[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 154-162]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         AMERICA'S DRUG POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bishop of Utah). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. 
Souder) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority 
leader.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, the subject of this Special Order, and I 
hope to be joined by several of my colleagues, is going to be narcotics 
policy in the United States and a number of success stories we have 
had.
  We often talk about the problems and challenges as chairman of the 
Subcommittee on Drug Policy, the committee that has oversight over all 
drug issues but also authorizing over the Office of National Drug 
Control Policy, so-called Drug Czar, Director John Walters. We have 
authorizing and oversight on all drug issues.
  Before I get directly into the subject of this Special Order, I 
wanted to say a few words about last night's wonderful address on this 
floor and to this assembly.
  If the President had included every single thing of importance and 
everything we have in our budget, we would still be sitting here this 
morning. So I first want to thank the President for finishing his 
speech in 60 minutes.
  My colleagues were sharing many concerns that I share as well. That 
is why our budgets are this thick. That is why we debate all year long 
on appropriations. But the goal of the State of the Union address is to 
set a basic vision for where our country is headed; and I thought 
President Bush did a remarkable job of outlining the major challenges 
that we face.

                              {time}  1445

  We are not a county or a city council. We are not mayors. We are not 
governors. First and foremost, this body and the President of the 
United States and the United States Senate have to do international 
policy. States and local governments cannot do things like the 
challenges we faced after 9/11 in trying to root out terrorism in 
Afghanistan, root out terrorism in the funding and the harboring of 
terrorists in Iraq, to try to break up these networks worldwide, and 
the President definitely had his focus on the one thing that only the 
President can lead in and that was our national security. He said, very 
eloquently, after the first World Trade Center attack and the bombing 
occurred there, the people were served with subpoenas, they went 
through our court process, but then the terrorist groups came back and 
hit us even bigger. We cannot just issue subpoenas. We have to tackle 
the problem head-on.
  He also said in response to some critics that we are not going to get 
a permission slip to protect the American people. We each took an oath 
of office to uphold the security of the American people, every Member 
of this body and the President of the United States, and in spite of 
all the criticism, it would have been easier to make some compromises 
last night on some of this stuff but he held firm because he would 
prefer to win, but if it is necessary to protect American security, he 
will do what is necessary, and if the people do not understand it and 
reject him, he can look at himself in the mirror and said I did my best 
job, I did my best job to defend the American people, I upheld the 
Constitution to do that. He showed his boldness last night in defending 
his policies.
  By the way, both sides stood up and cheered. On these issues, there 
was not a my-way-or-the-highway approach. I saw both sides of the aisle 
standing on almost all of his statements on international security, on 
Iraq, on Afghanistan. I saw bipartisanship. Not every Member of the 
other party stood, but most did and most supported, at least many of 
them, the war resolution itself.
  Let me mention a couple of other specifics. For example, I support 
veterans assistance, too. In my district, I do not have any active 
bases. I have lots of guard and reserve units, and I voted for and 
support the continued effort if we are going to use guard and reserve 
like the military to try to address pay concerns, and we are not going 
to have an active voluntary military unless we improve pay and health

[[Page 155]]

