[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 6 (Tuesday, February 1, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H158-H163]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        AMERICA'S PROBLEMS WITH ILLEGAL NARCOTICS AND DRUG ABUSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to return to the floor in really 
the second half of this session of Congress to renew my continued 
efforts to bring to the attention of the Members of this body and the 
American people the problem that we as a Nation face in our

[[Page H159]]

 tremendous problem of illegal narcotics and drug abuse that have 
ravished our land.
  Tonight I will probably begin my 20-something special order of the 
106th Congress by first of all reviewing a little bit of what has taken 
place in some of the omissions of the President in his State of the 
Union Address, particularly in regard to the threat we face as a Nation 
from illegal narcotics.
  Then I would like to focus a bit on a General Accounting Office 
report that I requested last year which is on drug control. It was 
released a few weeks ago, the end of the last year, in December. It is 
entitled ``Assets That DOD Contributes to Reducing the Illegal Drug 
Supply Have Declined.'' I will speak about that particular report that 
I requested, along with one of my colleagues from the other body.
  Tonight again I think it is important that I cover and the Congress 
pay attention to items relating to illegal narcotics and drug abuse 
that were not mentioned by the President of the United States, and as 
this problem affects our state of the Union.
  Just a few days ago, last week, the President took the podium behind 
me and he gave only glancing lines, one or two lines, a sentence or 
two, in a very lengthy presentation to the Congress and the American 
people on the State of the Union, and in particular, with regard to 
illegal narcotics and drug abuse. I will try to fill in some of the 
gaps in what really is probably the most serious problem facing us as a 
Nation, the most difficult social and judicial problem that we face, 
and one that I have a small responsibility in trying to develop a 
policy for in the Congress, particularly in the House of 
Representatives, as chair of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug 
Policy, and Human Resources.
  I think that anyone who just takes a few minutes to look at social 
problems facing us has to be struck by the sheer magnitude of the 
illegal narcotics problem. Since President Clinton took office in 1993, 
and he did not mention these figures, nearly 100,000 Americans have 
lost their lives as a direct result of illegal narcotics, overdoses and 
activities related to illegal narcotics and drug abuse. That is only 
the tip of the iceberg because there are many, many tens of thousands 
of other deaths related to illegal narcotics that are not even reported 
in statistics and in the numbers that I have cited.
  Just in the most recent reporting period, over 15,900 Americans lost 
their lives as a result of narcotics in our land. The problem is not 
diminishing, the problem is in fact growing. That is confirmed by just 
about every statistical report our subcommittee has received, and also 
by the sheer facts that we see in picking up our daily newspapers, 
whether it is in our Nation's Capital, Washington, D.C., or throughout 
this land.
  This problem we did not hear the President talk about has resulted in 
the incarceration of an unprecedented number of Americans, with over 
1.9 million Americans in jail today. It is estimated 60 to 70 percent 
of those individuals behind bars are there because of drug-related 
offenses.
  The toll goes on and on. The most recent statistic cited in this GAO 
report has identified $110 billion in costs to our economy.

