[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 14 (Tuesday, February 15, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H437-H442]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      ILLEGAL NARCOTICS IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kingston). 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 come before the House again on a Tuesday 
night to talk about the subject of illegal narcotics and how it affects 
our Nation.
  Today we conducted an almost 6-hour hearing on the administration's 
proposal to expend more than a billion dollars in taxpayer funds in an 
effort to bring the situation in Colombia under control; and tonight I 
would like to speak part of my special order pointed toward that 
hearing and some commentary on that hearing.
  I would also like to review some of the things that have taken place 
in the last week both in my State of Florida with a Florida drug summit 
and also here in Washington with an international drug summit, which I 
was one of the cohosts, along with the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Hastert), the Speaker of the House, and with the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Gilman), chairman of the Committee on International 
Relations, and also with the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), full 
chairman of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight.
  As my colleagues may know, I chair the Subcommittee on Criminal 
Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources of the Committee on Government 
Reform. And, of course, the responsibility for national drug policy in 
trying to make some sense out of what we have been doing in our anti-
narcotics effort really rests with that subcommittee.
  So today we had a hearing, last week a summit at the national level, 
and a continuation of efforts at the local level.
  Let me just mention, if I may, the international drug summit, which 
was held for 2 days last week here in the Nation's capital. If you look 
at the war on drugs, and the international problems relating to 
narcotics, you see that you cannot win an effort by yourself. The 
United States cannot stand alone and combat illegal narcotics 
trafficking, illegal narcotics production, illegal narcotics 
interdiction and enforcement and eradication.
  It is really a simple thing to determine to look at the pattern of 
production of hard narcotics, illegal narcotics, to look at the path of 
illegal narcotics, and then the problems that we all have when they 
reach their source, the various countries.

                              {time}  1930

  Quickly you realize that the United States, even the powerful United 
States Congress, cannot legislate or dictate solutions to this 
international problem. But the problem is not that complicated, and I 
wanted to show something that was brought before our international drug 
summit last week. In that summit, we brought together probably the 
largest gathering of parliament members from various congresses and 
parliaments around the world to Washington. We had law enforcement 
leaders, including individuals from Scotland Yard, Interpol, Europol, 
DEA, other major drug enforcement agencies.
  In addition, we had some of the leaders in treatment. Dr. Leshner, 
the head of NIDA, National Institute on Drug Abuse, came, along with 
others who were involved in successful treatment and prevention 
programs. General McCaffrey addressed the group. The Speaker of the 
House, Dennis Hastert who is intimately knowledgeable about this whole 
problem, chaired the subcommittee responsibility antinarcotics efforts 
in the House before he became Speaker, and a whole array of others who 
were involved in antinarcotics efforts.
  This was not my idea; it was something that I agreed to cohost along 
with the others I have mentioned, and it was a follow-up to real 
efforts that were undertaken by one of the United Kingdom members of 
the European parliament, and that was Sir Jack Stewart-Clark who 
initiated the first international meeting some 3 years ago.
  The second international meeting was held last year just outside of 
Vienna. I had an opportunity to attend, with the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Gilman) and others, and participate behind closed doors in a 
meeting to discuss an international narcotics strategy. So we agreed to 
cohost with the United Nations Office of Drug Control Policy and its 
director, a wonderful gentleman, very talented, Pino Arlacchi, who 
again heads that office in the U.N.
  This third summit, bringing together everybody who deals with this 
problem and look at how we could cooperatively tackle this and get a 
global approach and solution. We can look at the globe, and this 
happens to be a cocaine trafficking route, we see the problems created 
by cocaine. Now, cocaine, one does not have to be a rocket scientist or 
study the problem of cocaine trafficking very long, because there are 
only three countries that produce coca and cocaine. They are Peru, 
Bolivia, and Colombia.
  One hundred percent of the world's supply of cocaine comes from that 
area, but it trafficks throughout the world. So all of the nations have 
an interest in that particular drug trafficking. Cocaine now has really 
surged in production the last year or two, and particularly in Colombia 
where the United States let down its guard some years ago. And as a 
result of an effort really that was instituted by the Speaker of the 
House, Mr. Hastert, and his predecessor, Mr. Zeliff, myself, and others 
who, when we assumed responsibility for the House of Representatives 
leading the majority, the new majority in 1995, went down to those 
source countries to look at firsthand what had taken place.
  Most of our antinarcotics programs from 1993 to 1995 were slashed by 
the Clinton administration. They were cut out in many instances or, in 
most cases, halved. We went into the jungles and saw that in fact the 
resources were not there to stop the production of coca. We worked with 
two countries in particular, Peru and Bolivia, and their leaders, in 
Bolivia Hugo Banzer and a dynamic Vice President Jorge Guerra and 
others from that country who were willing to step forward and take a