service and all sorts of things for the veterans.
  I am on the Select Committee on Homeland Security. I strongly believe 
we have to do more on the domestic side of homeland security, but 
fortunately, by disrupting, as the President pointed out, by disrupting 
the terrorist bases, by disrupting the financial assistance that they 
have, the places to hide out, they are continuing to try to penetrate 
us the same ways because they do not have the training grounds in Iraq. 
They do not have the training grounds in Afghanistan. They do not have 
the financial networks. They do not have places to hide out right now 
so we have been able to intercept them, which buys us time to help 
along the Canadian border, along the Mexican border, to try to get 
better and faster equipment in our harbors because the cost would be 
horrendous to try to defend every child care center in America, to try 
to defend every single harbor, to slow us down so that our goods in the 
United States go up way in prices as we try to ship them in and out, as 
we try to check 100 percent at the border. It just cannot work right 
now.
  As we move these machines in, for example, many of these machines at 
the airport cost $1.5 million each. One cannot walk down to Wal-Mart 
and pick them up. It takes a while for the companies to make them, to 
implement them at the airports, but because we have disrupted those 
bases, because they do not have places to hide out, we have not been 
hit on our soil. Because of the brave men and women in our Armed 
Forces, they are taking the bullets that were intended for us here.
  So we have time to develop our domestic homeland security because of 
the initiatives the President has done. And the fact is, I know those 
who would like to throw the incumbent party out of office do not like 
to admit this, but the economy is recovering, and the economy is 
recovering in spite of 9/11. In spite of the weakness that occurred 
after 9/11 in the markets exposing the fraud and cheating of companies 
like Enron and others who are manipulating the markets, in spite of the 
uncertainties of war, the economy is coming back, and it is coming back 
more efficient, and the jobs are increasing not at a fast enough rate.
  Underneath that we have some problems. That is why we have the job 
retraining because we are having reshifting. I hope we address the 
Chinese currency question and the unfair trade policies of China that 
are ripping the guts out of my District just like they are in other 
places and unnecessarily causing adjustments. The President pointed out 
we needed an energy bill and we need new health care bills because when 
we talk about jobs, when we talk to industry and the people who create 
the jobs and the investors, they want the tax cuts. If the Democrats 
succeed in raising the taxes, they will kill the recovery because when 
they say they do not like the President's tax cuts, what they mean is 
they do not want to vote to extend them, and if we do not extend them, 
as the President said last night, it is an increase.
  So, if they increase the taxes, does anybody really believe there 
will be additional investment to keep our economy recovering? Do people 
really believe if we increase the taxes on inheritances that small 
businesses will not disband and continue to sell out to foreign 
corporations because of inheritance taxes? Do people really believe if 
we raise capital gains taxes again that people will expand their 
companies and add jobs in their companies? Do people really believe 
that if we increase their income taxes, and as the President said last 
night, everybody who pays taxes got a tax cut. The only people who did 
not get a tax cut are the people who do not pay income taxes. They did 
not get an income tax cut because they do not pay income, but if you 
pay income, you got a tax cut, and by giving more dollars to people, 
people were able to invest and now help lead the stock market recovery.
  After 9/11 if we had not given the $600 to individuals, I just cannot 
imagine where our economy would be, and then the child tax credit, can 
my colleagues imagine the pressures on families trying to deal with 
health care and housing costs and clothing costs if all of the sudden 
the Democrats succeed in taking back the tax credits? We will have a 
disaster in the economy. That is why the President talked about taxes 
last night and health care last night and some adjustments; and he 
talked about Medicare, too, which is important with seniors.
  The only area where we did not really have bipartisan support was 
when the President addressed social issue. When he talked about 
abstinence education, it was really disappointing to see that become a 
partisan issue. Since when has abstinence before marriage become a 
partisan issue? That was really sad. Since when did the Defense of 
Marriage Act, which even President Clinton signed, that said marriage 
should be between a man and a woman forever, when did that become a 
partisan issue? When did drug testing and drug prevention programs 
become partisan?
  I am concerned about the divides on the social issue area because, in 
fact, we had the bipartisan support for the Medicare bill. It could not 
have passed if we had not had literally dozens of Democrats for that 
bill. The tax bill would not have passed without Democratic support. We 
would not have been able to pass the war resolution without Democratic 
support, but on things like faith-based, on abstinence education, 
defending marriage in the United States, we do need to have bipartisan 
support. We need help from the other side. We cannot just have those 
issues be Republican issues, and it was really disturbing last night to 
see that division, and when it is viewed as the President interjecting 
partisanship, if he raises the subject of abstinence education, my 
lands, how is that partisan? If we say I believe marriage should be 
between a man and a woman that is partisan?
  Those people who criticize faith-based organizations as being 
partisan have a problem right now. Where has the consensus and the 
moral foundations of America gone? I thought the President laid that 
kind of comprehensive vision, not the particulars that will come in the 
budget, but the comprehensive vision of a strong America that stands up 
against evil in the world, wherever it is coming from, an America that 
is founded on letting people keep their own money, of trying to create 
job creation, not have Washington drive everything, not having lawsuits 
drive our economy but having the people that are investing in it drive 
the economy, and a moral, Judeo-Christian-based foundation in America 
that treats people decently and accommodates all kinds of religious 
diversity as people move into our country but understands that faith 
plays a key role in our Nation. That was the vision he laid out.
  Now it is our job as Congress to take his budget that he proposes to 
us and get into the specifics of how we fund the National Guard and 
what we do in the national parks. I have worked with my colleague from 
New Jersey on fish and wildlife issues, on human rights issues. We do 
that stuff on a regular basis, but last night we had an amazing 
presentation on the basic vision of where we are going in America, and 
I was excited by that speech.
  One of the things the President also addressed was a few new anti-
narcotics initiatives, but I think a lot of people missed something he 
said right at the beginning of his new initiatives on drug testing and 
prevention and trying to correct steroid abuse in the United States, 
and that is, that we have had a drop in illicit drug usage in the 
United States of 11 percent in the last 2 years. It is an extraordinary 
thing.
  I get a lot of flak as chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal 
Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources. The drug legalizers groups, 
and groups funded by George Soros that masquerade as large citizen 
groups but get their money mostly from George Soros and his few allies 
who are billionaires to try to legalize drugs in the United States, 
hiding behind so-called medicinal marijuana which is not medicinal at 
all, and heroin needles, distribution, free heroin clinics and all this 
type of stuff, really predominantly a drug legalization movement funded 
by George

[[Page 156]]

Soros and his allies. Those groups do not like me. They do not like 
anything that comes out of our committee, and they are constantly 
harassing us.
  They opposed and were just really crushed when the ONDCP, the Office 
of National Drug Control Policy, and the National Ad Campaign passed 
this House by voice vote. They were just crushed because they had this 
idea that there was going to be this big uprising and drug policy would 
be defeated, but the fact is we have done drug policy in a bipartisan 
way. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings), who is the ranking 
member of the subcommittee, he and I do our best to work together on 
all issues, to draft the bill together. He had multiple amendments. The 
gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) and I often do not see eye to 
eye on other things, as the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), 
the chairman of the full Committee on Government Reform, and I do see 
eye to eye, and we have our differences at times with the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Waxman) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. 
Cummings), but we realized on drug policy we needed to stand together 
and worked to address the evils. By doing that, we have had a 
reduction.
  Often, I will come to the House floor and talk about the problems of 
Oxycontin and the rise in meth and the struggles in Colombia and Mexico 
and Canada and in Afghanistan, but the truth is if all we hear is the 
struggles, we miss the part of the success story, that in fact, the 
money we have been spending, by raising the struggles, by raising the 
problems, the money we have been spending has actually been working.
  Those who are libertarians, or I would call liberal-tarians, whether 
they be far right or far left anti-government people, want a line and 
say government programs never work. No government programs can tinker 
at the edges. Job creation predominantly comes from the private sector, 
but incentives can help, that in education it should be mostly at the 
local government but had we not addressed through IDEA and certain 
civil rights legislation many people in American would not have had a 
chance, and the Federal Government needed to directly step in. Clearly 
in housing, had the Federal Government not stepped in in certain areas, 
there would not be some of that social safety net. That is not the 
primary. From a concerted perspective, I think it is secondary, but in 
some groups, it was very primary and important.
  Same thing in narcotics policy. We have most law enforcement is State 
and local. Most treatment is State and local or private sector through 
insurance. Most of these things are done through the private sector, 
but the government plays a critical role, and let me read a few of the 
accomplishments this year through the Office of National Drug Control 
Policy.
  One of the most visible is the national campaign against marijuana 
which is probably why there has been such an outcry and an angry 
frustration with some of our policies, because the one thing they do 
not want to happen was marijuana. So let me address that a minute.
  We hear, and as I started to point out, about all the negatives and 
then we start to think it is not working, but in fact, we have made 
progress. We have these peaks that drug use in the United States went 
up in the 1960s, dropped, went up again, dropped under Reagan, went up 
again. By the way, we would have to reduce drug use in the United 
States 50 percent to get it back to where it was when President Clinton 
took office. We can argue with sub-groups in that and some went up 
higher than others and some drugs went up higher than others, but we 
are making progress now partly because, quite frankly, we had a balloon 
when our national policy from 1992 to 1994, our national policy was 
hear no evil, see no evil, do no evil.
  From that perspective, what happened was is the President started 
joking about I did not inhale. They cut the drug czar's office from 120 
people down to 23 people. They cut the interdiction money going to 
South America by dramatic amounts, and guess what, cocaine and heroin 
flooded into our country. Marijuana flooded our streets. The stigma 
went off like it did in the 1960s. The grades of marijuana went up in 
their potency from 5 to 8 percent THC to 15 to 25, in some places, 40 
percent THC, where marijuana is as potent and as dangerous as cocaine 
and sells for that amount in the streets. Those changes in 1992 and 
1994 were dramatic.
  President Clinton, to his credit, after the Republicans took over and 
after a little bit of arm twisting, brought in General McCaffrey to 
head the drug czar's office, gave him dollars, and since 1995 we have 
had pretty steady progress for 8 years. The first couple of years were 
more to flatten out the trends, then to get like a 2 percent, and last 
year, there was an 8 percent reduction in marijuana. People who say the 
national ad campaign does not work are wrong. The fact is, by educating 
people, not just hammering off over the heads and saying, look, you are 
going to wind up forever destroyed if you use marijuana, no, not 
everybody who does winds up destroyed, but you cannot get at cocaine, 
heroin, meth, oxycontin and other abuses as a whole unless you get at 
marijuana, because marijuana and alcohol abuse, but for the other hard 
drugs, marijuana basically is an entry level drug.

