[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 7375-7380]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                    ILLEGAL NARCOTICS AND DRUG ABUSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to come before the House again on 
a Tuesday night to address the topic that I normally address on Tuesday 
night before the House and to the American people on the subject of 
illegal narcotics and drug abuse and its effect upon our Nation and the 
responsibility of this Congress to address that terrible social problem 
that we face.
  Tonight, I would like to provide an update. We were in recess during 
the spring work period, and I would like to update the House and again 
the American people on some of the things that have happened relating 
to illegal narcotics. When I make these presentations, I try to look at 
what has been in the recent news and highlighted, sometimes violence 
which is highlighted, unfortunately, in our newscasts about what is 
happening in our society. Again, I think there is no greater social 
problem facing this Nation than that of illegal narcotics. It has a 
dramatic impact on our communities and our children.
  Before we left for recess, I addressed the House and spoke about the 
untold story. The untold story of a 6-year-old bringing a gun into 
school and shooting a 6-year-old and all of the attention focused on 
the gun. We did look a little bit behind the scenes and found that the 
6-year-old was the victim of a crack house family that was disjointed; 
drugs and narcotics prevalent. I believe the father was in jail on a 
narcotics charge.
  Again, if we look at the root problem, we see narcotics, we see again 
a dysfunctional family, and societal problems. The gun was the means by 
which this 6-year-old committed a terrible act, a murder, but the root 
of the problem is, I think, what this Congress and the American people 
must focus upon in their attention to correct the situation.
  Then I think the American people were focused and the news also 
riveted in on a 12-year-old who brought a gun into school and had his 
classmates I believe at bay with a weapon, and again, if we look behind 
the scenes, and I related to the Congress, we found that the child, the 
12-year-old had taken a gun to school and attempted to get attention 
and get arrested because he wanted to join his mother, who was in jail 
on a drug charge.
  Another incident of illegal narcotics being at the root of the 
problem, the gun manifesting itself again is certainly a very serious 
problem, a problem of bringing a weapon into school, but again, a child 
with many problems, illegal narcotics at the root of some of his family 
problems. Then, during the holidays, right at the season of Easter and 
Passover, I think the entire Nation and the world was focused on 
Washington, D.C., our Nation's Capital, which has some of the strongest 
gun control legislation and laws on the books of any locality in the 
United States. In fact, it is almost illegal to own a weapon that is 
unregistered and there are very tight control laws. Yet, a 16-year-old 
terrorized a family day at the National Zoo here in the District of 
Columbia. The report, of course, focused on the young teenager who was 
using a weapon and fired into the crowd. But the rest of the story was 
not told.
  Let me just cite a little bit about this young man, a 16-year-old by 
the name of Jones who was actually the son of an enforcer in the 
District's biggest drug gang, his father was one of the biggest drug 
gang participants in the 1980s, and this young man, again, was the 
victim of illegal narcotics, and what it had done to his family. He was 
brought up as really the product of illegal narcotics and crime that 
emanated from illegal narcotics. His father, this article went on to 
say, James Antonio Jones, was already in jail, a source to the family 
confirmed. The elder Jones, 43, is serving a life sentence in a Federal 
maximum security prison in Beaumont, Texas, after a 1990 conviction for 
his role in the drug hierarchy run by Raphael Edmond, who was a 
notorious drug dealer and head of a crack cocaine gang here in the 
District of Columbia.
  Mr. Speaker, in almost every one of these instances I have cited and 
others that we see on the nightly news with the attention of the media, 
in fact, all of these cases have illegal narcotics at the root of their 
problems. Some 70 to 80 percent of those in our prisons, in our jails, 
in our Federal penitentiaries are there because of drug-related 
offenses.
  Many would have us believe that these folks are in prison for 
possessing small amounts of marijuana or some other drug. The fact is, 
most of these people are there for repeated felonies. Some of them, in 
fact, have been on drugs when they have committed these repeated 
crimes. Many of them have repeated their crimes time and time again, 
are multiple offenders. Most of the people in our prisons, in fact, 
have two or more felony convictions in our Federal penitentiaries and 
State penitentiaries, according to the studies that our staff from our 
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice has undertaken.
  So there are a lot of myths about what is going on, there is a lot of 
misinformation about who is committing crime and these illegal acts. In 
fact, we try through these weekly presentations before the House of 
Representatives to get the facts to the American people and the 
Congress.
  Again, this is the worst social problem that we face. It is a 
horrendous problem. The toll is not only those behind bars, but those 
who die annually.
  The most recent statistics that we have on deaths, direct deaths from 
illegal narcotics are 1998 figures, and that is 15,973 Americans died. 
If we take all of the other deaths related to illegal narcotics, people 
driving under the influence of illegal narcotics, people who die as a 
result of illegal narcotics, not necessarily an overdose, but some 
other act, total, according to our National Drug Czar, Barry McCaffrey, 
more than 50,000, almost as many in one year as killed in some of our 
international conflicts.
  So this, indeed, is a great problem. It is a problem that can cost 
our society as much as a quarter of a trillion, $250 billion a year. 
That is in dollars and cents, not in heartaches to mothers and fathers 
and sisters and brothers