                              {time}  2030

  And if all the costs related with this social problem are added up, 
it could be as much as $250 billion a year.
  So the cost is dramatic. The cost in dollars is dramatic, but the 
cost in destroyed lives across this land is absolutely incredible.
  Mr. Speaker, it is something to talk to parents who have lost a young 
life and drugs, illegal narcotics particularly, impact our youth 
population. But to try to understand the agony of people that must deal 
with addiction, the agony of people that have young or adult 
individuals in their family hooked on illegal narcotics, the ravages 
that this has done to our economy and what could otherwise be 
productive lives is just untold.
  So we have a problem that has been swept under the table. It was not 
mentioned by the President in his address, but again except a glancing 
and I think talking briefly about aid to Colombia, and I will talk 
about that very shortly.
  But we got into this particular situation not by accident, I believe, 
because in the 1980s under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan 
and President George Bush, we began a decline. At that point we had a 
cocaine epidemic and drug epidemic in the early 1980s that we were 
beginning to get under control. If we look at the statistics, we see 
clear evidence that, in fact, drug use and prevalence of drugs, 
particularly among our young people was on the decline. That there was, 
in fact, a war on drugs in the 1980s and the beginning of 1989.
  Mr. Speaker, that multifaceted and comprehensive program was, in 
fact, dismantled beginning in 1993 with the Clinton administration 
taking office. Very purposefully, the President began dismantling that 
effort. Some of that dismantling is detailed in this report that I 
requested. And, again, not my statistics, but actual statistics 
compiled by and information compiled independently by the General 
Accounting Office we will go over a bit tonight.
  But the first thing that was done was the dismantling of the drug 
czar's office which was slashed from 120 staffers to 20 staffers. I 
ask, how can we conduct a war or a concentrated effort against 
narcotics, against the scourge of drugs by slashing the command 
structure? I say that is impossible, but that was the very first step 
in this process.
  The next step, and I brought these charts up before, but let me just 
bring them out again, was dramatic declines starting in 1992-93, here 
we see dramatic declines in drug spending for international programs. 
Now, many people might wonder what international programs are. 
International programs would be stopping drugs at their source.
  So this war on drugs or fighting a war on drugs is not really rocket 
science. It does not take somebody years and years to develop a 
strategy, because we know that 100 percent of the cocaine that is 
produced, I will say 99.5 percent of it that is produced, there might 
be a little bit somewhere else, but we know that it is produced in 
Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. Again, not rocket science.
  We know that it is very cost-effective for a source country 
eradication program to deal with the problem. We tried it and if we 
eliminate drugs where they are grown, coca that produces cocaine in a 
limited area of the world where it can be grown, we do not have a lot 
of cocaine production. Simple.
  We also know that today some 65 to 70 percent of the heroin produced 
in the world that is on our streets, and we know factually that it is 
on our streets from the fields of Colombia, comes from, in fact, 
Colombia. We know where the heroin comes from that is spilling over in 
unbelievable quantities on our streets and throughout our communities.
  The reason that we have incredible supply of drugs in this country is 
basically because in 1993-1994, during the Clinton administration and a 
Democrat-controlled Congress, they made a very direct decision to cut 
these cost-effective eradication crop alternative and drug programs in 
source countries.
  Actually, this chart shows the 1995-96, the period the new majority 
and Republicans took over, that we have begun to restore funds. If we 
use 1992 dollars in 1999, we are just about back to the 1995 levels.
  The same thing happened in interdiction. Let me put this chart up if 
I may. Again, we are going to stop and think about this. It is a common 
sense approach. If they cannot produce drugs and we stop them at their 
source, we have stopped some of the supply. Now, the next most cost-
effective way to stop illegal narcotics and a huge supply from reaching 
our streets is simple. It is to stop it as it is leaving the source 
where it is produced. That can be very cost-effectively done, as the 
Reagan administration demonstrated and the Bush administration, with 
interdiction programs.
  We brought the military into the process in the 1980's, not for our 
military to be law enforcement officers, not for them to conduct combat 
against illegal narcotics traffickers, but to provide surveillance 
intelligence information.

  Now, first of all we have to realize that our military is conducting 
this around the world all the time. I must admit some of our resources 
have been strained to the limit because this President has deployed 
more forces in

[[Page H160]]