[[Page H438]]

stand against cocaine trafficking and coca production.
  There has been a dramatic decrease, some 55 percent decrease in some 
3 years in Bolivia in coca production. We went on to Peru and met with 
President Fujimori and have worked with him over the past couple of 
years. President Fujimori inherited a country that was fraught with 
turmoil, with Marxist and terrorist operations throughout the country 
that destabilized Peru just some 9 or 10 years ago. It was an 
intolerable situation.
  He brought that country under control. Meeting with us and working 
through programs he established in Peru, he has been able to cut coca 
production by 60 percent. Now, this is the good news. I do not want to 
say the United States or Mr. Hastert, myself, and others should take 
credit for that but it was not done all by the United States. It was 
also supported by the international community through the United 
Nations Office of Drug Control Policy and also under the leadership of 
Pino Arlacchi.
  I might just as an aside tell the Members about Pino Arlacchi. Pino 
Arlacchi is the Italian prosecutor who helped take down the Mafia and 
organized crime in Italy. He came on board and almost single-handedly 
led the effort to destroy the entrenched mob in Italy and did an 
outstanding job. He made Italy a country that is really free of the 
organized crime and corruption and did it single-handedly and then was 
chosen to lead the U.N. Office of Drug Control Policy.

  I might also say that as a conservative Republican, it is sort of an 
odd fellow combination, myself and the head of the U.N. Office of Drug 
Control Policy. Although I have been a critic of the U.N. and some of 
the bureaucracy it has built up and some of its ineffectiveness, I do 
realize that we need international cooperative efforts, and I think 
that drug control and a global drug strategy working together is very 
important. Also it is important to know that the United Nations effort, 
while it does work with the United States and Peru and also in Bolivia, 
there are countries that we have no relations with that are major 
producers.
  In fact, if we could look at heroin production, 75 percent of the 
heroin in the world is produced in Afghanistan. The United States has 
no relations really and at best very strained relations with 
Afghanistan. But yet 75 percent of the entire world production of 
heroin comes from Afghanistan. It is in our interest to see that that 
activity is curtailed.
  So through the United Nations and through a program that Pino 
Arlacchi has championed and successfully put together, even talking 
with the Taliban and other groups in Afghanistan, again with which we 
have no communications, he is doing an effective effort, and the few 
dollars, the limited dollars, I believe it is around the $50 million 
mark over the last couple of years, that we have put into that effort 
and the few dollars he spends are very effectively spent.
  They are spent in the Golden Triangle, some in Cambodia and Burma and 
Laos and other areas in which we do not have influence. He has had a 
successful program for the most part in stopping illegal narcotics, 
particularly heroin, where we cannot stop it, and working with us in 
South America to complement our efforts.
  We see that successful effort. It does work. This is not rocket 
science. It works. We have stopped it. He has found, and gave a great 
presentation to our gathering, that alternative crops and crop 
substitution programs do work. But they must be combined with tough 
enforcement.
  I think Bolivia had tried programs with just the carrot, and he has 
said in his remarks to us that the carrot alone does not work. You must 
have the carrot and the stick to enforce that. Both Peru and Bolivia 
are successful examples. Colombia is a disaster.
  We know 75 percent of the heroin that is produced in the world comes 
from Afghanistan. One of the things that came out of this besides 2 
days of discussion is really an effort to see if we could put a belt 
around Afghanistan, and also introduce and support programs that would 
stop production in Afghanistan of heroin, and then around the belt 
countries. There was substantial progress made in that regard.
  Also, again rather than talking but acting on the issue of coca 
production and cocaine. The vice president of Bolivia has offered to 
host the fourth international summit gathering sometime next year, in 
2001, and hopefully at that time we can celebrate the demise in 2001 of 
coca production in Bolivia, which once accounted for nearly 50 percent 
of the production.
  Peru was the biggest producer, and now down by some 65 percent. The 
bad news is the United States curtailed some of the surveillance 
operations and information sharing to President Fujimori and we have 
seen a slight increase in coca production. The good news, I guess, is 
that coca is not coming into the United States; but the bad news is 
that it is going into Europe where it can get a higher price.
  These programs are very cost effective, the crop eradication and 
substitution. In one year, we put in some $60 million in South America 
in the three countries that produce 70 percent of the heroin, 70 
percent now of the cocaine, we put a few dollars, $60 million out of a 
$17.8 billion project and expenditure that the Congress undertook last 
year and will even be exceeded this year, more than $18 billion this 
year for the various drug programs that we support.
  So a few million dollars can provide an alternative to these 
countries. It has proven to be, in fact, very successful. Next year, we 
hope to meet in Bolivia, celebrate that country's eradication of coca 
and hopefully the beginning and continuation of a successful crop 
substitution program which makes a better life for their people and 
certainly one for the people of the United States when we do not have 
cocaine and crack on our streets and our young people dying from drug 
abuse.
  The international summit was successful, and I think again, everyone 
who came away is convinced that it can only be through a cooperative 
effort that we make progress. Now, one of the areas that has not been 
as successful is Colombia. Colombia is the focus of the national news 
tonight. It was the focus of a hearing that we spent 6 hours on in our 
Criminal Justice, Drug Policy subcommittee.
  Almost all of the heroin that is consumed in the United States is 
produced in Colombia. DEA through its signature analysis program, which 
analyzes really almost the DNA in the heroin, DEA can tell you through 
this analysis that the particular heroin that is seized in the United 
States comes from Colombia, practically from the field it comes from. 
So 75 percent of the heroin coming into the United States comes from 
Colombia. Now, I talked about our strategy, and we have a strategy 
beyond the administration, because the administration's strategy is not 
going to work by itself.