[[Page 7376]]

and parents and grandparents who have children and sons and daughters 
involved in illegal narcotics.
  During this past recess, it was my privilege to talk to some of the 
local law enforcement people in my community. I have cited the impact 
of illegal narcotics in central Florida, and I represent probably one 
of the most tranquil areas in the country and in the State of Florida 
and on the East Coast, and that is the area between Orlando and Daytona 
Beach.
  Central Florida has had a heroin epidemic. I have cited that before 
on the floor of the House. In the past several years, we have had in 
the neighborhood of 60 deaths from drug overdoses. We have had a record 
number of heroin overdoses and deaths. Unfortunately, I have had to 
meet with many of the parents who have lost young people to heroin 
overdoses, and they die a horrible death. It is none of the glamour 
that is portrayed by Hollywood or by films or the word of mouth that 
heroin is a great experience. It is a horrible experience and a 
horrible death, and any of these parents will testify to that. I 
brought before the House rather gruesome pictures of the results of 
overdoses of heroin and they are not pretty pictures.

                              {time}  2130

  I hate to bring them back up here again, but there is no glamor in 
death by heroin. The heroin that we have on the streets of the United 
States today is not the low purity heroin that we had in the 1980s, now 
some of the heroin is 80, 90 percent pure. It is as deadly as any 
substance can be, particularly when used with other drugs or alcohol, 
and first time users unfortunately do not survive.
  In meeting with some of the local law enforcement people, we are 
matching our deaths in central Florida. Again, our deaths are record in 
number. Our deaths by heroin overdoses now exceed our homicides, 
according to the latest statistics, which is absolutely alarming. In 
fact, we find the situation getting worse, not only in central Florida, 
but across the Nation.
  In meeting again with these local officials, they told me that while 
the deaths are equal or slightly above previous years' death count, the 
only reason they have not shot off the charts even at an even greater 
rate is the ability of our emergency medical personnel to provide 
better attention, quicker attention, and better medical survival 
equipment available to save more of these individuals.
  The problem we have, though, is we are seeing more and more 
incidents, emergency room incidents of heroin overdoses. We are just 
able to save a few more folks, and the deaths continue to spiral. One 
of the headlines that was in the newspaper just this week in the 
Washington Times here, which always does such a good job in reporting, 
I brought a copy of this tonight, suburban teen heroin use on the 
increase.
  This is the headline that blurted out. This is an absolutely shocking 
statistic that was presented, and this is part of a study that was 
done. I have a copy of the study here. It is an interagency domestic 
heroin threat assessment, and these statistics on the increase in 
illegal narcotics is, again, quite remarkable.
  If we look at 1996, we had suburban teen heroin use, and we are 
looking at about a half a million young people using heroin, that 
figure has doubled just about to 1 million, 980,000 according to this 
report.
  In a very brief period of time, we have had a near doubling of the 
number of heroin users in the United States, teenage heroin users. The 
rate of first use by children aged 12 to 17 increased from less than 1 
in 1,000 in the 1980s to 2.7 per thousand in 1996. First time heroin 
users are getting younger, from an average age of 26 year olds in 1991 
to an average of 17 years of age by 1997.
  Again, some of the statistics from this report are startling. Again, 
we see teen heroin use on the increase.
  What I also wanted to address tonight is the question of where this 
heroin is coming from and how did we get into a situation where we have 
a doubling of the amount of teenagers in our country on heroin. 
