[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 78 (Tuesday, June 20, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H4776-H4779]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    DRUG ABUSE AND ILLEGAL NARCOTICS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) is recognized 
for 35 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. MICA. Madam Speaker, tonight is Tuesday night and it is the night 
that I reserve to come before the House on the issue of illegal 
narcotics and how the problem of drug abuse and illegal narcotics 
affects our Nation and the impact that illegal narcotics has upon our 
society, this Congress, and the American people.
  Tonight I want to provide a brief update of some of the information 
that we have obtained. Our subcommittee, which I am privileged to 
chair, the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human 
Resources of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, has as 
one of its primary charters and responsibilities to help develop a 
coherent policy, at least from the perspective of the House of 
Representatives, and working with the other body, the United States 
Senate and also the White House, the administration, to come up with a 
coherent strategy to deal with the problem of drug abuse and illegal 
narcotics.
  I have often cited on the floor the impact which really knows no 
boundaries today in the United States. Almost every family is affected 
in some way by drug abuse, illegal narcotics, or the ravages of drug-
related overdose and death.
  I have cited a most recent statistic, which is 15,973 Americans died 
in 1998, the last figures we have total for drug-related deaths. And 
according to our drug czar, Barry McCaffrey, who testified before our 
subcommittee, over

[[Page H4777]]

52,000 Americans died in the last recorded year of drug-related deaths 
either directly or indirectly.
  We do not know the exact figure because sometimes a child who is 
beaten to death by a parent who is on illegal narcotics is not counted 
as a victim. Sometimes a spouse who is abused to the point of death is 
not counted as a victim. Sometimes a bus driver who is on an illegal 
narcotic that has had a fatal vehicle crash, the number of victims 
there are not counted in the tally. But we do know the total is 
dramatic.
  This past week our subcommittee had the opportunity to hear from the 
Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and officials came in and briefed 
our subcommittee, some of the Members in the House, about some of the 
most recent findings. And the findings are quite alarming, particularly 
among our young people.
  They confirm what most Americans know and what many parents fear, 
that illegal narcotics are more prevalent on our society. The study 
that they reviewed for the members of the subcommittee revealed, in 
fact, that there have been some dramatic increases in drug use and 
abuse among our young people.
  I brought tonight some charts from that study and also from a study 
on national youth risk behavior. This shows the percentage of high 
school students who have used methamphetamines, some figures that show 
in 9th grade we were up to 6.3 percent, in 10th grade 9.3 percent, 11th 
grade 10 percent, and 12th grade 11\1/2\ percent.
  These are pretty dramatic figures when we stop and think that we are 
talking about young people and having as high a percentage as we have 
reported here have used methamphetamine. And methamphetamine, if my 
colleagues are not familiar with methamphetamine, can be more damaging 
and create more bizarre behavior than the crack epidemic that we had in 
the 1980s. To have these percentages of our young people having 
experimented or used methamphetamine is quite disturbing.
  The other thing many people do not realize about methamphetamine is 
methamphetamine does an incredible job of destroying the brain and it 
is not a drug which allows you to have some replenishing of damaged 
brain cells. It is not a narcotic that leaves temporary damage. 
Methamphetamine induces an almost Parkinson's-like damage to the brain 
and does incredible damage and results in bizarre behavior.
  Now, we have conducted hearings throughout the United States, some in 
California, some in Louisiana. Next Monday we will be in Sioux City, 
Iowa, the heartland of America, which is also experiencing an 
incredible methamphetamine epidemic. That area has been hit by Mexican 
methamphetamines and we have reports again of incredible numbers people 
throughout the Midwest, the far West, now in the South and East, who 
are falling victim to methamphetamine.
  This chart should be a shocker to every parent out in America, to 
every Member of Congress who sees this. These are some pretty dramatic 
figures. When we stop and consider that these figures really were not 
even registering some 6 or 7 years ago, there was almost no meth 
available, shows that we have got to do a better job of first of all 
controlling the substance, law enforcement going after those who 
traffic in this deadly substance.
  Also, it is absolutely incumbent that we do a better job in educating 
our young people and preventing people from getting hooked on this 
drug. Now, getting hooked on drugs is bad enough. But this drug does 
incredible damage, as I said.
  We have had Dr. Leschner, who heads up the National Institute of Drug 
Abuse, testify before our subcommittee about the permanent damage that 
is done to the brain with this drug. This is not a question of 
addiction or use a little and come out of it. This is a question of 
becoming a victim of this. And the question of addiction is really too 
late for those who get on methamphetamine. There is no recovery. There 
is no turning back. Because they have induced some incredible damage to 
their brain and to their ability to function as a normal human being.

