outraged at the fact that the warrants that we 
have issued for the arrest of people that are in Mexico have not ended 
up in their conviction and brought to trial within the United States 
because of various technicalities on how to extradite, how the appeal 
process is extremely slow, in point of fact, there are tens of 
thousands of these operatives linked up to the gangs that exist in 
Mexico who now operate within the United States.
  So I believe what this should tell us, what this should instruct us 
is a stronger, much more determined commitment on the part of the 
United States to do something about these individuals that are already 
operating within the United States.
  This is a statistic that I have already given you about the 
percentage of Federal prisoners who were sentenced because of drug 
offenses. There is no doubt that the problem within the United States 
is a major one insofar as our prison population is concerned, and that 
gives you an idea of the relationship of criminal activity to a drug-
abuse situation.
  The marijuana arrests within the United States is also an interesting 
statistic. In 1998, this report tells us that 12 percent of the eighth 
graders in all of our schools in this country were users of marijuana. 
In the 10th grade it rose to 21 percent. In the 12th grade it rose to 
25.6 percent.

                              {time}  1430

  This is a very, very high proportion. A lot of people wink or blink 
or just look the other way when we talk about marijuana on the 
assumption that it is not a serious matter. It is an extremely serious 
matter, because the studies prove that there is a very high correlation 
between marijuana use and serious behavior problems in the schools, 
including cutting class, low scores in their academic studies, physical 
violence against teachers and their schoolmates, and outright theft and 
destruction of property. So there is an antisocial behavior problem 
with those of our youngsters who are using marijuana at such early 
ages.
  And so we have to worry about this whole concept of marijuana use. 
Each year about 60,000 of our youngsters in our elementary and 
secondary schools are arrested on varying degrees of marijuana 
offenses. We have a very, very disturbing problem there that is 
affecting many thousands of our young people and their families.
  The report also tells us that overall, throughout the whole country, 
there are more than 4 million chronic users of one or more of the drugs 
that I had listed. This is a very, very serious problem. These are 
chronic users, 4 million. About 14 million are current users. They may 
not become chronic abusers, but they are current users of one of these 
various drugs. And so it is a dimension of a problem that cannot be 
dismissed in terms of our social and political agenda.
  The National Office has listed five goals, as I said earlier: First 
to educate our young people; second, to reduce drug-related crimes; 
third, to reduce the social-economic costs of illegal drug use; fourth, 
to shield our frontiers, to close the borders so that the supply does 
not come forward; and, fifth, to do something about our domestic 
sources. This is an issue that I think we can do something about.
  Let us take marijuana as an example. There are currently 11 million 
users of marijuana. Much of the marijuana that is being abused in this 
country is produced in this country. We cannot point a finger at 
another country and say they are the culprits, shut off their supply, 
and this problem will go away. It will not. Because a good deal of 
marijuana is raised within this country. California, my own State of 
Hawaii, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee are listed in this 
report as major growing States of marijuana. And while all attention is 
put on Mexico because of the decertification problem, the report also 
cautions us that another growing, major supplier of marijuana is 
Canada. And so maybe we should look to Canada, also, as a country that 
needs to have a drug policy that we could examine.
  Heroin has about 800,000 chronic users. The purity of heroin is an 
issue, because as it becomes more and more pure, which is the 
phenomenon we are experiencing now, it allows it to be smoked or 
snorted rather than injected. As a consequence, the use of it is 
expanding rather than contracting. The increases are quite significant. 
In 1996, there were an estimated 200,000 heroin chronic users. Today 
there are 325,000 users. And so the numbers are increasing quite 
dramatically.
  The other drug abuse in this country which is causing great alarm 
because of its highly addictive qualities is a drug known as 
methamphetamine, or in some cases with crystal methamphetamines, it is 
referred to as ice. Meth can be manufactured in a bathtub. We refer to 
them as laboratories. But really they are not complicated places where 
the drug is manufactured. It just could be in somebody's kitchen. A 
great deal of it is manufactured within the United States. This is a 
drug that is not dependent upon being trafficked across the borders 
from somewhere. It is being produced and manufactured right within our 
own communities, predominantly in the West. It is highly toxic. So if 
you think that this is a problem only with the producers of meth and 
the consumers, think again, because when this stuff is put into the 
sewer and drains out of the bathtub, it goes into the environment and 
it is becoming a very, very serious, toxic, dangerous, highly polluting 
commodity. Communities are becoming quite alarmed because they have 
ways to detect its disposal in our sewage system. Meth is produced 
primarily in the West, consumed primarily in the West, and we have 
very, very large indications of its use. In one statistic that I saw, 
52 percent of all persons arrested in San Jose were tested positive for 
having used methamphetamines.
  Here is an issue that we have to come to grips with. The DEA seized 
over 4,140 methamphetamine laboratories in the last 4 years. In this 
1998 period, over 2,000 were seized and destroyed. These meth 
operatives, people who go out and sell it and dispose of it, have 
connections with the Mexican drug traders. And so in that sense it is 
the same people that are selling the cocaine and the heroin and so 
forth are also dispersing the methamphetamines. This is a new aspect of 
a problem that is growing and causing tremendous concern.
  We have many, many other issues in terms of our working relationship 
with Mexico. We have various bilateral agreements. It is indicative, to 
me at least as an observer in our discussions and in reading all the 
various materials that I have seen, that the leadership of Mexico, 
President Zedillo and others, his Attorney General and other 
individuals that we spoke with, have a very firm commitment and a will 
to do something about it. It is as though one could look at our own law 
enforcement considerations within the United States and ask the 
question, are we doing enough? I would have to answer no, I do not 
believe we are. That is the same question we put to the Mexican 
Government, are they doing enough, and my answer there would be also, 
no, I do not believe they are doing enough. But I certainly do not 
believe that Mexico should be decertified and cut off from any 
potential agreements or collaboration or cooperation or joint efforts 
to try to do something about the supply of these drugs coming across 
the border.
  This is certainly a very, very critical problem. We have the 
opportunity to debate it and discuss it. I am not sure whether it will 
come up in a legislative matter. There have been bills that have been 
introduced calling for decertification. I hope the Congress does not 
take that step. But neither should the problem be dismissed as 
something that simply comes up once a year and that the country is 
asked to engage upon it only once in 12 months. This is an issue which 
is serious, it is pervasive, it is destroying tens of thousands of 
lives within the United States. It is making