Unfortunately, the chart that I present now shows a rather sad record 
for the Clinton/Gore administration on the question of long-term 
prevalence and use of heroin. This chart was prepared by monitoring the 
future study at University of Michigan. It is not something I made up 
in a partisan fashion.
  If we look at the chart for a minute, we see the percent of 12th 
graders, and if we look at this record here, see pretty much stable, 
some downturn, some slight increase and then a dramatic downturn under 
the Bush administration.
  It is pretty level and in some cases there are reductions, some 
valleys, mostly leveling out and valleys from the Reagan and Bush 
administration. Actually heroin was not quite as much of a problem 
because President Reagan had developed a methadone strategy, an 
interdiction strategy, source country programs, many of which were 
eliminated in this period from 1993 forward. In 1993, and I have not 
touched the chart in any way or doctored it, you can see a dramatic 
increase in heroin use.
  We actually see some stabilization here, that stabilization and a 
slight decrease is right after the Republicans took over the House and 
Senate and began an effort to restore some of the source country 
programs, the interdiction programs. We have also had a tremendous 
problem in heroin, and I will talk about that, but part of the problem 
that we have is, again, a lack of attention to heroin and its 
production and entry into the United States.
  In fact, in the same period we have since the beginning of the 
Clinton administration doubled the amount of money on treatment, but we 
have again the situation that we see here.
  We know where the heroin is coming from. If we can put this chart up 
here, in 1998, we know today, according to this DEA, Drug Enforcement 
Administration chart which they have provided me, that 65 percent of 
the heroin that is seized in the United States comes from South 
America, and probably 99 percent of that comes from Colombia. We know 
this for a fact. They can do a chemical analysis, almost a DNA 
analysis, and find out almost to the field where the heroin comes from. 
The heroin that is seized across the country, samples are sent in to 
DEA and they perform this analysis, so we know pretty well the picture 
of where heroin is coming from. It is coming from Colombia. We also see 
it coming from Mexico. The bulk of it, of course, again is from 
Colombia.
  If we had this chart for 1992, 1993, we would see almost no heroin 
coming from South America. In fact, heroin was not produced in Colombia 
until the beginning of the Clinton administration, for all intents and 
purposes. Heroin was probably in the single digits from Mexico. It has 
crept up a bit since even the last report we had in 1997. It was at 14 
percent. It is now at 17 percent.
  Mexico, who we have given incredible trade advantages to, this 
administration has certified repeatedly as far as cooperating in the 
drug wars, now in 1 year increased production by some 20 percent of 
black tar heroin. Again, we know exactly where this is coming from, 
according to the tests that are conducted.
  This is where heroin is coming from in 1992, almost none of the 
heroin produced in Colombia and single digit in Mexico, and dramatic 
increases in both of those countries, from both of those countries.
  We know the pattern of drug traffickers. Let me take this down. This 
is the pattern of drug traffickers. We know since 1992, 1993, with the 
election of the Gore and Clinton team that there was a change in 
strategy; that they wanted to in fact close down the Reagan and Bush 
programs for source countries, stopping drugs at their source, and also 
interdicting drugs as they came from the source, and they effectively 
did that. They closed down most of the international programs, slashed 
the budgets by some 50 percent.
  We know the pattern of heroin coming out of Colombia now because we 
can identify it by the signature program. We also know that Colombia, 
which was not producing but a small,

[[Page 7377]]

