[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.
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