                              {time}  1500

  For every 10 marijuana users, one, or maybe two, counting high-grade 
marijuana, will move into a harder drug. If you have 100, you will have 
10 over here. If you have a thousand, you will have a hundred over 
here. If you have 10,000, you will have a thousand over here. The 
percents stay roughly the same.
  Because once you are introduced, a certain percentage will become 
addicted, whether psychological or physical. A certain percentage will 
want a higher hit, a bigger and longer impact of the narcotics. And the 
next thing you know, you have more addicts.
  So to make a really dramatic reduction, Director Walters decided to 
go at marijuana. So the national ad campaign showed all kinds and they 
studied particularly target youth groups. I hear a lot of people say, I 
do not see a lot of those ads, or I do not particularly like those ads. 
Well, guess what, 53-year-old white guys like me are not the primary 
target. Not saying there are not 53-year-old white guys who are abusing 
cocaine, but we are not the prime target. We are trying to get people 
at the entry, at the gateway coming in and getting addicted. By the 
time you are 53, if you are addicted, you need a treatment program. And 
we are working with the treatment programs and trying to do that. What 
we need to do is get at the people as they are coming into the system.
  I see I have been joined by my colleague, the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson), and he has been a leader in the drug-
testing area. If I can, let me make a brief introduction on the drug 
testing.
  Last night, the President proposed an initiative for $25 million for 
drug testing. The gentleman from Pennsylvania has been looking at this 
issue for some time. I worked on this when I was a staffer over on the 
Senate side with Senator Coates years ago. So let us say this as point 
blank as we can. Drug-free prevention programs and treatment programs 
will not work without drug testing. You have to have an accountability. 
The President last night said that as part of our prevention treatment 
programs we are going to put in some measurement sticks, just like he 
talked about in education and just like he talked about in other areas, 
and one of those things is drug testing.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield now to my friend from Pennsylvania to talk about 
a little of that and whatever other issue he wants to talk about.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my good 
friend from Indiana (Mr. Souder), who is the leader in Congress on this 
issue. I want to commend him for these efforts because these are not 
issues that are pushed by the power brokers in this country or pushed 
by the big PAC givers. These are the issues that are at the heart and 
soul of America's kids

[[Page 157]]