small percentage, probably again in single digits of cocaine, is now 
the world's major producer of cocaine. Some 80 percent of the cocaine 
in the world is coming out of Colombia. This is also since the 
inception of the Clinton-Gore policy, where they dismantled these 
source country programs.
  During the past 4 or 5 years of the Republican administration, we 
have made a concerted effort to put back together some of the programs 
that the Clinton-Gore team and the Democrat-controlled Congress in 2 
years did incredible damage to. It is a monumental effort. It took 
President Reagan most of his term and President Bush to get the illegal 
narcotics problem in the right direction, and that is on a downward 
trend.
  Again, these are not doctored in any way. These are not partisan 
charts. This chart, also produced by the University of Michigan, shows 
the record, and it is a very clear record. I know this drives the 
Clinton-Gore people crazy, and it drives the people on the other side 
of the aisle, the liberal side, who changed policy crazy, but this 
shows very clearly that with President Reagan, we see the long-term 
trend and prevalence of drug use.
  This really is the major measure of what is going on with illegal 
narcotics. We see it going down in a steady fashion under President 
Reagan. We see a dramatic drop under President Bush, an incredible job 
here done.
  Then again, undoctored, and we do not play with any of these charts, 
but the facts are very clear, that again, with President Clinton, with 
the close-down of the interdiction programs, the source country 
programs, taking the military out, cutting the Coast Guard budget, all 
this was done in a very short period of time, but the damage has been 
absolutely incredible.
  When the Republicans took over, having participated in this, we knew 
that this policy needed to be reversed. Under the leadership of the now 
Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), who 
chaired the subcommittee that I now chair, actually, the responsibility 
for drug policy, it was a different title, it is now titled the 
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, but 
the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert) was the one responsible, 
along with his predecessor, Mr. Zeliff, who left the Congress, in 
restarting the war on drugs.
  This is basically the war on drugs, and we will hear people say the 
war on drugs was a failure. Mr. Speaker, if this is a failure, I am 
either reading the chart wrong, and we can bring back the heroin chart. 
We also have them for cocaine and other narcotics. This is pretty 
dramatic and pretty evident of a successful program. Again, the use of 
illegal narcotics is going down, down, down. This certainly has to be a 
patent failure with the Clinton-Gore administration, by any measure.

                              {time}  2145

  It is interesting that, if we looked at the resources that were 
committed, again, this chart is not doctored. It shows the exact 
figures in the millions of dollars for international programs. Now, 
when we think about drug programs, we spend billions and billions in 
drug program, it costs us billions and billions of dollars. Here we 
have a chart that starts out with about $600 million in international 
source country programs. These programs were started under President 
Reagan and President Bush to stop drugs at their source, because it 
really is the most cost-effective way.
  Where drugs are produced by peasants in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, 
these peasants get very few pesos or the equivalent of dollars for 
their harvest. And we know that 100 percent of the cocaine comes from 
Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. One hundred percent. Maybe I should say 
99.99 percent. Maybe there is a little bit on the slopes of Ecuador or 
some other bordering country, but it all comes from that region.
  We know that the programs under President Bush and President Reagan 
worked. We know that the programs under President Clinton have not 
worked in eliminating international drug programs or slashing them.
  Here we can see from this chart, 1992-1993 here, and again with a 
Democrat-controlled Congress implementing their policy and gutting the 
international programs to less than half of what they were. We see 
increases with the advent of the Republican Majority. We are back up 
to, and if we take this 1999 dollars and put it into 1991 dollars, we 
are just about back at 1991 levels.
  But this is a clear pattern. If we took this and did an overlay with 
the previous chart, we can see that as they cut drug use here, they had 
those programs in place, as they took the programs for international 
out of place, the drug use started to soar and that is because we had 
an even greater supply coming.
  This chart shows Federal spending for interdiction also gutted by the 
Democrat-controlled Congress. Gutted here in 1993. It looks a little 
delayed, but we have to remember that we start a fiscal year a little 
bit later, like we will start the next one in October of this year. But 
we can see the devastation of the cuts in interdiction programs here. 
And we see, getting back to the equivalent of the 1991 figures, 
actually, if we look at this little peak that we have gotten to here, 
it coincides with the slight downturn that we have seen here in drug 
use.
  Also, if I got the heroin chart out, we would see some stabilization. 
The problem we have in heroin is that heroin is now produced in 
Colombia in incredible quantities. The quantity is completely 
uncontained as far as coming into the United States. Because the 
Clinton administration has thwarted every single attempt, up to, I 
would say, last October when the situation in Colombia got totally out 
of hand.
  Colombia is about to lose its country. We sent the Drug Czar down, we 
have sent other officials down. But the policy of the Clinton-Gore 
administration, the Democrat-controlled Congress, was one of one error 
after another in Colombia.
  First, we stopped information sharing with Colombia back in 1994, 
which brought the outrage even from Democrat Members of the Congress. 
That was information sharing which we provide through interdiction. And 
we can see if we look at this interdiction chart, we see the gutting of 
the interdiction program.
  Our military does not get involved in an enforcement manner in the 
narcotics issue. It is prohibited from actually conducting law 
enforcement by the Constitution. We do not want the military in law 
enforcement. But what the military does is surveillance in the 
international area outside our borders.
  If we had missiles coming in that were killing 15,973 citizens in one 
year, 100,000 in 7 years, and 50,000 deaths related to that action, we 
certainly would use our national security forces. What we do is we use 
the military to conduct surveillance. Our planes provide that 
information to other countries. We, again, through the Republican new 
majority, started programs for source country, for interdiction, 
restarted them in 1996 and 1997 for Peru and for Bolivia.
  Mr. Speaker, those programs have been phenomenally successful. The 
amount of cocaine has been cut, production in Bolivia has been cut some 
55 percent. In Peru, we are up in the 65 percent, 66 percent range. The 
only change that we have seen is further cuts of providing this 
interdiction and surveillance information to Peru, and there have been 
some downturns in the United States providing that information. We 
immediately see some increase in drug trafficking or drug production. 
It is almost guaranteed to happen according to, again, all the research 
and evidence and information that we have.
  So, where we let up, we in fact have illegal narcotics coming into 
this country. Nothing is more evident than Colombia. Again, in 1994, 
the administration stopped information sharing. The next thing they did 
was they decertified Colombia without a national interest waiver, which 
meant that we could not send assistance to Colombia to fight illegal 
narcotics.
  In Colombia, illegal narcotics and the narcoterrorist activity that 
has caused tens of thousands of deaths and disruption of that country 
are synonymous. The narcoterrorists fund their