[[Page H1265]]

it impossible for young people to develop as normal human beings 
because their lives have been interjected and contaminated and abused 
by drugs.
  So I feel that while we are taking this issue of the international 
responsibilities that our neighbors have with respect to this issue and 
the complicity that their nonperformance or noncooperation may have to 
the exacerbation of our own problem within the United States, we cannot 
any longer dismiss our responsibility to make sure that everything 
possible is being done. We certainly have the experts, we certainly 
have the science, we have the technology. We have all the means by 
which to detect the movement of individuals, money, and the drugs.

  So I would like to see a much more heavily engaged, much more largely 
financed operation of people within the DEA and within the Justice 
Department helping us to interdict these criminals within our 
community. They have a long list. They tell me thousands of these 
traffickers have been arrested. But so many of them have not been 
brought to justice. So they are out there still, lurking around our 
communities, banking tens of billions of dollars in investments and 
creating this problem which we call money laundering, because this 
money is illegal, it is illicit, it was made from the benefit of 
selling illegal products within the United States. It has no business 
moving into the normal legal commerce of this nation or of any nation. 
And so we need to take greater steps to interdict this money, find out 
where it is, where it is being deposited, which banks, and making sure 
that no benefits, no profit, no advance, no monetary benefits are 
derived from this illegal traffic. That is another area which I feel we 
need to engage the financial interests of this country.
  When you go to Mexico, immediately the big American businesses will 
come to you and say, ``You can't decertify Mexico,'' because billions 
of dollars of our American interests are involved in the trade between 
Mexico and the United States. I certainly will agree to that. There are 
huge connections of involvement between American business and Mexican 
business. But I call upon the American businessmen here in this country 
as well as in Mexico to join forces with the United States in making 
sure that every effort that they can pursue to help us interdict and 
arrest these individuals and bring them to justice be done.
  So I like to look upon this decertification process as an opportunity 
for us to examine our policies, to make sure that we are protecting our 
young people, in the schools we are teaching them about the tremendous 
hazards of drug consumption and how addictive it is and how they must 
stay away from it. We must do everything we can to prevent the adult 
population from engaging in this kind of activity. We have to arrest 
the people who are on the street selling this stuff. We have to also 
engage ourselves with the nearly 2 million people that are in our 
prisons, to make sure that adequate treatment is available to them so 
that when they are released, and they all will be released eventually, 
can go back into society completely rid of any habits they might have 
had previously with regard to drug usage.
  So we have an enormous problem. But the most important, it seems to 
me, for our American communities is to make our streets safe so that 
while we are teaching our young people and have all these treatment and 
prevention programs in place, it is not an easy thing to just walk to 
the street corner and pick up a gram or two of heroin or cocaine or buy 
marijuana or whatever. It should not be something which is that easy to 
do in our communities. I believe that law enforcement agencies need our 
support, they need our commitment to make sure that these laws are 
abided by. They need enough funds to make sure that enough people are 
in their agencies to make it possible for law enforcement activities to 
take place. They need a lot of intelligence. They need a lot of 
undercover agents to ferret out where these activities are taking 
place.
  So we in the Congress have a dual responsibility. We have to make 
sure that adequate resources are being engaged to combat this problem 
within the United States, because demand is an issue. And if we can get 
our hands on an adequate control of the demand that comes from the 
United States to buy these terrible things, then, it seems to me, we 
have an evenhanded policy with other countries by insisting that they 
shut off the supply as well.