                              {time}  1945

  You push this down in one area, it is like Jello, it pops up in 
another. That is why the Afghan's international global strategy is so 
important. Again, just a few dollars of our contributions in this 
effort will do an incredible amount to stop that supply.
  The same thing can happen in Colombia, although the situation there 
has spiraled out of control. In addition to heroin production, Colombia 
in 5 or 6 years is now the major coca-producing country in the world. 
Some of the production has shifted from Peru and Bolivia to Colombia.
  We know that what we did in Peru and Bolivia will work in Colombia; 
there is no question about that. The problem is, every effort that the 
new majority has tried, and I tried to make these efforts in a 
bipartisan fashion the last 4 or 5 years since we took over, every 
effort has been thwarted by the administration to get resources to 
Colombia. So where you do not have ammunition, where you do not have 
supplies, where you do not have a riverine strategy in place, where you 
do not have information-sharing that allows a shootdown of drug 
traffickers, when all of these things are taken out or blocked by the 
administration, which they have repeatedly done, you have a very 
difficult situation.
  Then you see Mexico on this chart. Mexico, it is not a big producer 
of illegal narcotics. It does produce a great deal of marijuana and 
about 14 percent of the heroin, and that is up; but that is because we 
have this open border. But most of the heroin that is produced

[[Page H439]]

and enters the United States is produced in Colombia. So that is where 
we need to concentrate some of our resources. It will not even reach 
Mexico to get into the United States.
  In addition to these two charts, I wanted to trace the history of how 
we got ourselves in this $1 billion-plus Colombia mess.
  This did not happen by accident. As I said, the administration and a 
Democrat-controlled Congress from 1993 to 1995 cut the interdiction, 
the source programs, the eradication programs, cut the Coast Guard and 
began taking the military out of the war on drugs. Basically, the war 
on drugs was closed down in 1993 by the Clinton administration, 
slashing the drug czar's office from 100-some staff to 20-some staff.
  You cannot fight a war unless all these things are in place. The 
media is unbelievable in this. They say the war on drugs is a failure, 
there has not been a war on drugs since January of 1993. What we have 
tried to do in 1995 and 1996 is restart the war on drugs, target it to 
where the drugs are coming from.
  Now, just let me read from 1994, my colleague Steve Horn in a 
hearing, his comments. He said, ``As you recall, as of May 1, 1994, the 
Department of Defense decided unilaterally to stop sharing realtime 
intelligence regarding aerial traffic in drugs with Colombia and Peru. 
Now, as I understand it, that decision, which has not been completely 
resolved, has thrown diplomatic relations with the host countries into 
chaos.''
  Now, here is sort of the genesis of how we get ourselves into that $1 
billion fix. Back then the administration made a decision to stop 
information sharing. Now, how can anyone fight a war on drugs without 
information to conduct combat? The United States was the source of that 
intelligence, with overflights, with forward operating intelligence, 
with all the information needed to go after drug traffickers.
  So the first thing we did, Steve Horn complained about it back in 
August 2, 1994, and he was not the only one. Even the Democrats 
complained about it in the House of Representatives. In fact, this is a 
Washington Post story a couple days later, August 1994. ``Chairmen of 
two House subcommittees blasted the Clinton Administration,'' not 
Republicans, mind you, ``for its continuing refusal to resume sharing 
intelligence data with Colombia and Peru that would enable the Andean 
nations to shoot down aircraft carrying narcotics into the United 
States.''
  So here is the beginning of a multi-billion dollar spiral out of 
control, the drug czar called it a ``flipping nightmare,'' to use his 
term, before the press. This is the genesis of it; and you see that, 
again, that both Republicans and Democrats, their leaders, were 
absolutely appalled by what was taking place. That is how you turn a 
minor producer, and you have to remember, Colombia produced almost no 
coca, there was almost no coca grown in Colombia, almost 100 percent 
was grown in Peru and Bolivia at the beginning of this administration, 
almost no heroin. In fact, today I said the only poppies that were 
grown could barely fill a flower arrangement, grown in Colombia in 
1993. Now this Nation is the leader in growing and producing both coca, 
poppy, heroin and cocaine.
  Here is the genesis of this. Now, it would not be bad if this was the 
only misstep, but the missteps just continued and continued. The next 
thing the administration did was adopt a policy to decertify Colombia 
as being eligible to receive United States assistance.