[[Page 7378]]

terrorist activities through narcotics trafficking. That is well-known. 
The right and the left, extreme right and extreme left in that civil 
war fund their activities through narcotics trafficking, narcotics 
taxes and income from the production of narcotics. We know it, our Drug 
Czar has stated that many times.
  That is why it has become in the United States' national interest to 
provide assistance to Colombia to stop the narcotics trafficking, stop 
the terrorist activities that are going on there. Not to provide any 
troops or any active military participation there. We have agreed to 
provide some training.
  But year after year since 1993 with the Clinton-Gore administration, 
they have stopped resources getting to Colombia. The results are very 
evident. We have, again, production from no production in Colombia of 
heroin to now producing some 65 percent, probably closer to 70 percent 
of the heroin, where there was almost none.
  Cocaine. We have some 80 percent now being produced in Colombia. 
Before it was being transshipped through Colombia from Peru and 
Bolivia. And we do know that the program instituted by the Republican 
Majority has worked very well in those countries to cut production.
  But right now the reason we have this report on heroin flooding our 
streets, young people being victimized and dying at incredible numbers 
from heroin, is the sheer quantity, the sheer supply.
  Now, it is bad enough that we have this record of all of these 
activities being stopped here which has allowed some of this to happen. 
But what is even worse is the reaction of the administration to provide 
assets. If we are going to fight a war on drugs, or if we are going to 
fight a war, we need assets and we need to have those assets committed 
to that war effort.
  Mr. Speaker, this chart is part of a report that was prepared at my 
request by the General Accounting Office in December of 1999. What this 
chart shows is the various assets. Some of these are DOD. This is the 
DOD assets, which have been dedicated to the war on drugs. And we see 
this decline from 1993 here, this continuous decline of DOD assets to 
the war on drugs.
  The next little triangle, the yellow triangle, the Customs Service 
assets declining. Some beginning of increase with the Republican 
Majority, and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert) was responsible 
for this. We see the beginning of the return back to this 1992 level. 
The Coast Guard, we see steady decline.
  If we took the budgets for these various agencies, we would see them 
gutted by the Clinton-Gore administration and also by the 
Democratically controlled Congress. So if we have a war on drugs, we 
must commit assets.
  The report that I had conducted said that flight hours have been 
reduced 68 percent for fiscal years 1992 to 1999. So this is flying 
hours dedicated to tracking suspect shipments of illegal narcotics in 
transit to the United States. The number declined from 46,264 to 
14,770.
  So I submit that the war on drugs was a success, but basically closed 
down by this administration and this is pretty good evidence.
  The other area, if drugs are not shipped by air, they ship by sea. I 
also asked GAO to look at trafficking patterns and also what we were 
doing as far as providing assets in the war on drugs as far as maritime 
activities.
  If we look again from some of these highs here, we see DOD in the red 
declining and a steady decline of ship days. If if we look at the Coast 
Guard, we see some slight increase. This follows the other pattern, and 
the total overall is still below what it was in 1992.
  In fact, the report given to me indicates that assets that were used 
in shipping and going after illegal narcotics declined some 62 percent 
during this period from 1992 to 1999. So the ship days for going after 
illegal narcotics and those resources in a war on drugs declined 
dramatically during that period.
  One of the other problems that we have had in the war on illegal 
drugs is the failure of this administration to negotiate with Panama 
the location and continued operation of our anti-narcotics operations 
centers, which were located in Panama. These are known as FOLs, forward 
operating locations. In order to conduct a war on illegal narcotics, we 
need information and surveillance from the area where illegal drugs are 
produced and also shipped out of that particular setting.
  In May of 1999, of course, the United States was forced to stop all 
flights. The administration bungled the negotiations with Panama. We 
encouraged them to at least negotiate an arrangement where we could 
continue our narcotics tracking flights out of that area.