                              {time}  2300

  Addiction and treatment might sound good and well-intended, but in 
fact methamphetamine is the end of the road for many people. Again this 
is absolutely a disturbing chart and figure to show us that 11.5 
percent of our 12th graders are now reported having ever used 
methamphetamine, a shocking figure.
  Another figure that we have from 1991-1992 during the beginning of 
this administration, we had about 2 percent of our high school students 
being reported as using cocaine. That figure in 1999 is now up to 4 
percent, a 100 percent increase in cocaine use among our young people. 
This again is another dramatic increase in a hard and a very 
destructive narcotic. These figures are reported to us again last week 
by CDC and indicate a disturbing trend. This is in spite of the 
Congress, Republican and Democrat efforts to put together a massive 
educational campaign, $1 billion in public funding over a 3-year period 
supplemented by $1 billion in donated service and time toward that 
effort, so a multi-billion-dollar education campaign. I know some of my 
colleagues have seen those ads on television but quite frankly with the 
results that we are experiencing with our young people, we are missing 
the target. We see a dramatic increase in cocaine use, particularly 
among our young people, a skyrocketing figure for methamphetamine, both 
shocking for parents and again Members of Congress who have attempted, 
I think, to stem some of this illegal narcotics abuse.
  This is the percentage of high school students who ever used cocaine 
from 1993. From the beginning of this administration to the current 
time we see a doubling in use, another dramatic figure. Somehow the 
message must have gotten lost in this period here, the beginning of 
this administration, that illegal narcotics were something that could 
be tolerated and possibly used and that is unfortunate that any message 
that condoned or gave any message other than ``Just Say No.'' Actually 
we have had incredible results from that lack of a direct specific 
message. A doubling again of the percentage of high school students who 
have ever used cocaine, disturbing, I am sure, to parents in the latest 
statistic we have from the Centers for Disease Control.
  I think this next chart and again this information is provided to us 
by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta to our subcommittee last 
week is another startling figure. Go back to 1991-1992. Thirty-one 
percent of the students had used marijuana in that period. Now we have 
almost half of the students reported last week, 1997-1999 have used 
marijuana. Many people refer to marijuana as a soft drug and maybe some 
of the boomers who used marijuana in college or in school in the 1960s 
and 1970s were not much affected by use of marijuana. Unfortunately, 
the marijuana that is on the streets today has very high levels of 
purity. We have some testimony in our subcommittee about the damage 
that the current high purity marijuana does to young people. I was 
shocked to learn, also, from NIDA, our National Institute of Drug 
abuse, that marijuana is now the most addictive narcotic. Even though 
it is again commonly referred to as a soft drug, it is the most 
addictive drug and it is also referred to as a gateway drug. So young 
people who think it is fashionable to use marijuana are on the 
increase. It is unfortunate that this administration gave sort of a 
``Just Say Maybe'' policy with the appointment of a liberal and I think 
mixed message chief health officer of the United States and that 
officer was Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders and she said just say 
maybe. I do not think that the President of the United States really 
showed the leadership and provided the direction to get the message out 
to our young people about the problem of illegal narcotics use. That 
actually I think has been substantiated by a little research we did.
  I mentioned last week, and we only had 15 minutes of special order 
last week, that a lady had come up to me during one of our recent 
visits home and she said, ``I have never heard President Clinton talk 
about the war on drugs.'' Out of curiosity, I had our staff run a tally 
of all of the public recorded accounts. I think most people have a 
computer or access to Nexus research which has most of the public 
statements recorded there can plug in ``President Clinton'' and then 
``the war