and who, I feel, have more peer pressure today to deal with the drug 
issue than any generation before them.
  This used to be a city issue. For years, maybe decades, the cities 
have been infected with drugs. But I hear the experts today say there 
is not a community in America that does not have a drug problem. Now, 
one of the problems we have is a lot of those communities do not 
realize the severity of the problem and sometimes kind of just want to 
look by it as long as it has not impacted them or their families or 
their neighborhoods.
  I represent a huge rural district in Pennsylvania, one of the largest 
rural districts in the eastern part of the country, and I have hundreds 
and hundreds of small towns. I have not talked to a youngster in my 
office that does not tell of the severity of the drug issue in their 
school and the easy availability, marijuana being available in middle 
school. Sometimes kids will actually smoke a marijuana cigarette before 
they smoke tobacco because it is easier to buy. They do not have to 
have an ID card. Stop and think about that.
  Jonathan Walters, the Drug Czar, was with me in my district about a 
year ago and is doing a wonderful job. I will never forget the face of 
a young lady, 16 years old, who lived in a small town of about 6,000 
people. This is an area you would think would not be infested with 
drugs. When she was 14 she was using three bags of heroin a day. The 
young people in that school were driving into north Philadelphia and 
they were buying pure uncut heroin.
  The tragedy of that is that usually heroin is the drug for the end-
of-the-line user. When people got hooked on heroin, they had worked 
their way all the way up the food chain. Heroin is such a powerfully 
addicting drug, it is usually just a matter of time until their life is 
over. But here we have 14-year-old and 15-year-old and 16-year-old 
teenagers who are into heroin. I have probably 10 or 15 communities in 
my district that have known heavy heroin use in kids.
  The power of it is that it is uncut pure heroin that is affordable 
and available. And the problem with that is it is so addictive that the 
drug counselors tell me if you have any kind of an addictive 
personality you may never lick the habit. Now, this young lady, I said 
to her, what is your wish? Well, she said, my wish in life is that I 
had never touched it. I am on my second rehabilitation program, and I 
hope I can stay drug-free. I do not want to ever do drugs again.
  But the addiction is so powerful, and when you take young people like 
that, who are not even mature as an adult yet, and give them uncut 
heroin, or uncut cocaine, or the one that has been terribly impacting 
my region also, which is methamphetamine, where it is manufactured in 
laboratories out in the country, in homes and garages and barns and 
buildings, it is about as addicting as heroin and about as powerful. 
And I am told many times people who may be first- and second-time users 
will fight that addiction the rest of their life.
  So those who think testing is an intrusion of privacy, I want to 
plead with you that testing is the only way parents know, it is the 
only way a family knows, it is the only way schools know what your 
child is doing. And if you have it to where schools participate 
voluntarily and parents approve of their kids being tested, I would 
test all kids that parents would allow the test. Leave it a freedom of 
choice of the family, but I would make it a negative check-off where 
everybody gets tested.
  Now, that is not where most are at today. But I listened to the 
debate at the Supreme Court when they expanded from sports activities 
to all extracurricular activities, and some schools have gotten 
creative and said kids driving their cars to school, because assuming 
you drive your car to school, you are more likely to be bringing drugs 
in here.
  I had an argument with a nationally well-known figure, and if I 
mentioned his name you would all know him, but he was arguing on a 
national television show against testing, so I said to him, well, if my 
memory is correct, 15 or 20 years ago the military had a rampant drug 
problem, and random testing fixed it. He stopped, he paused, he said, 
yes, I was there. I was a part of that. I had never related it, but you 
are right. I change my position at this moment. I would support random 
drug testing.
  So today I introduce the Empowering Parents and Teachers for a Drug 
Free Education Act. The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) joined me 
and the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne). That is a band of three. 
But I think it is legislation whose time has come.
  I cannot tell you how excited I was last night when the President put 
sufficient emphasis on this. It is not about privacy. It is about 
helping young people who are now being exposed to drugs that are so 
powerful that if they use them once or twice they may be addicted the 
rest of their lives. So it is preserving their life.
  It is not about drug enforcement. It is about when you find a 
youngster that has drugs in their system that the parents get involved, 
and then the schools get involved to first help them with this problem. 
A youngster into drugs without help will soon be too far down the road 
that they will literally owe their life to the drug dealers.
  When you look at who the drug dealers are, we know today for a fact 
that terrorism is often funded by drug dealers. The drug dealers of 
America in our small towns are the scourge of this country. They are 
the low life who care nothing about the future of our youth, care 
nothing about the future of this country. They are just interested in 
the mammoth profits they make selling this poison to our young people.
  I will never forget the discussion I had last year with my 
granddaughter Nicole. We were going shopping after Christmas, returning 
some things and spending some of her money she had gotten for 
Christmas, and we always get on this subject. And she said, Pop, why 
are you so concerned I will get on drugs? I am a good student. I am 
doing well in school, she said. I am not going to do drugs, Pop. So I 
said, well, who do you think will entice you to do drugs? She said, oh, 
some creep at school or somebody that will come. I said, no, Nicole, 
that is not who will introduce you to drugs. The person who will 
introduce you to drugs is one of your best friends, like Jacquelyn, 
whose boyfriend or friend has, maybe at a party where she has had a 
couple of beers, even though that is not legal, but her judgment is 
impaired and she tries them. When she tries them and has gotten into 
that habit, she is going to want her best friend, Nicole, to be with 
her.
  It is not some creep that introduces our kids to drugs. It is 
somebody who is their friend. It is somebody who they have an 
established relationship with. I guess the thing that scares me, and 
that I wish school superintendents would be more scared of, and I wish 
parents would be more fearful of is that their child, without any doubt 
is going to have numerous opportunities to do drugs. Even if they are 
not an avid drinker, even if they are not into the other things where 
they are more likely to, there will be a time. So we must help these 
young people.
  In the workplace today it is common practice. You sign a form, and in 
most cases they say we will be randomly drug testing. That is the way 
of the work world. In the military, you will be randomly drug tested. 
And I find there is no tool to help get drugs out of our schools. If I 
were president of a college, I would have on the application form that 
you will be randomly drug tested. And I would promise the parents that 
brought them there that my first goal would be to run a drug-free 
college. It would be difficult, but it would be my number one goal. 
Because those are still those formative years.
  The kids tell me that the age at which they are asked to do drugs is 
getting younger and younger and younger. And when you get down to 8th 
and 9th graders, who are not that mature yet, who are more vulnerable, 
and the drugs are more available to them, and they are more potent than 
they have ever been, a lot of them are pure and uncut, and at that 
those young ages, if they try once, they may never lick the habit.
  I thank my colleague for the chance to join him.

[[Page 158]]


  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to my friend, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to join my fellow 
colleagues today in applauding our President last night for his 
position on drug testing, and I would certainly agree with what my 
colleagues have just said, because young people today are faced with 
this onslaught.
  First of all, we have a media around them, entertainment media, et 
cetera, that actually breaks down their ability to make the right 
decisions for their lives in the long run, and drug testing would not 
only go a long way in terms of just identifying a young person whose 
parents need to know that they are vulnerable and are perhaps making 
some wrong choices in their life, but drug testing also gives these 
young people an added incentive to say no.
  Without drug testing, if you are talking about your daughter going to 
a party or something and having a few beers, there is nothing she can 
say to the person proposing using drugs except, well, that is wrong and 
we should not do that; my parents have told me that is wrong. And that 
is about as neat a thing to say at a party as I guess let us listen to 
Bing Crosby music or something like that. But if there is drug testing 
in school, young people will know what to say. And what to say is I 
cannot take this drug because I may be tested for drugs in my school 
tomorrow. And if I get tested for drugs and I am positive, my parents 
will know about it.
  And as far as I am concerned, any young person who is found to have 
drugs through drug testing, and there should be drug testing in our 
schools from junior high all the way through, not only should their 
parents be notified but the student should be able to then face an 
extra hurdle to jump over before graduation. And that hurdle should be 
a class that they need to take that will demonstrate to them the evils 
and the threat that drugs have for them as an individual. We need to 
let this child, who is now a young person, sit through a few films and 
some personal stories about how drugs have destroyed the lives of other 
young people and make that mandatory if that young person tests 
positive for drugs.