various deployments throughout the world than probably any President in 
the history of the Nation. But in any event, we have in this arena for 
the most part military, and we have resources in this area. So what 
they have been supplying is intelligence, surveillance, and 
information. That is the interdiction program heart and soul.
  Now, again, using the military in this fashion, again, 1993, we see a 
dramatic reduction. In fact, a 50 percent slash. This GAO report which 
I will cite tonight details even more what took place. It is pretty 
startling what took place about taking the military and our assets out 
of this effort.
  Again, if we look back here in the Republican administration 
actually, the Republican control of the House of Representatives and 
the other body in 1995-96, we began to restore the funds. And, again, 
because of 1992 dollars versus 1999 dollars, we are just about back at 
those levels. But, in fact, it has been very difficult to put together 
those resources. Again, in interdiction programs also with a Department 
of Defense, which this report outlines that has not really been willing 
to cooperate, and an administration, starting with the Commander in 
Chief who has not wanted to conduct a real cost-effective and targeted 
war on illegal narcotics.
  So, again, stopping drugs at the source is most cost-effective, and 
then the second most cost-effective thing is getting the drugs as they 
are coming from the source. What is interesting too is that practice, 
and what I am talking about in interdiction really does not require 
forces of the United States to go after these. These would be primarily 
giving intelligence and working in a cooperative international effort 
with countries like Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia where the heroin and 
cocaine is produced. We then allow them, and they have, except where 
the administration has blocked the information and the intelligence, 
gone after the drug traffickers, in some cases shot them down or had 
the information and the surveillance fed to them so that they could 
cost effectively go after drugs as they came from the source but before 
they reached our border.
  Now, this administration has picked the least cost-effective way of 
going after the war on drugs in my opinion. In 1992 or 1993, they began 
an effort to, in fact, put most of our war on drugs in the treatment 
category. Most of the expenditures from the Congress were dedicated or 
redirected towards treatment. Now, treatment by itself is very 
necessary, but alone it will not solve the problem. And it is very 
costly and sometimes fairly ineffective, particularly public sponsored 
treatment programs which have a 60 to 70 percent failure rate.
  I compare this a little bit, if one is going to conduct a war, they 
target the source, which was not done by the Clinton administration. 
Then one tries to get at the target as the destruction comes from the 
source, which is interdiction. This method of the Clinton 
administration has been pretty much just treating the wounded in the 
battle, and that is those who were afflicted by illegal narcotics.
  In fact, we have almost doubled since 1993 the amount of money for 
treatment. Now, the President also came up with his 100,000 cops on the 
street and put the Congress in a bind to fund those. We have funded 
those. I submit tonight that that is probably one of the most costly 
approaches to fighting this war on drugs. And we can continue to put 
cops on the street, it can be effective. Tough enforcement can be very 
effective. But it is a costly way of doing it, as opposed to putting a 
few dollars at the source country to stop drugs before they ever get to 
the street.
  The difficulty is once they reach our borders, illegal narcotics, it 
is almost impossible for all the law enforcement agencies at every 
level, whether it is local, State or national, to get all the drugs; 
particularly in the huge quantities that are coming across our borders, 
again, because the drugs have not been stopped at their source.
  So there has been, in my estimation, a major flaw in the whole 
strategy of the Clinton administration and really a misappropriation of 
resources in this effort. The results are pretty dramatic. In fact, let 
me leave this interdiction chart up here. Let me show here the long-
term trend and lifetime prevalence of heroin use. As we see in the 
Reagan and Bush administration, there is some activity here and a 
decline, activity, and a decline. With the institution of the Clinton-
Gore policy in 1992-93 here, this is where it would take effect, we see 
a dramatic rise in the prevalence of heroin use.
  It is amazing how this chart, if we took it and had an overlay of the 
previous two charts, would show, again, the failure of the current drug 
policy of this administration.