  Now, I helped develop a law back when I worked in the Senate that 
allows for decertification of countries that are not cooperating in 
either stopping the production or trafficking of illegal narcotics. It 
is a good law. It ties aid and financial assistance and other benefits 
to their cooperation. It is one of the few handles we have.
  As you will notice, we are getting closer to certification, which is 
required by law March 1st. Mexico extradited someone the other day, and 
these countries start behaving and cooperating in the anti-narcotics 
effort when it is time for certification.
  But you could not believe that an administration could possibly mess 
up a law the way the Clinton administration messed up the certification 
law. We allowed under the law to decertify a country and not let them 
get benefits for trade and assistance and foreign aid, but we put in 
the law a little provision that said the President could grant a 
national-interest waiver in our interest, the United States' national 
interest, because we knew when we wrote the law we wanted to be able to 
get aid to a country that was having a problem to deal with the 
problem, to make efforts to eradicate the problem, drugs at their 
source, to stop trafficking, et cetera, and get them the resources they 
needed to conduct that activity.
  You could not believe that they could mess this up, but they did; and 
the President decertified Colombia without a national-interest waiver. 
Not for Colombia, but national-interest waiver for the United States.
  Repeatedly we asked for, of course, hearings during the Clinton 
administration when they controlled the House of Representatives. I had 
132 Members sign a letter requesting hearings over 2 years when they 
controlled the House, the Senate and the White House. One hearing was 
held, and it was a very brief hearing. Since we took over, we have had 
at least 20 hearings on the narcotics issue in trying to get this 
effort that was started back so successfully under Reagan and Bush 
restarted in 1995-1996.
  The next thing we knew as a Congress, and anyone who looked at the 
situation, is that it was worsening in Colombia. This is back in 1995-
1996 as a result of the 1994 policies that were ill-advised in 
decertifying Colombia.
  The next thing that we asked for was to get to the police in Colombia 
equipment that could go to high altitude and go after narcotics 
traffickers and also do eradication of the beginning of the poppy 
fields that were growing there that we saw that were reported, at the 
beginning of the coca production that we saw that was started there.
  I cannot tell you how many letters, how many communications, how many 
requests were made of this administration. It was countless, asking the 
Secretary of State, asking the President, asking the Secretary of 
Defense, everyone in the administration, to get resources to Colombia 
because the situation was worsening.
  Now, this is an interesting headline. It says ``Delay of copters 
hobbles Colombia in stopping drugs.''
  I do not know if you can see this. I would like to blow this up and 
just put it on the screen here so every colleague could read this. This 
is February 12, 1998, just after 1997. This is an unbelievable sequence 
of events. Again, first dismantling the entire command structure of our 
war on drugs; gutting the drug czar's office; next, doing away with the 
shootdown policy; next, doing away with the information-sharing policy; 
and then, next, decertifying the country without granting a national 
U.S.-interest waiver to allow the equipment to get there. We knew the 
equipment needed to get there, we knew what was happening, we knew that 
only copters and equipment in the anti-narcotics effort could eliminate 
that.
  But this is how you turn a minor problem into destabilizing a whole 
region, failed policies of an administration. This is not partisan, 
this is fact, and it is very well documented. It should be documented 
for history, and also for what we are doing, that these kinds of 
mistakes are not made in the future. And you cannot win this by 
yourself; it is going to take a cooperative effort; and you are not 
going to be sending United States troops in. That would never happen. 
But you can provide a little bit of assistance to countries that are 
trying to stop narco-terrorism within their borders.
  So here you see in 1997-1998, asking for the resources denied by the 
administration, not only denied, but blocked by the administration, and 
that helps you get into a multi-billion dollar pickle that we are now 
in.
  Then we have been asking not only could we appropriate a few dollars, 
and under the leadership of Mr. Hastert, now Speaker of the House, who 
had this responsibility, he framed together in 1998 a bill for a 
supplemental in the war on drugs to restart the source-country 
programs, restart eradication, alternative crop programs, to restart 
interdiction of drugs, trying to get information and sources down 
there.