                              {time}  1515

  They would have to get a passing grade. And I would suggest that if 
someone has tested positive for drugs before they get their degree, 
they have got to test so they are not on drugs. In other words, we have 
got to provide positive incentives for young people not to get involved 
in this type of behavior in the first place. Again, I would applaud our 
President for taking a positive approach. I have some disagreement with 
some of my other colleagues as to how effective the war on drugs is and 
how effective just focusing on enforcement or interdiction is. I do not 
think they have been effective at all. That is why we have got to try 
this personal approach, personal responsibility, focusing on 
identifying those people who are vulnerable, especially focusing and 
identifying people who might make us vulnerable. Airline pilots, 
doctors, people who our lives are in their hands, they all should be 
drug tested, but then especially testing young people to make sure 
their parents can know that there is a challenge and giving an 
incentive for these young people to say no when they are offered these 
drugs.
  I would join you both in applauding our President and hope that we 
can stimulate people across this country to look at drug testing as a 
positive alternative rather than some sort of threat to privacy. The 
only way it would be a threat, I would say, to civil liberties is if 
drug testing is mandatory and then we believe that we are going to 
prosecute young people for using drugs. That would be self-
incrimination in my point of view, but I do not think that is what is 
being advocated here. What is being advocated here is drug testing in 
order to facilitate some type of outreach program to get someone so 
they are not using drugs.
  Mr. SOUDER. I wanted to reiterate the gentleman's last point. This is 
a prevention and interdiction tool to help reach people before they 
become heavy addicts. That is why it is targeted at the schools. There 
is a body of law that has to be followed. This program will be thrown 
out in any school that does not follow the body of law. In 1989 and 
1990 in the omnibus drug bill, my former boss in the Senate, the junior 
Senator from Indiana, whose name I guess I cannot say here on the 
floor, that we had an amendment based off of a high school in West 
Lafayette, Indiana where the baseball team had an outfielder who got 
hit on the head with a fly ball. And he was a very good fielder. The 
question was, how did he miss a fly ball?
  A similar thing happened, I think, to the third baseman. In that 
process, they decided to drug-test their baseball team. They found that 
one-third were high. So they decided to put in a policy of drug testing 
on athletes and then cheerleaders. We took that as an allowable use 
then in the drug-free school bill, in the 1989-1990 bill, and put that 
in as an allowable use. It was then attempted to be expanded in Texas 
and a few other States student-wide. The court initially just upheld 
where there was extra risk in athletics and then as our colleague from 
Pennsylvania pointed out, it broadened it in a recent court case to go 
to the next step. But in the legislation it was very explicit.
  We also did this in the drug-free workplace. We did it on truck 
drivers' testing. The test has to be either a total classification or 
purely random. They cannot say, ``That guy has long hair. I think he's 
doing drugs. I'm going to test him. I'm not going to test this.'' In a 
company you need to test the management and the owners, not just the 
employees. You have to have equitable treatment, including us in 
Congress should be testing ourselves, even though technically we are 
exempt from this. If we are going to put it on government employees, we 
ought to be doing it ourselves in our offices.
  The second thing is related to that, the type of tests and how you do 
the tests are by law required. If you are going to use a urine test, 
there are standards of how you keep that, how you sort it, how you mark 
it, that you have a second test so you do not get any false positive 
with it. Hair tests and follicle tests are much better and harder to 
mix up. There ought to be a logical appeals process with it. In other 
words, if you deprive people of their civil liberties in the process of 
this, even students in loco parentis, you got a problem. But the fact 
is, if you do it right, it is the best prevention and identification 
deterrent.
  To share one of the stories from my district, I was at a school which 
was doing it in athletes. I like drug testing, like both of my 
colleagues, and proposed that it ought to be used more widely. The 
student body president objected and said this is a violation of my 
liberties. A couple of other people objected. And then one student got 
up and said that he had been abusing marijuana, got caught, his life 
had been going downhill, that that forced him to confront it just like 
the gentleman from California referred to and said he talked to his 
parents, got his life straightened around and he believed drug testing 
would be good.
  Then somebody else from the student government objected again and a 
couple of the other students spoke up. And when we were done, the 
principal and superintendent came over and said, ``We're implementing 
school-wide drug testing because every single person who spoke up 
against it has never had a drug violation or suspected but every one of 
the kids who spoke up for it had either had a problem or we wondered if 
they did.'' They were crying out for help, for accountability from 
adults in a society that does not care. That is another aspect of it. 
If they think they are going to go to jail, they are not going to speak 
up, but if they think somebody is going to reach out and love them and 
help them, I believe, and I believe our policies in the United States 
need to be focused not on legalizing the behavior, but we recognize 
that very few actually go to court for one-time marijuana use.
  You cannot be our age and have gone through the 60s and the 70s 
without knowing lots of people who did marijuana, and I do not 
personally know

[[Page 159]]