                              {time}  2045

  That is probably why President Clinton did not want to talk about it 
the other night when he came before the Congress. We see here a slight 
decline, and that is with the advent of a Republican-controlled policy 
and the beginning of our trying to get resources back in place.
  One of the problems we have here is the Clinton administration 
blocking assistance to Colombia. It was their policy that got us into a 
situation where the President next week is going to make a request to 
the Congress for $1.5 or $1.6 billion. Now, he sort of mumbled over the 
situation in Colombia, but Colombia, in his term of office, has become 
the major producer of cocaine and heroin.
  Again, in 1992-1993, there was almost no coca production in Colombia. 
Almost no heroin production. Almost zip in Colombia. And what the 
President did through very direct actions, and I will be glad to detail 
them for the House of Representatives, he actually began the increase 
of heroin and cocaine production in Colombia.
  The first step was in 1994. And having served in the House of 
Representatives during the 1993-1994 period, let me detail what took 
place. I served on the committee that oversaw drug policy. I was in the 
minority at that time. I personally requested and had 130-plus Members, 
Republicans and Democrats, request a hearing on this change that the 
Clinton administration had made, on the Clinton's so-called drug 
policy, the changes that were made. Because I saw then the beginning of 
a disaster. That request was ignored. One hearing was held. One hearing 
specifically on the drug policy. There were cursory hearings on the 
budget items.
  In contrast, when the Republicans took control of the House of 
Representatives, we held dozens and dozens of hearings, both under Mr. 
Zeliff, who chaired the subcommittee with drug policy responsibility, 
and then under the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), who is now 
the Speaker of the House and former chairman who was involved in 
restarting most of the anti-narcotics effort in the Congress, and 
particularly in the House of Representatives as chair of that 
subcommittee.
  But the first step in this disaster and how we were going to end up, 
the taxpayers of this country, with a $15.5, $1.6 billion next week, is 
that on May 1, 1994, the sharing of drug trafficking intelligence and 
information with the governments of Peru and Colombia ceased. This was 
a, and I am sorry to put this into the Record, but a cockamamie plan 
and decision by the administration and out of the Department of Defense 
under the Clinton administration, that we would cease sharing 
intelligence information with Colombia.
  Actually, this raised the ire on both sides of the aisle. And I 
remember meeting the President at the Hemispheric Conference in Miami. 
He was inundated by protest from Members on both sides of the aisle, 
and in a closed-door meeting he said he did not know that this had 
taken place. In fact, the administration fought us in trying to restart 
this effort, claiming they needed additional legislative authority.
  And I might say that the House of Representatives and the Congress 
did act. And a GAO report in May of 1994 said the decision of the 
administration to not share this information with Colombia made life 
easier for drug traffickers. But Congress did step in, passed a law 
that would require the administration to provide intelligence and 
information. And even then, after that took place and the damage that 
was done from that, the administration continued to block aid and 
assistance to Colombia.
  Incidentally, in January of 1995, under heavy pressure from both 
Democrats and Republicans, the intelligence

[[Page H161]]

sharing was resumed. The problem was again in actions by the 
administration, this administration, to cut off assistance to Colombia 
so it could effectively bring a halt to narcotics trafficking and 
narcoterrorism in its country.
  In 1995 to 1996, I remember writing a request to the administration 
and to others to try to get aid to that country. In 1997, critically 
needed law enforcement assistance, such as helicopters, to replace 
those shot down; defensive ammunition and ballistic protective 
equipment was delayed by the Department of Defense.
  I also brought, and was able to find, a letter dated August 25, 1994, 
asking the then drug czar to respond to Mr. Clinger about information, 
intelligence sharing, with the governments of Colombia. And this was in 
response to protests from Congress about the policy that the 
administration had adopted dealing with providing that needed 
intelligence information to Colombia. I just thought it was interesting 
that we have good documentation of showing exactly how this 
administration and various agencies thwarted every attempt of the 
Congress and request of the Congress to get needed critical equipment 
to Colombia.
  Unfortunately, the policy of decertifying Colombia as not 
participating in the war on drugs was inappropriately handled by the 
administration. Having dealt in the development of that law in the 
1980s, there is a provision in decertification law to allow the 
President, when they consider whether a country should be eligible for 
aid and assistance, to grant a national interest waiver so that 
assistance, such as counternarcotics aid, can get to that country. The 
administration failed to implement the waiver and kept any type of 
assistance in the war on drugs from reaching Colombia during a critical 
period.