  We not only wanted to put a few more dollars in that that could 
effectively cure the problem that was erupting and we saw back from 
1994, but we

[[Page H440]]

thought it would be wise to also take surplus United States equipment 
and get it to Colombia, so we asked the President to do that.
  Now, until a few weeks ago, equipment requested in 1997 still had not 
been delivered, surplus equipment, delivered there. This stuff sits 
rusting in fields or warehouses or in lots, and there is no reason why 
it cannot get to Colombia.
  Then almost a slap in the face. Last year when we began asking why is 
the equipment not requested, and even that the President said he would 
send as surplus in 1997-1998, getting there? This is another headline 
that just shows that ``the gang that couldn't shoot straight'' was in 
charge. ``Colombia turns down dilapidated U.S. trucks.''
  We sent dilapidated trucks, I think they were trucks used primarily 
in the tundra or the cold climate, down to Colombia. So when we do 
finally get some equipment there, it is equipment that is not usable in 
the war on narcotics. It is a pretty sad story. It would almost be 
humorous if it did not have consequences.
  Now, I know people think that this is probably something that the 
Republicans made in a partisan fashion, but in fact this chart was 
produced by the Monitoring of the Future Study by the University of 
Michigan. Let us just look at it for a minute, because it shows from 
1980 the problem with cocaine and drug use at that time, it was 
predominantly cocaine that we were having the big problem with. This 
chart shows a long-term trend in lifetime prevalence of drug use.
  This shows the Reagan campaign, the Just Say No, the Andean strategy, 
the Vice President's task force. This was reducing drug use among our 
youth, among our population, in very good fashion. It was put together, 
all of these initiatives, the certification law, and it worked.