anybody quite frankly who went to prison for just smoking marijuana. If 
they went to prison for that, they were probably involved either in 
multiple parties or dealing or driving somebody or something more 
extensive. As a practical matter, that is what we are trying to bust. 
My colleague from California and I have strong disagreements about 
Colombia policy and some other things, but on this type of thing in 
prevention and the treatment programs, quite frankly, these treatment 
programs that take all this money and do not want to measure whether 
their clientele are abusing when they come out, hey, that is a big 
problem. I thank my colleagues.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the gentleman will yield, as I said, I believe 
that the interdiction effort and the efforts, punishment, et cetera, 
have not succeeded. One of the reasons that it has not succeeded in our 
society, what we have is laws on the books that supposedly make 
something illegal, yet we have, by our own actions not put a societal 
stamp of disapproval. In fact, by not having drug testing and by not 
having, as Ronald Reagan used to say, a Just Say No mandate, or a 
societal norm that is unaccepting of drug use as personal behavior, 
what we have done is we have got laws that are unenforced, so 
officially supposedly it is against the law, but at the same time, the 
norms of society are accepting drug use. I think that drug testing will 
make sure that young people know absolutely fully well that society has 
a stamp of disapproval on drug use. Right now it is very nebulous as to 
whether or not our society is against people using drugs or not. This 
would be a clear message to young people, saying that society is so 
much against it, we are even going to test you and if you are using 
drugs, we are going to send you through a special program to make sure 
that you know how harmful this can be, and so there is no question in 
these young people's minds.
  The gentleman is right. Young people are looking out for guidance. 
Frankly I believe that if you threaten them, and I know we disagree on 
this, if you threaten them, sometimes it is almost titillating for kids 
to get around those type of rules where the sheriff comes up and we're 
going to put you in jail or something. But when you have to say you are 
not going to get your driver's license if we find out that you have 
been using drugs, you are not going to graduate, there is no getting 
around that. That is a real life stamp of disapproval. I think this 
would be very effective.
  Again the gentleman is right on target for congratulating our 
President and applauding him for making this an emphasis in his State 
of the Union speech.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I have had young people and other 
people who were opposed but most of the young people who come in my 
office support drug testing. They would like to see that down pressure 
on their friends who are struggling with the decision-making process.
  Several years ago I was discussing this issue with a radio 
commentator on a big city talk radio program. He was making fun of me, 
according to the people who were listening to the station, prior to me 
coming on, that we are going to talk to the Congressman that wants our 
kids to fill a cup with urine and just was kind of making light of it. 
At the end of that discussion that day after I was off, one of my staff 
was listening, he said, you know, I was pretty opposed to this idea, 
but after the discussion, if I had a 12- or 14-year-old boy, and I 
don't, would I want testing or would I not and he had a long pause and 
he said, you know, I think the Congressman convinced me. Just the 
matter of having a discussion.
  We have other tests. We have the hair test, which I think is one of 
the best because it reaches back. If you tested in September, you know 
the activity for months before, because the hair holds the drug. You 
have saliva tests, you have sweat tests, of course you have the blood 
tests, the urine tests. There is lots of testing today. One of the 
deterrents to schools doing it is the cost, especially in a small rural 
school district with there is not much extra cash to go around. That is 
what is so vital about the President's program saying, hey, if you 
decide, if the parents in your community talk to your administration 
and say we would like our kids tested and you develop a testing 
program, we're going to help. That is what this is about. This is not a 
mandate. I know in my district, I am going to be selling it. The young 
people want me to sell it. We need to encourage parents and community 
leaders to encourage school boards to move out and say, let's do 
everything we can do to make our school drug free. I have 
superintendents who are there. I have lots of superintendents who are 
afraid of the issue.
  But I have had a couple of superintendents who have said they bring 
in dog teams, they bring in a drug enforcement officer, they bring in 
people who tell about the lives of people who got addicted to drugs and 
how their life was really over. Parents would have the right to veto if 
they did not want it. That keeps us out of the ACLU and the courts. In 
my view, I think there are a lot of things we can be doing, and what we 
are doing it for is the kids.
  Joe Paterno is a strong proponent of drug testing. He has been 
coaching young men for a long, long time. On my very last time with 
him, as I went to leave the room, he said, Pete, you keep pushing that 
drug testing. I want to tell you, over my years of coaching, and I have 
been drug testing for some time, one year I let up and the next spring 
camp I saw some of my boys back from last year who I suspicioned may 
have at times been on drugs, and I hadn't tested much that year and I 
saw more signs, because as a coach he knew, he could tell by watching 
their play in spring camp whether they had been using drugs or not. I 
do not know how he told.
  He said, I want to tell you, I'll never make that mistake again. I 
continue to do more and more and more testing because testing works.
  Mr. SOUDER. I thank both gentlemen for talking about drug testing. I 
want to put this a little bit in the context, because that was a 
critical part of the State of the Union last night to talk about that 
in particular, but once again as the President said at the front of 
that section, that, in fact, we have had a reduction in drug use in the 
United States. That is partly because we have a holistic policy that 
the drug testing is a key component of the accountability and the 
measurement.
  As both of my colleagues have pointed out as well as myself, but 
particularly the gentleman from California, it is a stigma part that 
one of the things, I have been to Colombia now about 10 times and in 
multiple countries, particularly in the Andean region, where because of 
our demand, because we cannot control our demand, we are disrupting and 
overturning democracies that have been there for hundreds of years.
  In Colombia, I think it was actually in Ecuador, in Guayaquil, a 
young student came up to me and said, why do you keep picking on the 
Andean nations? When I went to school in the United States, I saw no 
stigma at all. You could get dope in any college, you could get it from 
anybody. Why don't you put some stigma?
  That is partly why I offered the amendment that is a very unpopular 
amendment but basically says if you get convicted of a drug crime and 
you are taking money from the taxpayers of the United States you're 
going to lose your loan. We have had arguments about how that has been 
interpreted and I do not agree with how it has been interpreted and we 
are trying to fix that but the bottom line is if you take somebody 
else's money, you should follow the laws of the United States. We 
cannot go to Colombia and say stop growing this stuff if we do not do 
things here like drug testing and that.
  In Colombia, interestingly in this past year, we have had the most 
successful year yet, we are still struggling but we have had the most 
successful year yet in stabilizing at least large sections of that 
country. We have, in addition to having sprayed all but some 
concentrated areas of coca, which is why the attacks are getting so 
vicious, why we had some Americans shot down, why we have had our 
planes

[[Page 160]]

taking more hits than they ever have because we are not spraying the 
whole country anymore, we are spraying concentrated areas that are hard 
to get to and the drug dealers are digging in to fight to keep us from 
eradicating, but we have had the best spraying year.
  One hundred fifty municipalities now have a government presence in 
them instead of just having the right-wing terrorists come through who 
originally were trying to protect the towns but were not government 
units and the left-wing FARC which provides protection for the drug 
growers fighting with each other, terrorizing the individual people. 
There is now a government presence since President Uribe took over in 
150 municipalities that did not have it. They have had more than 300 
projects and 25 departments benefiting displaced persons, 
rehabilitating child soldiers, providing legitimate employment 
opportunities. It is part of our Andean initiative to make sure that we 
do not just spray, we do not just eradicate but what are we doing for 
the people who are being disrupted because of our habits, our habits 
and western Europe.