                              {time}  2200

  Since May of 1999, we have seen, not a total shutdown, but a dramatic 
increase, again, as documented by this GAO report. Our illegal 
narcotics, heroin, cocaine are coming in from Colombia in unprecedented 
volumes. It is absolutely mind boggling the sheer amount of heroin and 
cocaine that is coming in.
  But one sees that we do not have the locations. Now, this chart shows 
coverage with potential FOLs, and this chart was given to me as showing 
the Congress and our committee what would be done to relocate those 
operations for surveillance and important interdiction information.
  One of the locations proposed was in Manta, Ecuador. The other was in 
Curacao and Aruba. Unfortunately, the Manta location in Ecuador and 
also the location in Aruba Dutch Antilles took longer than anticipated 
to negotiate final agreements.
  The cost, by the time we are through with relocating here, will be 
$128 million since the Manta air strip is not adequate to land the 
heavy planes and equipment that we have. Aruba will have to build 
additional facilities.
  But we have dramatically cut the number of flights, the number of 
surveillance missions because we do not have these two locations in 
operation. It may be 2002 before actually both of these are up and 
running at full capacity. That is why we have the report of incredible 
amounts of heroin and still cocaine coming into the United States. We 
have nothing in place to stop it.
  Today I met with the representatives of the Department of Defense and 
various agencies involved in trying to put together a program to put 
Humpty Dumpty back together again to try to get us back to the 1992 
levels in this fight.
  We now have recently signed, but not fully approved by the El 
Salvador legislature, a third location. This will cost us another $10 
million or $15 million in addition to losing the Panama location and $5 
billion worth of assets there. We will now pay to relocate these 
operations.
  But nothing will stop narcotics quicker than either eradicating them 
at their source or getting them as they come from their source. It is 
proven effective in Peru. It is proven effective in Bolivia. It will 
prove effective in Colombia and the surrounding areas and stop some of 
the incredible supply that is driving down the price and making more of 
the drugs available to our young people.
  Again, my colleagues saw the figures of a doubling in just several 
years of heroin abuse. But this is where it is coming from. 
Unfortunately, all of this will not be in place for several years to 
get us back to where we were in 1992 in our operations in the 
antinarcotics effort.
  What is sad, too, is that this administration continues to thwart the 
will and recommendations of Congress. We have attempted for some 4 or 5 
years, I know since we took over the majority, in every fashion, 
including granting appropriations, to get resources to Colombia and to 
the area where illegal narcotics are coming from.
  But this GAO report also outlines that DoD is not providing assets 
that are requested. When we question the various agencies where these 
assets are, in fact, the assets are going to Bosnia, the assets are 
going to the Middle East, the assets are going to Kosovo, they are 
going to the record number of deployments under the Clinton-Gore 
administration.
  This is quite telling because SouthCom, which is the Southern U.S.