                              {time}  2000

  It was working. This is nothing that we made up, it is not a partisan 
poster. Then we had President Bush, and he continued the same policies 
through to the end of his term. We saw continued dramatic declines in 
prevalence of drug use, period. This formula works. A balanced formula 
of eradication, crop alternative at the source, interdiction as the 
drugs are coming up, give the information, surveillance, get them as 
the drugs leave their source country, and then involving the military 
or whoever to protect our borders as it gets closer to the borders; the 
Coast Guard, which also was dramatically cut.
  In 1992 and 1993, we see the beginning of the end of the war on 
drugs. Again, this is fact. It is just fact, pure and simple. The media 
probably would never print this chart. One would never see this on the 
evening news.
  Tonight I saw the evening news and they showed a little bit about how 
Peru and Bolivia went down in production. Of course, they did not say 
who did that or what policies instituted that change. They do not give 
us the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey says. One has to listen to 
myself and my colleagues tonight to hear that on the floor.
  Drug use just climbed, climbed, climbed with the Clinton 
administration. One could almost trace the gutting of the Drug Czar's 
office. We have the documentation. The slash of the Drug Czar's office 
was from 112 to 27. Now, how could one fight the war on drugs when we 
slash the command staff. I will say the Republicans have given Barry 
McCaffrey I believe 150 positions, he is fully staffed, but it has 
taken us a good period of time to get us back into the war on drugs. 
Mr. Speaker, 112 to 27. They cut source country and interdiction 
funding by 50 percent. We can almost see the actions here.
  Mr. Speaker, in 1993, appoint Jocelyn Elders Surgeon General who said 
to our children in the next generation, ``just say maybe'' instead of 
``just say no.'' There are consequences from those actions.
  The next consequence is the information-sharing, the commentary from 
Torricelli, the Democrats who mention here, do not stop that. Look at 
how we see the increase there. In 1996 and 1997, blocking the aid to 
Colombia. Finally we see the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), 
first Mr. Zeliff and then our Speaker of the House taking over this 
responsibility and again, turning that ship around.
  We are just starting to see a slight downturn in these figures. That 
is with a $1 billion national education program. The President wanted 
to pay for all of those ads. I introduced legislation that said that 
they must donate them. We ended up with a compromise. The compromise 
does give us a $2 billion effort, $1 billion in public money, $1 
billion in donated money. The success of that I do not know, and I 
cannot tell my colleagues today. We did preliminary hearings on the 
expenditures of one-third of $1 billion, and quite frankly, I am not 
pleased with everything I have seen. It is somewhat of an effort.
  But I will tell my colleagues one thing. When we go after production 
in the source country, we begin to stem some of the, not supply but 
glut; and that is what has happened with cocaine. Now we need to do the 
same thing with heroin and continue with the cocaine and hopefully, we 
will learn by the mistakes that were made in the past.
  Mr. Speaker, this is the history. It is pretty dramatic.
  The Republicans, I might say, what have they done? Well, we have 
restored the source country programs equivalent right now to 1992 
dollars the cost-effective stop-drugs-at-their-source. If we know 100 
percent of the cocaine is produced in coca in those three countries and 
it really cannot be produced in too many other areas, that makes a lot 
of sense to go after that.
  We know what we have done works because we have seen it work in Peru 
and Bolivia. I will say in Peru, President Fujimori was able to create 
stability in that Nation and then put these programs in place. The same 
thing President Pastrana in Colombia is going to do. That is why we are 
going to have to support that effort. I do not like that effort, I do 
not like spending taxpayer money there. But in comparison, a few 
billion dollars there; think of what this administration has squandered 
in deployments in forays around the world.
  In Somalia, which President Bush started as a humanitarian mission he 
escalated into the loss of, I believe, some 30 American lives; a $3 
billion enterprise, a failure in Nation-building and putting our people 
in there. The Haiti experiment, which is an absolute disaster, it is a 
national and international disgrace that he would impose sanctions on 
the poorest of the nations in the entire hemisphere, spend billions of 
dollars to put more corrupt people in place, and now Haiti is one of 
the major drug trafficking areas in the entire Caribbean, not to 
mention that much of the billions of dollars went to institution-
building that failed. Then, to send our troops to Bosnia, to send our 
troops to Kosovo. Great international humanitarian missions, probably 
$10 billion apiece. But there were very few civilian Americans killed 
in any of those incursions.

  Mr. Speaker, in 1997, 15,973 Americans died because of direct drug-
related deaths. Mr. McCaffrey, our director of the Office of Drug 
Control Policy, said today that if we take the total figure in the last 
year, it is about 52,000. Speaker Hastert, who spoke to our 
international drug summit for dinner the other evening when we convened 
that meeting and he spoke, he said that if we had 15,000 troops in any 
conflict anywhere who were killed in one year, that people would demand 
action. Unfortunately, these are silent deaths. Unfortunately, these 
are young people in our community.
  What is interesting, it has not stopped. It used to be just the urban 
centers, the ghetto. These were sort of the community rejects and they 
were injecting heroin or doing crack or cocaine, and it was not really 
covered; nobody really cared. They just sort of looked the other way. 
They were drug addicts; they were bad. Then it spread to our suburban 
communities and now it has awakened part of America.
  The most recent statistics are, and should be, alarming to every 
Member of Congress and every American. It has not only spread from the 
urban setting and the core of our cities to the suburbs, but the latest 
statistics just released in the past few weeks this year indicate that 
our rural areas are now plagued by the worst narcotics epidemic they 
have ever seen. So we have managed in 7 years to see the problem

[[Page H441]]