[[Page H4778]]

on drugs.'' What was absolutely startling is the President has referred 
to the war on drugs eight times, you can count it on just eight 
fingers, since he took office in public recorded statements, he has 
referred to the war on drugs. Basically what happened in 1992-1993 is 
we closed down the war on drugs.
  If we take another chart and look at the drug use and abuse and 
prevalence particularly among our young people, we see a decline in the 
Bush and the Reagan administration, and then we see an incline during 
this administration, the administration tolerating this use, and it is 
recorded again in the drug figures that we see, some of them nearly 
doubling in drug use and abuse.
  If methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine are not bad enough, we see 
some dramatic increases in suburban teen heroin use. These statistics 
were just provided last month, in May. It shows that we have risen in 
suburban teen use from 500,000 in 1996 to nearly 1 million in 1999, a 
startling figure for one of the drugs again that is about as deadly as 
you can find on the streets across this land. The purity levels of the 
heroin that we are finding are not the purity levels again of the 1970s 
and 1980s. These drugs, this heroin is a deadly substance, sometimes 70 
plus percent purity level. That is why we have incredible overdose 
deaths from heroin that is on the street today, another dramatic figure 
and another dramatic increase in a particularly deadly illegal 
narcotic.
  One of the myths that we often hear and we had a debate on the House 
floor about whether we should restart the war on drugs. Again, I must 
point out to my colleagues that in fact the war on drugs was closed 
down by the Clinton administration in 1993. The Democrat-controlled 
House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House from 1993 to 
1995 did inestimable damage to what had formerly been a formal and 
organized war on drugs. They cut the source country program stopping 
drugs in a cost-effective manner at their source, certainly a Federal 
responsibility. They took the military out of the interdiction, and 
that was mainly a surveillance role in finding drugs and spotting drugs 
as they came from the source countries, certainly a role that local and 
State law enforcement cannot do, a responsibility of the Federal 
Government to protect us from a danger coming towards our border.