[[Page 7379]]

Command in charge of basically our war on drugs and our antinarcotics 
effort, has been requesting assets. These are assets, DoD assets, 
towards the war on drugs. This is in the blue. The red shows what they 
got and what was provided as far as assets in this effort. We see that 
this is the request, and this is what they got. In 1999, this is the 
request, and this is what they got.
  So if my colleagues are wondering why they have heroin on their 
streets, if they are wondering why they have record number of teenagers 
using heroin and illegal drugs, this is because, even though the 
Congress has appropriated funds and resources, we cannot get those 
resources into this program.
  I do not know if it is the Secretary of Defense, but I fear that it 
is even higher in the administration because, again, every effort to 
get resources to stop these drugs and the sheer incredible supply 
coming into our country every effort is thwarted. It has almost reached 
comical proportions as I cited, and it would be funny if there were not 
so many people dying as a result of this.
  The helicopters that we requested for the Colombia National Police 
for some 4 or 5 years now finally got there late this past fall. 
Unfortunately, as we now know, the ammunition for those helicopters was 
delivered to the back door of the State Department in a bungled 
operation rather than to Colombia. It would almost be humorous to find 
out that those helicopters were sent to Colombia and they were not 
properly armored so they could not be used in the antinarcotics effort.
  Finally, I believe we now have those resources in place. The 
administration did become aware of the destabilization of the area and 
what was going on in Columbia and finally asked for a supplemental 
package. Unfortunately, the President did not submit finally to 
Congress until the time of our budget, and that was several months ago, 
a request; and that, unfortunately, now is being handled through the 
regular funding process, although it is necessary to move that package 
forward to get these assets in place.
  One of the things that does disturb me is some of the liberalizers 
out there and those who would legalize and propose that the solution to 
all this is just legalize what are now illegal narcotics, and all of 
our problems will be solved.
  I think that an article that I read by a professor at Pepperdine 
University, James Q. Wilson, had some interesting information. I just 
wanted to cite him tonight. He said,

       Advocates of legalization think that both buyers and 
     sellers would benefit by legalization. People who can buy 
     drugs freely and at something like at free market prices 
     would no longer have to steal to afford cocaine or heroin. 
     Dealers would no longer have to use violence and corruption 
     to maybe obtain their market share. Though drugs may harm 
     people, reducing this harm would be a medical problem. And 
     you always hear the legalizers say it is a medical problem, 
     not a criminal justice one. Crime would drop sharply.

  But there is an error in this calculation. Again, this is what 
Professor Wilson is saying.

       Legalizing drugs means letting the price fall to its 
     competitive rate plus taxes and advertising costs. That 
     market price would probably be somewhere between one-third 
     and one-twentieth of the illegal price, and more than the 
     market price would fall.

  As Harvard's Mark Moore pointed out,

       The risk price, that is all the hazards associated with 
     buying the drugs, from being arrested to being ripped off 
     would also fall; and this decline might be more important 
     than the lower purchase price. Under a legal regime, the 
     consumption of low-priced low-risk drugs would increase 
     dramatically. We do not know by how much. But the little 
     evidence we have suggests a sharp rise.
       Until 1968, Britain allowed doctors to prescribe heroin. 
     Some doctors cheated, and their medically unnecessary 
     prescriptions helped increase the number of known heroin 
     addicts by a factor of 40. As a result, the government 
     abandoned the prescription policy in favor of administering 
     heroin in clinics and later replacing heroin with methadone.
       When the Netherlands ceased enforcing laws against the 
     purchase or possession of marijuana, the result was a sharp 
     increase in its use. Cocaine and heroin create much greater 
     dependency. So the increase in their use would probably be 
     even greater.
       The average user would probably commit fewer crimes if 
     these drugs were sold legally, but the total number of users 
     would increase sharply.
       A large fraction of these new users would be unable to keep 
     a steady job unless we were prepared to support them with 
     welfare payments. Crime would be one of their major sources 
     of income; that is, the number of drug-related crimes per 
     user might fall even as the total number of drug-related 
     crimes increased.
       Add to the list of harms more deaths from overdose, more 
     babies born to addicted mothers, more accidents by drug-
     influenced automobile drivers, and fewer people able to hold 
     jobs or act as competent parents.