of narcotics spread to every element of our society. Those 15,700 from 
1997, and I am sure were in the 16 thousands in the past year, are all 
sort of nameless, but they are someone's child; they are someone's 
loved one, and they are human beings who it is our responsibility to 
protect.
  Now, if we cannot expend this money and get the funds to fight this 
war on drugs, a few dollars towards the international effort in 
Southeast Asia where we know those drugs are produced and do it 
cooperatively with the United Nations where we do not have relations 
with those countries, a few dollars in South America, the alternative 
is really the most expensive solution which the administration has gone 
for. That is treatment of the wounded in battle.
  Now, one would think that hearing tonight, and I saw the national 
news, that Republicans did not spend more money on treatment, the 
entire strategy of this administration has been to put the money on 
treatment. Could we imagine dismantling the command center in a war, 
stopping the information in war, not going after the targets in a war, 
not providing resources to fight a war, cutting back any of the aid and 
ammunition in a war, and just treating the wounded in a battle.
  That is exactly the philosophy, it is exactly the strategy, and it 
has been a failed strategy in communities like Baltimore. Baltimore had 
a liberal mayor up until just recently who said, just do it; we will 
have needle exchange; we will have all of these liberal programs. 
Baltimore went from almost no heroin addicts or drug addicts and a 
large population, the population was approaching 1 million, it is now 
down to about 600,000. One in 10 people, a city council member has 
recently been quoted in Baltimore saying 1 in 8 individual citizens of 
Baltimore, Maryland is a drug addict. Now, that is the liberal 
approach. The liberal mayor with his liberal policies just left.
  If we look at other cities, but let us go back to Baltimore for a 
second. Most major cities that have adopted zero tolerance like New 
York and Los Angeles, even Richmond, who have adopted tough 
prosecution, tough enforcement policies, zero tolerance, have dramatic 
reductions in deaths. The statistics we have seen from Baltimore were 
312 in one year, I think in 1997, and 312 in 1998. I do not have 1999 
figures, but I guarantee they have not gone down. The rest of the 
Nation is where we have zero tolerance. So we have 60,000, one in 
eight. Imagine the United States of America adopting this liberal 
policy that Baltimore did. One in eight Americans as a drug addict. 
Could we imagine the societal costs, the cost to families, the cost to 
the economy of the Nation. It would be astronomical.
  Now, that is one model we can look at.
  The New York model, zero tolerance, tough prosecution. I went up 
during recent months to visit a program that Mayor Giuliani put into 
place, DTAP, a prosecution program, tough prosecution program that tied 
in with an effective treatment program, one of the most effective I 
have seen anywhere in the Nation. Here is a mayor, an elected executive 
who inherited one of the most crime-ridden towns in America where most 
people would not walk on the streets with over 2,200 deaths when he 
took office, the year he took office, and through a zero tolerance, 
through a tough prosecution program, 600 deaths in New York City. This 
is a successful program. This is an area where they have successful 
treatment.

  I sat with addicts, and one of the addicts was 38 years old and had 
spent half of his lifetime in prison. Had no hope before the program 
instituted by the mayor and the prosecutors in that area. No hope.
  Another individual, I talked to his wife, had died of a heroin 
overdose. He was a heroin addict, and the story went on and on. No 
successful programs. No tough enforcement. This does work.
  Richmond, people talk about gun violence, and I was glad that the 
President came just behind us and talked about gun violence. Now, I 
believe very strongly in Second Amendment rights, and I heard the 
President talk about tough prosecution. We have asked for tough 
enforcement of gun laws. We have countless gun laws. Washington, D.C. 
has the toughest gun laws. Guns are banned in Washington, D.C. Today, 
this community buried a young couple the day after Valentine's Day who 
were massacred, slaughtered on the streets, I think they were 17 year-
old sweethearts in this community, a community with every restriction 
one could possibly have.

                              {time}  2015

  But we know that tough enforcement works. We know that Project Exile, 
which they adopted in Richmond, which was plagued by record numbers of 
deaths, but tough prosecution of existing gun laws worked, and we cut 
the murders dramatically in Richmond, where people could not walk in 
their neighborhood, in the street. We know the Giuliani method is 
successful, and that tough prosecution does work.
  Our hearing today, in addition to the drug czar, had as a witness an 
individual who has done an outstanding job, General Wilhelm, who is in 
charge of the Southern Command. He has done a great job, in spite of an 
administration that is not interested in having the military work in 
any way on the war on drugs, and has had to be drug, really, into this 
new restarted national strategy. General Wilhelm has done an 
outstanding job in piecing together our Southern Command.
  Our Southern Command has been in charge of the surveillance 
information. Our military does not go after, in a law enforcement 
manner, drug traffickers. What they do is provide surveillance 
intelligence information, and that is passed on to our allies, who are 
really the best suited to go after drug traffickers in their own 
communities and states and nations, and drugs, at their source most 
cost-effectively.
  Again, this administration could not have bungled things more. We 
were basically removed from Panama, and we knew we had to be out of 
Panama. We were unsuccessful, the administration was, in negotiating, 
keeping our drug surveillance operations at Howard Air Force Base, so 
last May all flights stopped out of there.
  One of the problems we have had is we have had an absolute wide open 
corridor for narcotics traffickers to come in through this drug-
producing region. Again, the most cost-effective way, stop drugs at 
their source, where they are grown, eradicate them; next, interdict 
them as they come out.
  The glut we are seeing is because Howard Air Force Base was closed 
down May 1. We turned over those assets to the Panamanians. We have had 
to relocate in Ecuador, and it will cost us probably $100 million 
before we are through. We finally signed a permanent agreement, I think 
a 10-year lease on that airport there. Right now the airfield is in 
such bad shape that the equipment cannot take off and land that we 
need. Aruba is another location we have had to look at moving those 
assets to.
  In the meantime, today we are probably only flying 35, 40 percent of 
the strategic missions to detect and monitor drug trafficking. In a 
report which I requested from GAO, and we held a hearing just a week or 
two ago, it was ``Assets DOD Contributes to Reducing Illegal Drug 
Supplies Have Declined.'' This is a real indictment of the 
administration in dramatically decreasing the flights. From 1992 to 
1995, the drug surveillance flights were reduced, according to this 
report, by 68 percent. The maritime efforts, anti-narcotics efforts, 
were reduced some 62 percent.
  What is even scarier is, according to General Wilhelm, in this 
report, and he did testify today, the Southern Command Commander, they 
can only detect 60 percent of the key routes in the drug trafficking 
area about 15 percent of the time.
  Mr. Speaker, if Members want to be even more concerned, the over-the-
horizon radar that was supposed to be in place next month to supplant 
some of this lost capability is further delayed for installations.
  The good news is some of the drug-tethered balloons, air balloons 
that we have in surveillance around our coasts, I understand we have at 
least a commitment from the Air Force and from the Assistant Secretary 
of Defense where they will stay in place, although they were going to 
remove them.
  Again, it does not take much to figure out a good strategy in the war 
on drugs. We stop it at the source, eradicate it. Even President Nixon 
eradicated heroin. They have had various programs. They were reviewed 
at the International Drug Control Summit