  So first we take away information sharing up to 1995, and then from 
1995 into 1998 we decertify Colombia and not make it eligible in a 
manner that could be done with a waiver to get aid and assistance so 
they could find narcoterrorism and drug production and trafficking in 
that country. The results are absolutely incredible.
  As I said, now we have 65 to 75 percent of the heroin that enters the 
United States coming from Colombia. We have a majority of the cocaine 
produced in Colombia today. And again, some 6 or 7 years ago Colombia 
was not even in the production business of either of these hard 
narcotics.
  Tonight I wanted to focus on a report that I requested, and requested 
it last year with the Senate caucus chairman on International Narcotics 
Control, the Honorable Charles Grassley. This report, prepared by the 
GAO, details exactly what we suspected about this administration's 
policy. The GAO report is entitled ``Assets DOD Contributes to Reducing 
the Illegal Drug Supply Have Declined.''
  The report details some of that decline, and again the Clinton 
administration's dismantling of anything that could be termed even 
close to a war on drugs. The report states, in fact on page 4, the 
number of flight hours dedicated to detecting and monitoring illicit 
drug shipments declined from approximately 46,000 to 15,000, or a 68 
percent decline from 1992 through 1999. Likewise, the GAO report says 
that the number of shipped days declined from about 4,800 to 1,800, or 
62 percent over the same period.
  Again, this report details a dismantling of any type of an effort 
that might even be termed close to a war on drugs. The decline in DOD 
assets that DOD uses to carry out its counter-drug responsibility is, 
according to this report, due to a lower priority assigned to the 
counter-drug mission and, secondly, they say, to reduction in defense 
budgets and force levels.
  Now, I might say that most of the reductions, and we looked at the 
interdiction, most of the reductions to the war on drug effort were 
instituted in 1993-1994 by a Democrat-controlled Congress. Only in the 
last several years have we been able to up the spending in the defense 
category. And even some of the money that we have appropriated for 
anti-narcotics efforts has been diverted, according to this report. And 
even some of the assets have been diverted to other deployments, 
according to this report, such as Kosovo, Haiti, and other activities 
directed by the President.
  The GAO report also is very critical of DOD's really basic activities 
or commitments in the war on drugs. It says that DOD has failed to 
develop measures to assess the effectiveness of its counter-drug 
activities and recommends that such a system of measuring the 
effectiveness of its counter-drug activities be instituted.
  DOD officials noted that the level of counter-drug assets will 
continue to be restrained by DOD's requirement to satisfy other 
priorities. So basically, drugs have not become a priority.
  It is also interesting to see the results of the change in policy by 
the administration. And again I just want to show what has taken place 
since 1980 with Ronald Reagan and the long-term trend in lifetime 
prevalence of drug use. In the 1980s we see the beginning of a decline 
down through the end of President Reagan's term, and on down to a 
bottom when President Bush left office. The policy adopted by this 
administration, back again in 1993, with the election of President 
Clinton and Vice President Gore, shows a steep return to the prevalence 
of drug use. And this is lifetime drug use.
  If we took this chart and just showed our youth, the statistics are 
even more dramatic.

                              {time}  2100

  Now, this report that again I bring before the House tonight, the GAO 
report on the decline of our military assets in the war on drugs, has 
some startling information and comments. I want to take them right out 
of the report.
  According to General Wilhelm, and General Wilhelm is the general in 
charge of SOUTHCOM, SOUTHCOM is the Southern Command, which is in 
charge really of this surveillance operation, the detection and 
interdiction effort. According to General Wilhelm, the Southern Command 
commander, the Command can only detect and monitor 15 percent of key 
routes in the overall drug trafficking area about 15 percent of the 
time. And this is in the report, and I met with General Wilhelm during 
the recess and he confirmed this statement.
  What is even of greater concern and should be a concern to every 
Member of Congress and every American citizen is not only have they 
closed down any semblance of the war on drugs and cost-effectively 
dismantled interdiction and we are down to this capability, but even as 
this report was written, we had the further damage done to this whole 
effort by the United States last May being dislodged from Howard Air 
Force base in Panama.
  Almost all of the operations for forward surveillance and forward 
operating locations in the war on drugs is located at Howard Air Force 
Base in Panama. All flights ceased last May 1. So we have had an 
incredible gap left wide.
  That is why we continue to see incredible amounts of heroin. And this 
is not the heroin of the 1980s that was 10 percent pure. This is the 
heroin of the 1990s that is now 70 and 80 percent pure. That is why we 
continue to see the death and destruction that we see.
  I come from an area that has had heroin overdose deaths, particularly 
among its young people, that now exceed the homicides in Central 
Florida. And I represent one of the most prosperous, well-educated 
districts in the Nation. So we have seen an incredible number of 
deaths.
  I met with local law enforcement officials and particularly the High 
Intensity Drug Traffic Area Group that I helped establish to deal with 
this problem of, again, drugs coming into our region in Central 
Florida. I met with them during the recess, and I was stunned to hear 
their commentary that the deaths have basically leveled out. We have 
still a record number of deaths but they have leveled out some. But the 
overdoses continue to explode.
  The only reason that the deaths are not greater in my area and other 
areas is that medical emergency treatment has become better in helping 
save young lives and people who suffer from drug overdose. That is sort 
of a sad commentary that we have even more overdoses, and the only way 
that we are really making any slight progress is through additional and 
swifter and better medical treatment for overdose folks.
  But if my colleagues want to know where the illegal narcotics are 
coming from, this basically says that the war