  I think that this observation by professor Wilson is quite 
interesting.
  It is also borne by the facts where they have tried liberalized 
policy in the United States. I bring out the chart provided to me by 
DEA, our Drug Enforcement Agency, which shows that heroin addict 
population of Baltimore.
  Now, Baltimore, until just recently, had a very liberal mayor, Mayor 
Schmoke. He actually turned his back on enforcement of some of the 
illegal narcotics trafficking and use and abuse in his community. The 
results were incredible. The number of deaths in 1997, 1998 were 312; 
1999, when we got these figures, the end of last year, were 308. It 
will probably reach 312 because people die as a result of some wound 
inflicted on them. But the deaths are pretty much stable.
  But what has happened in Baltimore with this liberal policy is 
absolutely astounding, and it is confirmed by what Professor Wilson had 
outlined in his statement of what happens. If we look at Baltimore, in 
the 1950s, it had almost a million population. In 1996, it was down to 
675,000. We will know what the population is now, but we think it is 
down lower, around 600,000.
  In 1996, it had 38,985 heroin addicts. Again, this is during the 
period of the liberal attitude towards illegal narcotics. That estimate 
is now, 1999, somewhere in the neighborhood of one in eight citizens. 
This is not something I have made up, it is something a city council 
person has said, one in eight are now addicted in what is left of 
Baltimore.
  So exactly what the experience was in England, we see an increase, 
dramatic increase in the addiction population. If this was multiplied 
across the United States and we had one in eight people in the United 
States addicted to heroin or illegal narcotics, we would have a 
disaster on our hands. This is, again, the model of a liberal approach, 
a liberal approach that failed, both in deaths and addiction. I do not 
think one can have more horrible results.
  What is interesting and most people like to ignore, particularly the 
liberal crowd or those that want to gang up on Rudy Giuliani these 
days, is the tough enforcement, the zero tolerance policy. Does it work 
or does it not work? If my colleagues will look in the early 1990s when 
Rudy Giuliani took over as mayor, they see about 2,000 plus deaths from 
murders, the crime rate in New York City.

                              {time}  2215

  The zero tolerance has brought that down to the mid 600 range, an 
absolutely dramatic decrease in murders in that city. What is amazing 
is not only the murders have decreased but in every other major crime 
area, crime is down by some 50 percent to 1999 during his tenure.
  And what is interesting is, I know that people pick on Mr. Giuliani 
and say that there is overenforcement, and our subcommittee did 
hearings and we updated that information. We did hearings a year ago 
when he was accused of some of his police force being overzealous in 
their enforcement and we found that there were in fact fewer incidences 
of police firing on individuals under Rudy Giuliani. We found there 
were fewer incidences of complaints against police. And, actually, that 
was while Mr. Giuliani had increased the police force by some 25 
percent in numbers. So, actually, the number of police on duty had 
increased and there were far fewer complaints under Mr. Giuliani than 
there were under the former administrations of the city.
  Again, the figures for the New York City Police Department are 
absolutely incredible. Zero tolerance, tough enforcement, does work. In 
1993, there were 429,000 major felony crimes committed. In 1998, we 
have 212. An incredible record.

[[Page 7380]]

  The liberals would have us believe that the legalization is the 
answer. In fact, the liberalization has almost devastated the city of 
Baltimore and other settings where they have attempted a liberal 
policy. The tough enforcement, the zero tolerance, in fact, does work 
and does result in dramatic decreases in crime across the board.
  I am very pleased that the Republican majority has increased the 
source country programs that are so effective in stopping illegal 
narcotics at their source. We are getting them back to the 1991-92 
funding levels for the programs of interdiction, of stopping drugs cost 
effectively as they come from those source country areas where they are 
produced. The Republican majority has instituted and funded through 
appropriations a billion dollars a national drug education program, 
unprecedented in the history of this country, and we have, again, 
dramatically increased the amount of money for treatment and other 
programs.
  So I am proud of our record and will continue next week to cite the 
drug problem that we have facing this Nation.
  I have run out of time, so I will yield back, Mr. Speaker, first 
thanking those who are working tonight for their patience.

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