[[Page H442]]

last week, and some were very successful, and China and Turkey and 
other countries. They have been able to eradicate them. We are not on a 
mission that will not succeed, but we must get the resources there. We 
must get the equipment there. We must aid our allies, who are willing 
to be partners in this effort, especially in Colombia, where we have a 
great leader in President Pastrana, who is trying to get his Nation 
back together.
  I submit, and it was confirmed by witnesses at our hearing today, the 
only reason the rebels are now in Sweden and in Europe and talking 
about serious peace settlement in Colombia is because the threat of the 
resources finally reaching there. It is sad that even until a few weeks 
ago, the three Black Hawk helicopters that we had requested, and again, 
Members saw the documents here back some 4 years, 5 years ago, that 
finally arrived the end of last year, and it is unbelievable, they 
arrived without proper armor.
  Today we were told that the armor that was sent does not fit on all 
of the helicopters, so some of these are sent in nonstrategic but 
support missions. Some are up and flying, but not in the proper fashion 
that Congress had intended.
  In addition, the ammunition and mini-guns and other resources to get 
to the national police, who are anti-narcotics officers in Colombia, 
still have not all arrived. It is unbelievable, but I believe confirmed 
that half the ammunition was inadvertently delivered during the 
Christmas holidays to the loading dock at our State Department; again, 
the gang that cannot seem to shoot straight in getting this drug 
situation under control.
  Again, it is not rocket science. Almost all of it is coming from 
Colombia. Seventy-five percent of the heroin coming into the United 
States, over 75 percent of the cocaine is now sourced there. Some of it 
does transit through Mexico, but if we stop it at its source cost-
effectively, we do not have to have 10,000 Border Patrol people there.
  Even today I see they are becoming threatened with bounties put on 
their heads by these reckless drug traffickers.
  Again, we can win this. We can win it cost-effectively. We have to 
learn by our mistakes. It must be an international effort, a little bit 
of dollars, with the help of our friends, the European communities 
willing to put in more resources, because they also are becoming more 
victimized, just like the United States; with a little help to Colombia 
and with a little help from both sides of the aisle, not making the 
mistakes, joining in and saying, we are going to get those resources 
there, we are not going to wait.
  If this was Kosovo and we could not get the helicopters to Kosovo, it 
would be a disaster. If we could not have gotten the ammunition and the 
resources to our troops, and these are not our troops we are trying to 
supply, in the Gulf War, we would have had a disaster there.
  So we can start a real war against narcotics. We have thousands of 
lives at stake. Out there tonight in our districts are young people who 
are overdosing. Three or four times those who are killed in Columbine 
will die tomorrow as a result of drug overdoses in our community, and 
hundreds more, as the drug czar said today, will die from the scourge 
each day across our Nation.
  So we have a great responsibility to get our act together, make 
certain this administration fulfills the will of Congress, and that we 
get resources to those who can help us bring this situation under 
control.

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