                              {time}  1530

  Then the question is if we cannot get it there, we have got to get it 
in interdiction. Because of pulling a lot of our Coast Guard units in 
and some of the other things in around Homeland Security, we have had 
some gaps; but we have been doing reasonably well, particularly on the 
south border. For example, a couple of DEA busts along with the stigma 
on LSD, when we can tackle it, much like we are trying to do with meth 
and OxyContin hopefully too, this is the pattern of emergency room, 
when somebody comes in, do they mention that they were high on LSD? As 
we can see, it has dropped from 5,000 in 1999 to 891 in 2002.
  In my home area in northeast Indiana, we had a similar drop. We had a 
jump up in LSD. We battle it hard; we interdict it. The DEA did a major 
undercover bust with it. We had publicity on attacking LSD, and when we 
put on the stigma combined with enforcement, it will drop.
  Meth is a huge challenge, and it is a growing challenge. Even though 
all of us see the little labs, I want to make just a brief education 
point on meth because most Members here, if we ask them what is the 
fastest-growing category, everybody would say meth, but it is actually 
still only 8 percent of drug use, and 80 percent of the meth is coming 
from superlabs in California and Mexico even though we are seeing all 
these arrests in our district, because the labs we have in Indiana and 
rural Pennsylvania and others are dangerous and addictive and 
threatening the kids in those labs, but they are only cooking for 
themselves and maybe two other people, whereas the superlabs will ship 
it to thousands of people. California has been the leader in passing 
child abuse laws; and other States need to emulate that, that if they 
have a lab, because of the terrible deaths of kids getting exploded by 
their parents cooking and the dangers of the superlabs, but we need to 
focus on meth and crystal meth and ice and all the different variations 
like we had on LSD to get this kind of trend and keep the law 
enforcement pressure on with the stigma pressure and with an education 
and prevention pressure.
  One other thing. We are doing an OxyContin hearing in Orlando. They 
have had a series of deaths in that city because of overdoses on 
OxyContin. It is a difficult issue because they can have legitimate 
uses. Just like in meth, it is tough to regulate out of Brussels and 
out of Amsterdam and through Canada because ephedrine is not illegal. 
It has legal uses too. But the fact is we have to have the courage to 
stand up to some drug companies that do not want us to talk about the 
dangers of misuse of some legitimate drugs.
  The President last night boldly addressed steroids. We heard, 
particularly those of us who are baseball fans, some questions being 
asked about records that were falling; and out of that process we 
learned more and more that in multiple sports that the success stories 
were because people were artificially pumping themselves up. As that 
pressure spread and as we listen to the stories of athletes in junior 
high and high school, the sad stories of these kids who are afraid they 
cannot get college scholarships, who are afraid they cannot be pro 
athletes, who are afraid they cannot advance unless they cheat, unless 
they alter their body, who are even more vulnerable than the baseball, 
football, basketball, wrestling, boxing stars who pump themselves up 
who have millions of dollars to get physician advice, who still destroy 
their bodies, now imagine being a young person who is still growing, 
who is filling out, who does not get the medical advice, and is putting 
their life at risk, not just damaging their body but putting their life 
at risk. And the President had the courage last night, like the 
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) and others here in this body, to 
talk about the abuse in athletics and how we have to tackle that. Just 
like the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) and the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Mica) and others have been leaders in trying to raise the 
issue of OxyContin here and the meth caucus in this Congress to try to 
address the meth questions, we have to work at the stigma.
  One other thing in this general category. If we continue to succeed 
in the eradication, if we continue to succeed in the interdiction at 
the borders, if we continue to succeed in arresting the dealers and 
those who are working with that, if we can up our prevention efforts 
and if we can put through drug testing and an accountability provision 
in, we still have to worry about those who are addicted. And the 
President last night had a couple of references. One is, in drug 
treatment, he has an expansion of drug treatment. We have been 
increasing that rapidly here; and we need to continue to do that 
because, quite frankly, if we do not stop the number of people coming 
in, we cannot, as Nancy Reagan so eloquently said, win a war just by 
treating the wounded. At the same time, we still have to treat the 
wounded. And if we can rehabilitate those who are addicted, we have a 
major impact on the drug problems in the United States. And the 
President proposed a faith-based initiative.
  But he did one other thing. I support mandatory sentences for certain 
crimes because I do not like how the legal system is letting certain 
people off based on how rich they are or what color they are and 
getting to make up what sentences they have based on their legal 
representation. There ought to be the same accountability. If one is a 
dealer, this is what they get. If one is a multiple user, if one is 
driving somebody to a drug bust, this ought to be their penalty. Our 
crime reductions in the United States, in the streets of the United 
States, and 75 to 85 percent of all crime is drug and alcohol related, 
are because we locked more people up; but our prisons are jammed. Many 
of those people are now coming out of their sentences, and the question 
is what are we going to do? They are starting to re-enter our economy. 
They are going to be back, and if all they learned was to how to be a 
better criminal, if their kids, who now lost their mom or dad because 
they were in prison and did not get any help, instead of being able to 
pull themselves up out of their situation, are now destroyed, we are in 
deep trouble in society.
  One of the other initiatives that the President announced last night 
was a major initiative to deal with housing kids of prisoners and 
initiatives in re-entry courts. There are a number of programs around 
the United States ranging from drug courts and looking for 
accountability of how to get drug courts that Director John Walters is 
trying to do and to get more patterns with it; but it is an innovative 
thing with an accountability, with the judge that people are working 
through. The drug testing is part of that, trying to include faith-
based groups that put a religious and friend and volunteer 
accountability with it. But we also need to look at real problems of 
people not wanting to hire people when they are coming out of prison, 
people not yet wanting to let them in their apartment complex when they 
come out of prison.
  The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), who is on our subcommittee

[[Page 161]]