[[Page H162]]

on drugs was closed down in 1993 by the Clinton administration. It does 
not paint a very pretty picture and I know that people are not happy to 
see this by the commander of our Southern Command who is in charge of 
that effort, but that basically is what has taken place.
  The report is even more disturbing in that in this chart we conducted 
a hearing the morning of the President's State of the Union address on 
January 27 and had DOD, the Coast Guard, and U.S. Customs come in, 
whose activities are also detailed in this record, but we use this 
chart and it is taken right from the report again and it shows that in 
the blue here it shows the requested assets of the Department of 
Defense by SOUTHCOM.
  So our commander who is in charge of the interdiction, the important 
part of keeping drugs from our shores, requested, and these are his 
requests in blue and part of the graph here in red is what asset he 
received from DOD.
  So we see the requests here again in blue and the red is actually 
what he got. This is even more disheartening because Congress has put 
more money into defense and defense in this administration are 
providing fewer and fewer assets in the war on drugs.
  Now, I take great exception to anyone who tells me that the war on 
drugs is a failure. Because the war on drugs, and I can bring back the 
chart of the Clinton administration and the Bush-Reagan administration, 
here, my colleagues, is the failure. It is very evident. This details 
exactly what took place. That is the failure. And how in heaven's name 
can Congress appropriate additional money to DOD, and we have 
appropriated some of the first increases since again the fall of 
communism and the Berlin Wall to defense.
  Now, I know a lot of that has been diverted to Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, 
and Somalia, but even in this scenario it is just unbelievable that 
very few assets and the policy of this administration has diverted 
assets again from this effort.
  Now they are coming forward with an emergency appropriation for 
Colombia. The situation in Colombia, as I said, was really generated by 
direct policy decisions of this administration, and we are now going to 
pay for them in a very big way with a very big tab. But this shows 
again the lack of putting any real cost-effective method of fighting 
illegal narcotics.
  This chart, and I will hold it up for just a minute, shows the 
decline in the assets that DOD contributes to reducing illegal drugs. 
And in this chart, this center red here shows DOD decline. A little bit 
of the slack has been taken up since 1995 by the Coast Guard, which is 
in this line, I believe it is green, you are dealing with a color blind 
Member of Congress; and this blue line here is the total assets 
contributed.
  So some of the slack has been taken up by the Coast Guard and also by 
U.S. Customs. That is the only reason things are not even worse today 
even with the commitment that the new majority has made since 1995 in 
the war on drugs.
  And again this is the result of what we see today. And these are the 
latest statistics on heroin. This is provided to me by DEA, our Drug 
Enforcement Agency, and they can tell us because of scientific 
analysis, just like DNA analysis, where heroin is coming from. We know 
South America, and this is all Colombia, 65 to 70 percent is coming 
from there.
  What is scary here is the chart I got from 1997 shows Mexico, which 
again in the early 1990s was a very very small producer of heroin, is 
now a 17-percent producer. And that is also I think directly as a 
result of this administration's policy of give Mexico every possible 
trade benefit, give Mexico every possible financial benefit, give 
Mexico access to our financial and international assistance programs, 
and get nothing in return.
  And what we have gotten in return is an increase in heroin produced 
in that country. And then southeast Asia produces about 14 percent. But 
the bulk of the heroin that we have seen that is flooding into our 
streets and our communities, and we have to remember that this red 
portion would not even have appeared in the early 1990s has been as a 
direct result of not targeting, going after, the source of illegal 
narcotics and again in a very cost effective way.
  Now, you may say can that be effective. Let me say, since 1995 when 
we took over, I went with Mr. Zeliff and then also with the gentleman 
from Illinois (Mr. Hastert) who chaired this subcommittee into Peru and 
Bolivia. We met with President Fujimori, we met with Hugo Banzer Suarez 
and other leaders of those countries and asked what will it take to 
reduce cocaine production. And we got small amounts of money, it is 
almost insignificant in the amounts of money that we are spending and 
the impact on our economy, but somewhere between $20 million or $40 
million out of $178 billion to those countries.
  In 2 years of work and 2 years of planning, we have been able to 
reduce the cocaine production in Bolivia by 53 percent and by almost 60 
percent in Peru, which is absolutely remarkable. So very little money 
has helped curtail that.
  Now, there is one problem that we have seen, and in fact that is 
production of cocaine, and this is from one of the newspapers just a 
few days ago, January 19 in an Associated Press, ``Cocaine Production 
Surges in Colombia.''
  Why is it surging in Colombia? Because the resources that Colombia 
has requested still have not gotten to Colombia, the resources that 
this Congress appropriated to Colombia. We appropriated $300 million to 
Colombia in the last fiscal year, which ended in December. We are into 
October in a new fiscal year.