                              {time}  1445

  Mr. Speaker, I shall pursue with great vigor, and great enthusiasm 
and a great deal of interest my new responsibilities as the ranking 
member of this subcommittee. I know that I have a great deal more to 
learn about the hazards of this problem, but I am certainly prepared to 
engage myself and my staff on a full and complete examination of this 
issue.
  Before I leave the special order this afternoon, I wanted to indicate 
that the President of the United States does not stand alone on his 
recommendation that Mexico ought to continue its work, and that we 
ought to join forces with them, and cooperate with them and encourage 
them to fulfill their commitment to us and to their own people because 
their own people are suffering just as tragically from what I have 
described as our own internal problem. The Mexican people are also 
suffering.
  So I have here a letter that was recently sent to the President of 
the United States, Mr. Clinton, signed by the Governor of Texas, George 
W. Bush, the Governor of Arizona, Jane Dee Hull, and the Governor of 
New Mexico, Gary E. Johnson, urging the President on behalf of the 
States of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas that they convey their full 
support for the certification of Mexico as a responsible ally in the 
international war against drugs. The letter states we believe that 
under President Zedillo's leadership Mexico's commitment to and 
cooperation in counter narcotics efforts has definitely improved, and 
they support full certification of Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I ask that this 
letter be incorporated at the end of my remarks.
  Mr. Speaker, the Congress will be pursuing this matter of 
certification, our subcommittee will be pursuing the overall national 
policies of drug control within the United States, and I hope that the 
Congress and the people of the United States can be engaged in a fair 
and thorough examination of our own internal domestic crisis and come 
up with a determination and a will to do much better than we are 
currently doing.
                                                   State of Texas,


                                       Office of the Governor,

                                                February 22, 1999.
     Hon. William J. Clinton,
     President of the United States, The White House, Washington, 
         DC.
       Dear President Clinton: On behalf of the States of Arizona, 
     New Mexico and Texas, we are writing to urge your support for 
     full certification of Mexico as a responsible ally in the 
     international war against drugs. We believe that under 
     President Ernesto Zedillo's leadership, Mexico's commitment 
     to and cooperation in counter-narcotics efforts has 
     definitely improved. For this reason, we support full 
     certification of Mexico.
       We maintain that the United States should not undermine 
     Mexico in its effort to control the drug trade, but should 
     demonstrate confidence in Mexico's ability to cooperate and 
     actively participate in a long-term counter-narcotics 
     strategy. Mexico has clearly demonstrated a renewed 
     commitment in the battle against drug trafficking by 
     announcing a $400 million increase in funding for anti-drug 
     operations and agreeing to improve cross-border undercover 
     operations. In addition, Mexico's new three-year plan 
     targeting early detection of drug flights and sea shipments 
     and an increased counter-narcotics role for the Mexican Army 
     should make a significant impact in the number of seizures 
     and arrests.
       It is our belief that de-certification could jeopardize 
     existing and future anti-drug and law enforcement efforts, 
     ultimately impairing the positive relationship between our 
     two nations. Moreover, as Governors of border states, whose 
     economies are interdependent with Mexico, we support full 
     certification because potential economic sanctions against 
     Mexico and decreased development aid resulting from de-
     certification would have a direct negative impact to our 
     states.
       We have confidence in President Zedillo's efforts and 
     commitment to a zero tolerance policy for drugs. Mexico has 
     been steadily on its way back to economic recovery, and de-
     certification would only hinder Mexico's efforts to implement 
     political and economic reforms.
       We thank you in advance for your consideration of our joint 
     position and look forward to working with you to ensure that 
     our congressional leaders support full certification of 
     Mexico as an ally in the war against drugs.
           Sincerely,
     George W. Bush,
       Governor of Texas.
     Jane Dee Hull,
       Governor of Arizona.
     Gary E. Johnson,
       Governor of New Mexico.
       
                                 ____________________