and is my colleague from Chicago from the other party, I am 
cosponsoring his legislation for trying to deal with the housing that 
often people who are coming out of prison face. The President 
understood that in addition to the Andean initiative, in addition to 
boosting the DEA, our critical anti-drug area, in addition to working 
with Homeland Security to make our borders secure from narco-terrorism 
and providing drug money to terrorists around the country that we have 
to do something to help rehabilitate those who have been in prison and 
we need to help them both from a personal standpoint, as they deserve 
it as a human soul, and from a practical standpoint for the rest of us 
as they are coming out of prison. They have been locked up. Our crime 
rate has been down. Are we really prepared for the changes we are going 
to see if we have not invested in those people?
  I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I recently visited a 
prison in my district, a Federal prison; and 80 percent of those there 
were addicted to a drug. I believe the figure was 60 percent were there 
because they were selling drugs. That is a huge figure, $35,000 per 
person to incarcerate people. We certainly can afford to invest in drug 
treatment and in prevention.
  But I wanted to mention the issue of methamphetamine again. The 
gentleman talked about the big labs in California. I come from a very 
rural area. There is hardly a month that goes by that in our local 
community, a small town, the local paper talks of another meth bust, 
another lab found.
  And I want to tell the Members the story of Suzie. Her name is not 
Suzie, but I want to protect the family. I remember vividly when Suzie 
moved to our area. She married a person locally who was very 
successful, a family. She was pleasant. She was attractive. She was 
smart. And as years rolled by, I had heard that Suzie might have a 
cocaine problem. I did not know. But I do know this: over a year ago, 
or maybe it was 2 years ago now, there was a major meth bust in our 
region, and it was proven that she was one of the kingpins. She was the 
person who was buying the material, a lot of the material to make 
methamphetamines, at the hardware store: lye, paint thinners, a lot of 
chemicals that one would not think have anything to do with ingesting 
in one's body. In fact, in my region the drug stores have all the 
Sudafed-type health medicines behind the pharmacy because they do not 
allow them out there because they are being purchased by people who 
come in time and time again and get them because that is a main 
ingredient to make meth. So it shows us the problem is rampant. It took 
4 years to get the kingpin. DEA, the State drug team, the local police 
worked 4 years to get the person. And Suzie was the person who helped 
them nail him because before they never could get the kingpin. And he 
is now in prison, I think, for 40 or 45 years. But residue is he has 
taught so many people how to make high-quality meth that we remain a 
meth production area. And the police tell me they just do not know how 
to get their arms around it because every time they turn around, they 
hear another lead, they go check, they find another meth lab. I mean, 
they are everywhere.
  So that is a story of a destroyed life. The final page on Suzie is I 
got to know her pretty well because she was volunteering in the nursing 
homes and the personal care homes and my mother was there, and she was 
always very nice to my mother and we talked a bit. And I always wanted 
to sit down with her and talk with her about how it happened because 
she was going out also speaking to school groups. Several months ago on 
a Sunday morning, after friends had talked to her on Saturday night and 
she was in good spirits, she was found hanging in an old pump house in 
the woods, dead. Suzie lost her life because we heard, the kingpin 
said, and I do not know if they can ever prove it, but the kingpin said 
she will not live long. Suzie did not live long. She was a person in 
her late 40s. She was a mature woman. She was attractive. She was 
smart. But she got hooked on drugs. And if a person her age can get 
hooked, how vulnerable are our eighth, ninth and tenth graders as they 
are still growing and working to become adults? And that is why drug 
testing is so important. It is about protecting kids, not about 
penalizing kids.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments, and 
this is not a matter of condemning Americans. It is a matter of trying 
to develop a fully holistic policy to try to reduce drug and alcohol 
abuse. The fact is the President of the United States in his amazing 
address last night again acknowledged he overcame his addiction, or at 
least overuse of alcohol. One of my favorite commentators, Rush 
Limbaugh, had to battle with an addiction with OxyContin. Clearly, it 
strikes all types of people. It is not just the stereotypical people. 
And we need to reach out to people who are hurting and try to help them 
recover. We need to make sure that part of that is eliminating the 
temptation as much as possible, trying to keep the prices high enough, 
the supply low enough. We need to try to make sure there is an 
accountability on the dealers and those who are using it so they know 
if they want public money, whether it is if they are going to a public 
school, that there is going to be an accountability and somebody 
watching them for their own good and that there is also going to be 
help there in treatment and follow-up if they need it. Does the 
gentleman from California want to make a comment?
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I do have some disagreements with the 
gentleman as to the best way to attack this problem, but I certainly 
agree that we should make sure that young people understand just how 
serious the problem is for them and that there would be no greater 
method of telling them and putting a stamp of disapproval on it than 
making sure they have to have a drug test.
  But the gentleman referred to on the chart there some of the decrease 
in drug use that we have had over the last 2 years, and I think that a 
lot of that can be attributed also to a stamp of disapproval that the 
young people understand that our society has given just in the last few 
years. In the last administration, I think that it could be accurately 
said that people who were out fighting this problem were faced by an 
administration that trivialized the use of drugs as to what kind of 
threat it was when the President talked about not inhaling and such. 
And some of us who have had pretty wild youths in our time looked at 
that and said this man is not being serious, and the young people 
looked at the President and said this is not being serious, and our 
administration's seriousness on this has had a lot to do with the 
reduction in the use of drugs.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, last night the President highlighted the 
success of our Nation's drug strategy. I applaud the President for the 
success of his strategy and for highlighting this issue in the State of 
the Union Address. Across the Nation, the latest study found there has 
been an 11-percent decline in drug use by 8th, 10th, and 12th grade 
students over the past 2 years. This finding translates into 400,000 
fewer teens using drugs and is the first real decline nationally in 12 
years. Our own local survey done by the Coalition for a Drug-Free 
Greater Cincinnati has shown similar results over the past 3 or 4 
years. This is very encouraging news for parents, teenagers, teachers 
and everyone else who cares about the welfare of kids.
  As the President mentioned last night, community involvement is 
critical to successful drug prevention. Community coalitions are the 
heart and soul of drug prevention and community action on this 
important topic. Coalitions help all of us to come together--parents, 
teachers, coaches, religious leaders, volunteers, law enforcement--to 
encourage youth to understand that any drug use is not only 
unacceptable but harmful. Having fewer youths use drugs is important 
because we know that if young people can abstain from drugs before they 
graduate from high school, they are much less likely to have drug 
problems later.
  The Drug-Free Communities Act is an essential tool that many of our 
communities utilize to fight illegal drug abuse. Instead of creating 
new Federal bureaucracies, this program sends Federal money directly to 
local coalitions working to reduce the demand for drugs through 
effective education and prevention.

[[Page 162]]

Community coalitions are groups of citizens--parents, youths, business, 
media, law enforcement, religious organizations, civic groups, health 
care professionals, and others--who are working on local initiatives to 
reduce and prevent substance abuse. These coalitions are engaged in a 
wide variety of activities and strategies specifically tailored to the 
needs of their communities.
  We know that coalitions are making a difference. Due go the great 
work of the Coalition for Drug-Free Greater Cincinnati, there was a 41-
percent decrease in marijuana use and 23-percent decrease in alcohol 
use among 7th graders from 1993 to 2000. In a similar region where a 
coalition did not exist, there was a 33-percent increase in marijuana 
use and no change in alcohol use. The coalition, which I founded 8 
years ago, is a comprehensive, long-term effort to mobilize every 
sector of the Greater Cincinnati community to take an active role in 
preventing substance abuse. It brings local community organizations 
together with business leaders, parents, teens, clergy, law 
enforcement, and school officials to implement antidrug initiatives, 
and has become a model for dozens of communities nationwide. I know 
that there are similar coalitions in more than 5,000 communities 
nationwide doing this good work and they need our support.
  The positive results highlighted today indicate that prevention tools 
like community coalitions work to create safe neighborhoods and a 
better future for our young people.

                          ____________________