  To date, this administration has continued to block or bungle getting 
aid to Colombia. The record is just unbelievable.
  Now, my colleagues may have heard that Colombia is now the third 
largest recipient of United States foreign assistance. Well, that would 
be all well and great and factual if they got that money. But, in fact, 
the record of this administration in blocking and thwarting and 
bungling getting aid to Colombia is just unbelievable.
  Our hearing helped detail some of that. Our closed-door meetings with 
the Department of Defense, Department of State and other agencies 
indicated a horrible job and failure in getting assistance there.
  Let us take a minute and look at what has happened with the $300 
million that Congress appropriated in the past fiscal year. Where is 
that money? Less than $100 million, a third of that, is actually in 
Colombia today. Most of $100 million, or one-third of that, is in the 
form of three Blackhawk helicopters.
  It is absolutely unbelievable. It is mind boggling. Every Member of 
Congress should be contacting the Department of State tomorrow and 
asking why those helicopters that we have given to and asked for for 3 
or 4 years and finally gotten down to Colombia late last fall are still 
not flying because they do not have protective armor, they do not have 
ammunition to even conduct combat or participate in the war on drugs.

                              {time}  2115

  What an incredible bungling. We did not hear anything about that from 
the President when he spoke at the podium last week. We will not hear 
about that next week when the President asks for $1.5 or $1.6 billion 
of hard-earned taxpayer money. We will not also hear the incredible 
story, I do not have this totally documented but I am told by staff 
that during the holidays when everyone was concerned about the 
terrorist threat and everything, that the ammunition that was to be 
delivered years ago and requested and appropriated partly through the 
$300 million and even promised before that as surplus material for the 
war on drugs to Colombia, the ammunition was delivered to the back door 
loading dock of the State Department. This in fact is not only the 
administration that closed down the war on drugs, this is the 
administration that bungled the war on drugs. I do not mind putting 
whatever resource we can cost effectively into these countries to 
combat illegal narcotics. But what an incredible fiasco to find out 
that the helicopters that we paid for still are not conducting a war on 
drugs, to find out they are not armed, to find out they are idled, to 
find out that the ammunition we have requested time and time again 
cannot even be delivered to the country in an orderly and timely 
fashion.