                              {time}  2310

  They closed down and cut these programs by 50 percent, took the 
military out or deployed the military and other deployments around the 
globe, and what happened really was an emphasis to move toward 
treatment. They started putting all of the eggs in the treatment 
basket.
  I often think of what they did as a little bit like fighting World 
War II or any armed conflict that we have been in. Can you imagine not 
going after the enemy; not going after the source of the destruction, 
the enemy's reigning on us? That is basically the strategy that was 
adopted, a strange strategy that actually said let us just treat the 
wounded in battle.
  Of course, the policy and the legislation adopted by this Congress 
under the control of the democratic majority from 1992 to 1995 put the 
money into treatment, and we can see the trend. We often hear this 
debate, oh, we need to just treat people. We can treat our way out of 
this problem.
  This is a chart that I had staff graph for us, and it shows Federal 
drug treatment has dramatically increased. We go up here to the period 
of 1992-1993, right in here, a steady amount of money going up, a 
little bit of leveling off during the takeover of the Republican 
control. Even under the Republican control, I am told in the last 
several years, we, the majority side, have increased treatment spending 
some 26 percent just in this period of time.
  We have had a dramatic increase in treatment. The problem is we have 
an incredible addiction population, so we are getting more wounded in 
the battle, but not fighting the battle on all the fronts that are 
particularly a Federal obligation and cannot be fought by local or 
state officials.
  This, again, I think debunks some of the myths that are out there 
that we do not spend enough money on treatment. We have doubled, in 
some cases tripled, the amount of money on treatment, and we have an 
incredibly larger and larger addicted population. Unfortunately, I do 
not think people pay much attention to what it means to be addicted. 
Once you get addicted, your chances of being cured are, at very best, 
with hard narcotics, about 50 percent.
  Unfortunately, we have a 60 percent to 70 percent failure rate in our 
treatment programs that are public. The faith based and some of the 
other private treatment programs are much more successful. I will talk 
about Baltimore, which has one of the biggest addicted populations in 
the country, partly a direct result of a liberal drug policy, a policy 
where they have needle exchange, a policy where the former police chief 
had said, well, we are not going to enforce, not going after all the 
drug markets. We are not going to enforce the law. We are not going to 
take advantage of Federal law enforcement assistance to go after drug 
dealers and pushers and traffickers.
  That policy has had a very dramatic effect in Baltimore. Baltimore, 
in fact, has had a steady number of murders which have exceeded 300 for 
each of the past recent years, while other areas like New York, with a 
zero tolerance policy, like Richmond, with the Project Exile going 
after tough enforcement, have cut the murders by some 50 percent in 
those cities and even more dramatically.
  The zero tolerance policies, and we will show them, and the facts 
support this, it is not something I am making up, have worked and cut 
drug abuse and crime at every level across the board.
  The tolerant liberal, the nonenforcement attitude of Baltimore has 
resulted in a disaster for that city by any measure, by deaths. The 
number of addicts in Baltimore have jumped, according to one city 
council person who has said publicly, 1 in 8 in the population, that is 
some 60,000 to 80,000 heroin and drug addicts in Baltimore as a result 
of a liberal policy, as a result of lack of enforcement, as a result of 
only going to a policy of treatment.
  It has not worked. It does not work. And this is the path that we 
have been headed on, as far as Federal policy. This is an interesting 
chart that we had the staff make up, and we wanted to put altogether in 
one chart what we are doing with treatment.
  People say we are not spending enough money again in treatment. This 
line here, this blue line shows treatment. It shows that on a steady 
increase we see what has happened in interdiction, dramatic decreases. 
They start in the period of the Clinton administration, where a 
Democrat-controlled House and Senate, the White House making a policy 
to cut interdiction.
  These are international programs, that would be stopping drugs at 
their source; that is also cut. If we look at where we are heading, we 
are trying to get back to the 1992-1993 levels in terms of those 
dollars of that time in spending in international programs, again, 
stopping drugs at their source and also in the interdiction, getting 
the intelligence information.
  If we have intelligence on people who are trafficking in narcotics, 
and it is real information, it is accurate information, we can go after 
those who are dealing in that death and destruction. When we cut that 
out, we have an incredible volume of illegal narcotics coming into the 
United States, and that is exactly what has happened now.
  To compound the problem, what has happened is our major operations 
center for our illegal narcotics advance work for surveillance, going 
after drug traffickers was basically closed down last May 1 when the 
administration failed to negotiate with Panama for not keeping our 
military base open, but keeping our forward drug surveillance 
operations operating in Panama.
  General Wilhelm who is in charge of our Southern Command. The 
Southern Command overlooks the drug production and trafficking zone. 
General Wilhelm provided our subcommittee a letter last week and said 
we are down to about a third of our former capability prior to the time 
that we had Panama open and the main center of operations for forward-
operating locations.
  This chart does again debunk that we are not concentrating on 
treatment. Certainly, we have put a ton of money in treatment. It is 
doubled as we saw from the other one. Where we have lost

[[Page H4779]]

the momentum is going after these huge supplies of illegal narcotics, 
both at their source and on the way to our shores.