[[Page H163]]

  And what do we see? Cocaine production surges in Colombia. Now, I 
wonder why.
  This report also details an incredible story about a request from the 
United States Ambassador to Peru. Now, that would be a Clinton 
appointee. The U.S. Ambassador to Peru on page 17 and 18 of this report 
warned in an October 1998 letter to the State Department that the 
reduction in air support could have a serious impact on the price of 
coca and coca production in Peru. Here we put in place a very cost-
effective and effective program and we have gotten a 60 percent 
reduction in cocaine and coca production in Peru. The Ambassador asked 
for assistance and warned that the reduction that is detailed here, the 
reduction that this administration has directed basically taking us out 
of this effort is going to result in additional coca production. I was 
stunned to learn by information provided to me at the Southcom briefing 
in Miami by our leaders down there that for the first time they are now 
seeing an increase in production of cocaine and coca in Peru again. It 
is incredible that we cannot get minimal resources and cost-effective 
resources to the source countries to stop illegal narcotics production 
and then get the drugs before they get to our shores, interdict them 
and at least provide the intelligence and surveillance information to 
countries that have the will like President Fujimora who instituted a 
shootdown policy. The drug dealers go up and they shot them down. Some 
people did not want us to provide that information to the government of 
Peru. Some people said that was cruel and unusual punishment on those 
drug dealers. I would like to take those who believe that and let them 
talk to the mothers and fathers in my district that have lost a young 
person to drug overdose. I would like to take them to the 15,900 
Americans who just in 1 year to their families, the survivors who have 
lost a loved one and see what they think about this failed policy.
  I think it is also important to see what this policy has wrought on 
this Nation of late. Just during the recess in the last few days, there 
was a report, and actually this is from last week, this is January 27, 
ironically the same day the President stood a few feet from where I am 
now standing and talked to us about the State of the Union. He did not 
talk about the State of the Union in this headline: Drug Use Explodes 
in Rural America. Not only have our urban centers been decimated by 
illegal narcotics, not only has now our suburban area, the other parts 
of the country, and I represent a suburban area that had really not 
been victim here, but now, thanks to this great policy and this great 
failure, we have managed to make our rural areas a killing fields. The 
statistics are unbelievable. The percent of eighth graders who said 
they used a drug at least once, the highest percentage of this use in 
marijuana, cocaine, crack, heroin and amphetamines is now in our rural 
areas. We did not hear the President talk about that. Nor did we hear 
him talk about this failed policy. And now we know why, because the 
legacy of this administration to address the most serious social 
problem we face in our Nation, that is again destroying countless 
lives, that again is impacting our youth in every part of our country, 
metropolitan, suburban and now rural, we see why we have gotten 
ourselves into this situation by again failed policies.

  It is nice to talk about who failed, and I do not want to be partisan 
in that, but I think people must be held accountable. I should also 
report that the Republican majority has begun to put this effort back 
together. We have begun to restore the cost-effective programs, the one 
I described in stopping cocaine production in Peru and Bolivia. We 
would like to restart it in Colombia, but we need an administration 
that is capable of at least delivering the resources to our allies in 
this effort and restarting a real war on drugs where the drugs are 
produced, where the drugs are coming from. Additionally, we have 
brought the Coast Guard back and United States customs and provided 
additional funding and resources. We are back up to the 1992-1993 
funding levels for that.
  Now, we know that just restarting interdiction and source country 
programs is not the answer. I had proposed legislation that would 
require our media and particularly those broadcast media, because I 
know television, radio impact our lives and particularly our young 
people, influence their opinion more than just about anything today. 
But I had proposed that they devote more of their time. In fact, we 
mandate that that time, public airtime be given to drug messages and 
not just at odd hours but throughout prime time. The President, of 
course, has had a different approach, which was spending, and he 
proposed expenditure and purchase of those. The compromise, and, of 
course, we must deal in a compromise situation to get anything done 
here because we have a great diversity and a very narrow majority, the 
compromise was a plan that combined my plan with the President's plan, 
and we have $1 billion appropriated for 3 years for drug education, we 
are 1 year into it, and the other part of the compromise was to have at 
least a match in donated time. We are 1 year into it. I am not real 
pleased with the beginning. I thought it was not a good start. 
Hopefully we will have even more effective drug and antinarcotics ads, 
education ads for our young people and adults, because it is important 
that education along with eradication, interdiction, enforcement and 
also treatment be part of a multifaceted approach.
  I look forward to working with my colleagues and bringing that 
multifaceted approach. I am pleased to report again on this issue to 
the Congress and the American people.

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