                              {time}  2320

  Now, one of the things that we know is where these narcotics are 
coming from. This is not rocket science, it does not require a Ph.D. or 
a lot of study. We knew that in 1993, when this administration took 
over, that we had 90 percent of the cocaine coming from Bolivia, Peru, 
a tiny bit from Colombia. This chart shows Colombia and Andean cocaine 
production. This shows Colombia here, and you see very little produced, 
1991-1992. These figures have not been doctored in any way. This is 
just graphing cocaine production in that era. Almost none in Colombia, 
most of it was coming from Peru, up here, and from Bolivia, about 90 
percent of it.
  The former chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Illinois 
(Mr. Hastert), the Speaker of the House, and Mr. Zeliff, who came in 
immediately before him and had assumed the responsibility for helping 
develop a drug strategy under the new majority, said we know where 
these narcotics are coming from. Let us take a few dollars and put it 
in going after the drugs at their source. That is what was done in 1995 
by the new majority.
  We targeted three areas, Peru, Colombia and Bolivia. That is because 
those are the only places where they produce cocaine. We were able to 
establish programs in Peru and Bolivia with the cooperation of 
President Fujimori, which this administration has trashed recently and 
who won a legitimate reelection, and still this administration trashed. 
I can tell you, having gone to Lima, Peru, and visited Peru before 
President Fujimori took over, there was absolute chaos in the country. 
The production of narcotics was running rampant, terrorists were 
killing and maiming in the villages, the City of Lima was understood 
under siege, and President Fujimori went after the drug traffickers, 
shot down those that deal with death and destruction and drugs, and 
brought that country to the order and the prosperity it is now seeing. 
He, in fact, with a little tiny bit of our aid, just several millions 
of dollars, took Peru from a major producer down by some 50 percent 
reduction, in fact a 65 percent reduction is our latest figure, in 
cocaine production in Peru.
  Bolivia, with the help of President Banzer, who took over, and we 
went down and discussed these programs, a little bit of assistance, 
some crop alternatives so the peasants would be growing something other 
than coca, and those programs work. There has been more than a 50 
percent reduction in Bolivia of cocaine.
  We pleaded with this administration to get aid and assistance to 
Colombia, the other producing area, and on every occasion the President 
blocked aid to Colombia; on every occasion the State Department 
thwarted our efforts to get even a few helicopters up into the Andean 
region to go after the coca that was being produced, and, if you want 
to get into heroin, there was no heroin produced to speak of in 1992-
1993, the beginning of this administration.
  So the direct policy of this administration and the liberals in the 
Congress helped make Colombia the producer of 80 to 90 percent of the 
cocaine in 6 years, and probably 75 percent of the heroin in 6 years. 
Until early this spring, the President and this administration never 
brought before the Congress any type of cooperative plan to deal with 
the situation in Colombia. Unfortunately, now it has caught up in the 
legislative process.
  I call on my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, to bring this 
forth. This plan works. This is not, again, rocket science. We can stop 
hard drugs from coming into our borders. We are not going to stop all 
of them, but this shows exactly what has taken place, and I think one 
of the most graphic portrayals that has been produced from our 
subcommittee.
  Again, this should be the ``chart of shame'' for this administration 
and the policies of the other side. This shows in 1993 the production 
of cocaine and heroine produced in Colombia. 1993, almost nothing for 
cocaine. For heroin, in 1993, almost none produced in Colombia. Now it 
produces 75 percent.
  Congratulations to the Clinton Administration. This is a great 
legacy, that you have managed to concentrate the drug production of two 
of the most deadly drugs in nearly 7 years here in one country in which 
you have blocked any assistance. It is an incredible legacy, and, 
unfortunately, it has resulted in a rash of epidemics of the use of 
these, particularly, as I just cited, according to the CDC report we 
got last week, among our young people, an incredible volume being 
produced in those countries.
  Again, this is not rocket science. We know where it is coming from. 
We know heroin is coming out of Colombia, 75 percent being used in the 
United States. We know that by any seizure that is done around the 
United States.
  Madam Speaker, to wind this up, we do need a bipartisan and 
cooperative effort. We must learn by the mistakes that have been made. 
We must learn by putting together a plan that does work and move 
forward with it. Next week, hopefully, we will have an hour to tell the 
rest of the story, as Paul Harvey says.

                          ____________________